Communication Skills
Online students can communicate with their teachers through email, interactive chat, or blackboard. The communication methods are many and varied in the online classroom, and each day technology becomes more advanced, which is to the benefit of the teacher and the student. Communicating in the online classroom can present challenges that are not seen in the regular traditional classroom situation. Technical problems will arise inevitably, and knowing how to deal with them will help the class to run smoothly and will help to avoid unnecessary frustration while learning online.
For students who are taking online classes and are experiencing any difficulty communicating with their teachers or with their professors, they can try to email them or even consider meeting them in person, even just once. Some online classrooms also require at least one or more face-to-face meetings in addition to the online portion of the classroom requirements.
Online teachers can try to personalized the communication involved in online instruction by having their students at the onset of a class introducing themselves and share their goals and reasons for taking the course. Doing things such as this will help students to feel more comfortable in the online classroom and students also will in turn be given ownership over their own classes that they take online.
How students and teachers communicate online is and can be entirely different from how this is carried out in person in the face-to-face situation. Online students and teachers will not be using any types of gestures or facial expressions as those found in the typical offline classroom situation. Online learners and teachers will rely more on voice, unless, of course, the classroom has video cameras and those involved in the classroom situation are able to see each other. Otherwise they are more limited in their modes of communication. They will have to depend on writing and often too, on sound. Some online classroom offerings include Powerpoint presentations or graphic organizers and the ability to draw or write out problems, as in the case of math instruction.
Since online teachers are sometimes limited in their ability to effectively communicate with their students, they must get more creative in their approaches. They can draw out concepts and also it helps if such teachers type fast and use words that are easily understandable. This is especially true in the case of English Language Learners.
Some people say that the online classroom environment is not for them because they have to see the teacher and see their gestures and facial expressions. Although some online classrooms exist where the students are able to see and interact as close as possible to the traditional physical inclassroom approach, that is not yet the norm. Some day it might be, but for now most online situations involve classrooms where students are unable to see their teachers. Because of this it is critical for the online teacher to be clear when speaking and to constantly check to see if students have any questions or concerns. This takes a lot of patience, but it is really important for the success of the students. Sometimes in my online classroom there are students who do not answer and there is no way at all to communicate with them. In such situations the online teacher must learn to be very creative. What I do in such cases is write on the chat and also write on the board in the classroom. This usually gets some kind of response from the student although it may take time to get that answer. Sometimes when there is no answer at all no matter how hard you try to contact the student it might mean that the student is really not in the classroom although they appear to be. All you can do is your best. Just keep trying to contact them and let them know in any way that you are there, whether through voice, chat, or by writing on the board. Sometimes a phone call home is what is necessary or technical support also might want to get involved in contacting and in assisting the student.
