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Topic
B2.4: Orienting Students to Online Technologies
Communications Technologies
Online students will need to communicate
with their instructors and perhaps with other students, so here are
the basics they will need to know:
- The course Uniform Resource Locator (URL), the
student ID, the student password, and/or other information on how to
access the course.
- If a course-specific email account will be used,
or if the student may use a personal email account? If the email is
course-specific, how does the student access it?
- Within many courses, chat rooms and a bulletin
board are used. The orientation materials should include how to find
the locations of the chat room and bulletin board, how to access and
use, and rules to follow (net-etiquette). For example, some instructors
ask students to say "Hello" upon entering a chat room and "Goodbye" before
exiting.
- The instructor can explain how students should
ask questions most effectively. Will questions be asked through the
bulletin board or in the chat session so that all students can see
the question and the answer, or should the questions be asked through
email?
- After students have posted a question or sent
a question by email, how soon should they expect a reply? Usually,
the frequency of response to student’s email is announced in
the course syllabus, which is linked from the course home page. Most
instructors inform their students they can expect to receive a reply
within 24 or 32 hours, except on weekends. Or, instructors might state
that discussion board postings will be answered every morning before
noon, Monday through Friday But that information should be given clearly
and prominently on the course information page.
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