Post 67: Five Kinds of Interaction in the Online Classroom

Post 67:  Five Kinds of Interaction in the Online Classroom

Faculty to Student Interaction--Adobe Connect--Remedial/ Difficult Student
When you have a struggling student who does not understand what is going on in the class, or you have a student with questions about his/her low grade, then you can schedule a synchronous meeting with the student to meet one-on-one in Adobe Connect. Meeting with the student in real time usually resolves any problem the student is having in the class. I like using the Adobe Connect White Board to explain in real time the mistakes the student has made in his paper. Usually after the one-on-one meeting, the student is satisfied and understands how to fix what he did wrong and then the student does much better the next time he writes a paper.

Also, if I have a difficult student, I would email him privately to talk to him about his difficulties. I once had a student who repeated what other people said in their forums. Other students complained that this difficult student was copying word per word what they were posting without adding any new ideas of his own, thus he was stealing other people's ideas.  I had to email this student privately to talk to him about the other student complaints and to explain to him gently that he could not just cut and paste other people's posts without adding anything of his own. Once that difficult student realized his mistake, he stopped cutting and pasting other people's posts and started posting his own ideas.

Student to Student/Peer to Peer Interaction--Peer Review in Forums

In my writing class, I love to design Peer Review exercises so students can peer review each other's rough drafts. I give them a template of questions that helps students know what to look for such as: Is there a thesis statement in the other students' paper? Is the thesis placed as the last sentence of the first paragraph? Does the essay have a clear introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion paragraph? Do the body paragraphs have matching topic sentences to the thesis statement? Does the conclusion paragraph give the reader closure? Are there places in the essay that need clarifying? Students love to look at each other's feedback and integrate that feedback into their papers.






Faculty to Students Interaction--Email, Announcements, Forums

I use Announcements to give my entire class reminders about assignments, upcoming quizzes, or projects. I also congratulate those with high grades in emails and I reach out to students who are doing poorly offering assistance.   

If one student asks a question, I then post the answer to the rest of the class, because I figure if one student is say for instance, having trouble finding the reading/resources or the quizzes, then other students are probably having the same problem, so I would post in the announcements the solution of where to find alternate links or tell the class that the readings are located in the Reading/Resources tab.


Student to Sources Interaction--Student reading and students doing research for assignments.

Students interact with sources that I give them or students find sources of their own when writing their papers. Sometimes I have students do a webquest so students would interact with sources on the internet. If students are having trouble finding sources in the library, I encourage students to use Google Scholar. However, I discourage students from using Wikipedia because anybody can upload any kind of information to Wikipedia. I teach students how to evaluate credible sources from fake sources and real news from fake news. So students learn digital literacy by interacting with sources.