Increase Instructor-to-Student Interaction

Matthew Hightower
Professor of Business and Information Technology

 (submitted by Matt Hightower)

As online instructors at Cerro Coso, we are bound to follow the Regular, Effective, and Documentable Contact (REDC) document. Among other things, this requires that we provide a learning environment that fosters regular instructor-to-student and student-to-student contact. I addressed one way to increase student-to-student interaction in my first article. In this article, I will present a technique that I have found to be effective for increasing instructor-to-student contact.

The REDC document outlines many instructor-to-student contact methods. Most of them require an active origination method – opening the Canvas inbox or an email program and then locating the appropriate contact address, etc.. While that extra step is easy enough, it is an extra step – one that may stop the process.

In my experience, students want to know three things:

1) what do I have to do,

2) when do I have to do it, and

3) what grade did I receive on it?

Consequently, students are watching for assignment grades. Canvas sends a message to students’ Inboxs notifying them of their grade on individual assignments. This message shows the student their grade and any comments that you made on the submission. The message also links to the assignment page where the comments box is. While you may think that your structured rubric and additional comments fully close the grading cycle, many students have additional questions or comments. They will use the comment box in the assignment to ask those questions – before and after grading. The problem is that, unless you make a change to your Notifications settings in Canvas, you may never see those comments and, consequently, will not respond to them.

Canvas allows you to reply to those comments without having to go to the assignment page to do it. You can do it via the inBox or via email but you have to make a couple of changes to your Notifications settings in Canvas. The notifications change is easy and it will increase the overall instructor-to-student interaction in your Canvas courses.

To make the change, click on your Account icon in Canvas and then choose Notifications (below). The two changes that you need to make are to “Submission Comment” and “Conversation Method”. Select the check mark in both and you will see the comments in your email inbox – complete with the student’s name, the course name, and the assignment name! You will not have to wonder which class or assignment the student is referring to. And, you can reply directly from email and Canvas will automatically put the response in the appropriate assignment comments chain.

Notification Preference

If you have questions or comments, please feel free to send me an email (mhightow@cerrocoso.edu).