Ideas on Managing Communications
with Students
The central
component to ensure success in teaching and learning is communication. There
are two main domains of student communications within the NetTel's diploma programmes:
Face-to-face and virtual. Between these two domains, there are many common goals,
for example:
- Facilitate
a conducive learning environment
- Build
trust and respect among students and instructors
- Improve
communication skills both verbally and written
- Reduce
anxiety and uncertainty on the part of the student
- Reinforce
learning objectives through modeling effective communication
As educators,
most of us have an intuitive understand of effective face-to-face communication.
However, in the emerging field of eLearning, the principles of effective virtual
communication are not as intutitive. Below are a few ideas for making sure your
virtual communications are effective:
- Organize
the presentation about a hierarchy of messages.
- Use a
constantly evolving attribute of the material to sequence it along a path.
- Order
the concepts so that earlier concepts facilitate the understanding of later
concepts.
- Provide
a memorable introduction and conclusion.
- Use multiple
representations and media to communicate.
- Allow
for multiple levels of engagement and understanding.
- Use an
``environmental look'' to provide thematic context.
(Adpated
from http://www.infoarch.ai.mit.edu/publications/mfoltz-thesis/node7.html) | 
