I am a huge advocate for clear, frequent, and open communication in educational communities.  Communication between educational stakeholders is key to improving student achievement and helps make the experience smoother for everyone.  I feel like I’m fairly decent at communicating, especially in writing.

I also feel like communication is one of my major weaknesses as a teacher.

Maybe it’s because I feel it’s so important and don’t want to mess it up.  Maybe it’s because it always seems like such a daunting task.  Maybe it’s because delivering content has always taken so much of my attention that communication tends to fall by the wayside.  Maybe it’s due to my crippling fear of talking on the telephone.

Whatever the reason, communicating regularly with students, parents, and other stakeholders outside of the classroom and assignment feedback has been a struggle for me since I began teaching.  This semester, however, I’m aiming to change that.  I’ve developed two main tools to help me accomplish this goal.

Tool #1: Anonymous “Check-in” Surveys

Because delivering an awesome experience is a prime goal of Michigan Virtual (and of mine), I’m always looking to improve on what I’m doing in my online classroom.  To facilitate feedback, I’ve created a survey that can be administered to students throughout a term.  I just launched the first one for this semester:

The survey is short, the questions are simple and straightforward, and most importantly, the responses are anonymous.  It’s so much easier to give honest feedback to someone when they have no idea who you are, right?

To be continued!  I plan to follow up on this check-in survey with a results post.  I also plan to do a parent version soon!

Tool #2: Communication Tracking Spreadsheet!

I love spreadsheets.  Ben Wyatt and I are very similar in this way.

This particular spreadsheet, combined with the “Work Offline” function of the Blackboard Full Grade Center (fully downloadable and copy-and-pasteable spreadsheets, baby!), allows me to track if a student accessed the course during the previous week, what their current percentage is in the class, and what kind of communication I’ve initiated with them in past weeks, who was involved in the communication, and what it was about.  Using this data, I can identify students who are in need of a push or help getting going, who hasn’t been contacted in a while, and who is making exceptional progress so I can send a positive e-mail to parents (which is just as important as the other, I believe).

I’m pretty excited to get working on improving this aspect of my teaching.  I’ll let y’all know how it goes!