Online Communication skills

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The Art of Teaching Online: Ron Paige – Encouraging Reticent Students

The Art of Teaching Online: Ron Paige – Encouraging Reticent Students Program Transcript

RONALD PAIGE: If I notice that some students are not making a good effort in class, here's what I do. I am actually a person who uses lots and lots of feedback with everything that a student does in the class. Whether it's discussion, assignments, projects, I've been known to write more in my feedback than the student submitted to me in their original document.

And one of the things I address is the issue of effort. And although the rubrics that we use-- and I think this is a key, is having a good rubric for scoring students. Rubrics don't really have a place for effort. At least, I don't think they should, because sometimes effort is too intangible to really put a quantitative score on.

But as you get to know students, you get to know the effort that they're expending. And I will ask students to always increase their effort, until they begin to get a little bit frustrated, and then I know to back off. But this is one of those areas where I like to set up a conference with a student and talk to them about the work they're doing in the class.

And I will point-blank ask them if this is their best effort, and the students are almost always honest when I ask that question, I think because they're not expecting it. And if they aren't, they usually acknowledge it to me, and then we'll talk about what the problems are, and typically they're time management problems. But we'll address ways that they can then improve their effort.

Maybe it's efficiency in what they're doing. Maybe it's me providing a better exemplar or example, so that they know better how to respond. But once I can get the student in Skype or on a Google Hangout for just a few minutes, we can usually resolve these issues. And I can almost say without exaggeration that almost every student that I've ever been able to talk to face to face in Skype or in Google Hangouts will respond and tell me if their effort is not their best effort. If the problem is not them, if it's not understanding the assignment, that's a completely different issue, and we will attack that from a different perspective.

Encouraging reticent students to participate is a common problem that needs to be addressed. Now, I go about this in a couple of ways. The first thing that I do is model expectations, whether-- if it's in discussion for example, I get involved as a learner. I don't just stay in the background as the facilitator in discussions. I get involved as a learner, and when I respond to students, I model the type of response that I think that they should be considering when they respond in discussion. This gives the reticent students an opportunity to see what a good discussion response looks like.

The Art of Teaching Online: Ron Paige – Encouraging Reticent Students

I also am very clear in picking out those students who are giving excellent responses, and note that to everybody in the discussion. Once again, this gives those students who are struggling to understand what a good response looks like a model from another student that they can use.

For assignments, I provide examples in the feedback. When I give feedback to students, I try to give an example of how they would respond more appropriately, if they do not have a good, thorough explanation. And again, it's the reticent students that tend to be very brief in their responses as they're struggling to find out what the best type of response is. And I will freely give them examples of what they should be doing.

But of all the possibilities, using technology is probably the best solution. If possible, when I find a student is being way too quiet in discussion, or being incomplete in discussion or in their assignments, I ask the student to contact me synchronously. In other words, I ask the student to meet with me on Skype or Google Hangouts or Zoom or one of the synchronous options that I have. I think just the face-to-face contact makes them feel more comfortable.

Oftentimes this reticence is because they don't know how to create a social presence, and by taking a synchronous approach, I can help explain that, and also it makes the student much more comfortable in this transition from a face-to- face to a fully asynchronous online response. I have found this to work almost every single time that I run into this issue.

But also, as an instructor, I have to be prepared to acknowledge and accept their reticence if it is culturally induced. There are some students whose culture is to be reticent, is to not engage the instructor, to engage other students point blank. And you have to be ready to accept that. We can discuss it with the student as an instructor, but many times if the cultural influence is strong enough, it just is not going to happen, and we have to find other ways to have them demonstrate their knowledge, their growth in learning, from the course situation.