Effective class management in an e-learning environment involves addressing discipline, organizing documents, ensuring attendance, preventing cyberbullying, and facilitating group work.
- Issues of discipline that can occur in an e-learning environment are similar to those of a face-to-face classroom
- Teachers should implement a system of progressive discipline which begins with making expectations clear to students.
- Students could be required to complete contracts acknowledging behavioural expectations.
- Contact with parents should made after student behaviour continues to be unsatisfactory after expectations have been made clear and they have been warned.
Attendance
- Students may lose track or forget about online courses as they are not required to attend at a certain time each day.
- Teachers could send out regular reminders to check into D2L and participate in the online discussions.
- Regular tasks could be posted (ie: exit tickets, etc…) to encourage students to check in regularly in order to complete these tasks.
Cyberbullying
- Students may engage in cyberbullying through social networks outside of the D2L environment.
- Students should be encouraged to choose followers and friends on social media carefully and only interact with people they know. This applied to peers in the eLearning courses as well.
Safety on the Internet
- Students must conduct themselves in a way that protects their privacy and software must be secure and protect student data.
- Use only school board and ministry approved tools such as GAFE tools which protect student data and ensure privacy.
- Include internet safety lesson as a module in the course orientation.
Group Work
- Students may find it difficult to schedule time to work together on assignments or one student may contribute disproportionately an assignment.
- As in a face-to-face classroom, teacher should develop group work that can be divided or allow students to make their own clear contributions to the overall assignment.
- Students’ individual contribution, knowledge and understanding should be evident in group work assignments.
Completion of Assignments
- Students may leave eLearning assignments to complete at the last minute or past their due date
- Teachers should post reminders and alerts in a visible location so that students are well aware of upcoming due dates.
- Students who are falling behind should be contacted and given feedback for what is required for them to be successful.
- Tasks should be chunked so that students feel a sense of achievement in completing assignments.
Plagiarism/Copyright
- Students can easily find and post material from electronic sources as their own work. They may also share copyright sources and media without permission.
- Students should have explicit instruction on how to properly cite sources and what are acceptable sources for assignments.
- Teachers may use tools such as “turn in” to prompt students when work appears to contain plagiarism.
Management of documents, handouts and student files:
- Documents must be organized in a way that is intuitive and easy to find for students
- Use D2L tools, google docs/drive to help keep all files in one place
- As part of the course orientation teach kids how to clearly organize course materials as a face-to-face teacher would teach students how organize their binders.
Netiquette
- All communication in online courses is conducted electronically. Although students are proficient with casual online communication, they may not be proficient with professional online communication.
- As an initial assignment (especially for a language class), student could be required to read and demonstrate appropriate online Netiquette by introducing themselves and responding to their peers. This could begin with the teacher modeling what this looks like.
