What Can Students Expect from You?
Some of the questions listed on the previous page overlap with what students can expect from you -- for example, your response time to student inquiries and turnaround time on providing feedback. Your online syllabus and Getting Started module should thoroughly address what you expect from students and what they can expect from you.
When you clarify what you will provide to students, you give them some assurances and also give yourself some protection against unreasonable student expectations such as expecting you to be available 24 hours a day to respond immediately to questions.
Basic Expectations
Some basic expectations of an online course include:
- A well-designed course – Students should easily be able to find everything they need in the course. This includes using standard navigation structure in the course navigation menu as well as logical organization to the content in the course modules.
- Course requirements clearly stated and easy to find – The requirements should be posted in the syllabus.
- Communication policy – Let the students know your expected response time to their communications. For example, if you check your messages once per day, state in your policy that students can expect a reply from you within 24 hours. If you do not plan to engage in the course on weekends, include that information in your policy.
- Grading timeframe – State the turnaround time students can expect after submitting assignments.
- Assessment info - Provide a description of the types of assessments, number of assessments and location(s) of assessments. Provide dates if possible.
- Feedback – Let students know the frequency and form of feedback you will provide.