Teaching with Technology Portfolio:
Electronic Communications
Communication is a key element of teaching, both for keeping students informed and as a way to interact as a class. Here, I provide two examples of electronic communication that I use in my courses:
- ANGEL Email
- Piazza Discussion Forum
ANGEL Email
With ANGEL's Communication menu, sending out messages to the entire class is straightforward. At the beginning of every semester, I inform my students that I will be using ANGEL for all course emails and remind the students to check their ANGEL messages frequently (or to get them forwarded their email account).
With ANGEL's Communication menu, sending out messages to the entire class is straightforward. At the beginning of every semester, I inform my students that I will be using ANGEL for all course emails and remind the students to check their ANGEL messages frequently (or to get them forwarded their email account).
At the beginning of every semester, I send an email to my students welcoming them to the class and describing what they can expect during the semester:
In this example, I am reminding my students of a homework assignment that is due:
For Math 036 Online, I send out an email every week detailing what we will be covering, as well as important dates and announcements:
Piazza Discussion Forum
Piazza is a great discussion forum which can be used in a many ways. I use it to post discussion questions for my class to explore the applications of the course material to real life. In addition, Piazza serves as a place for students to ask questions about the homework (as well as answer questions posted by their fellow classmates). Piazza is similar to a Q&A wiki for the class - every question has a single students' answer that students can edit collectively (and a single instructors’ answer for instructors). I also post important class announcements to the Piazza page.
This example shows a student question that was answered by a fellow student:
Sample discussion question and student responses: