Black Hawk College
Best Practices for Exemplary Online Instruction

1. Establish policies describing the types of communication and their corresponding channel. Ex: "Post requests for help in the ‘911’ folder on the discussion board." " Post questions about assignments in the ‘Q&A’ folder of the discussion board." "The quickest way to get through to me is via email."
   
   
2. Set clear standards for instructors’ response time to email, voicemail, or assignments. Ex: "I will respond to email within two days of receiving it." "Assignment feedback will be posted to the Digital Dropbox area of our course site, usually within a week of the due date."
   
   
3. Encourage students to include the word "URGENT" in the subject line when a quick response is needed to an email message.
   
   
4. Utilize online office hours (e.g., chat, IM) to stay in touch with online students.
   
   
5. Provide an instructor e-mail link on the course homepage with other links to college resources, such as the library, other faculty, tutoring, Help Desk, etc.
   
   
6. Provide prompt, constructive feedback on assignments.
   
   
7. Develop varied opportunities for student-student, student-instructor, and student-content interaction.
   
   
8. Ensure a sense of community (e.g., create a safe environment, specify netiquette standards, post a self-introduction, be friendly and approachable, contribute regularly to the online discussion, without doing so too much, so that the students wait for you to speak, acknowledge learner contributions via showing interest and encouragement, model appreciation of diverse perspectives, track individual participation and draw "wall flowers" into the discussions).
   
   
9. Proactively engage students in all aspects of the course, especially seeking out those who appear to be absent or non-participative.
   
   
10. Facilitate learning how to be a successful online learner (i.e. online or face-to-face orientation, ongoing feedback and guidance about successful online learning behaviors, technical how-to’s, etc.).
    
    
11. Solicit student feedback throughout the course on how the course is going, how their learning is going, etc. Then share composite results with the students, enlisting their assistance in making adjustments to the course. Keep in mind Principle #6 rather than trying to determine one best response.