Thank you for teaching online at NCTC. Below are some policies and best practices that you want to employ in your online courses.

First, if you are teaching online this semester, you have been added as an "Observer" to the online Composition I. Please feel free to look around, open assignments and dropboxes, and look at how the course is organized in the Modules. The purpose is to provide you with a different example of how one instructor builds in online engagement in a writing course. It's not perfect, and I'm always working to improve the course. But, it's helpful to see another example for inspiration or comparison. It also helps to get a sense of the kinds of assignments we teach, the ways we can build in engagement, and the expectations for the rigor that we have at NCTC. You can also see in the assignment rubrics how I connected the course to the learning outcomes and the core competencies.

Also, please be sure to do the following in your courses this semester:

Send weekly email/announcement to your classes. You might include in the weekly updates on where you're at in the grading, what they did well last week, what they need to consider for the assignments to come. (I don't like using Announcements and prefer to use the Homepage because I don't like for students to have to click a link to see my note. However, there are benefits to using Announcements, like it pushes out notifications.)

Make sure you've updated your profile w/ your picture and bio. You can update this in Account > Profile.

Make sure the dates are correct in your syllabus and the modules.

Make sure the syllabus is uploaded under the Syllabus tab.

Make sure that you respond to student emails within 24 hours during the week and within 48 hours on the weekend. If you have assignments due Monday night, be sure that you schedule some time to be online that evening to answer any last-minute questions.

Make sure that you participate in your online courses. In this division, we practice active participation in online courses. This means that faculty should:
- Post up an introductory video at the beginning of the semester,
- Participate in all discussion forums as a moderator (after all, we participate and moderate discussions in face-to-face classes),
- Comment on all student drafts,
- Post model responses,
- Schedule chats or conferences with students at least 1x semester to the conference about their papers in real-time.

Online courses are not independent study classes. It's important that--just like students should be spending time engaged w/ the material in the online course--instructors are active and engaged in online courses. I will also be checking in on online courses from time-to-time during the semester to see how things are going.

Here's also a helpful handout that Elizabeth Howell put together for the Math department.