ACADEMIC COMMUNICATION FOR ADVANCED LEVEL – FULL NOTES
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More teamwork
Teamwork and group discussions contribute to making the classroom a more comfortable environment. By working in small groups, students are able to share their ideas more easily, and improve their own communication skills. These activities also give them a good opportunity to ask you questions and get feedback on their work, leading to effective communication between you, better understanding of the lesson, and academic benefits.
You could also try to improve your communication skills through teamwork with your colleagues. Planning more lessons together, sharing ideas, and problem-solving together will develop the way that you interact.
Body language
Communication is not only verbal, but also non-verbal: you should ensure that the signals you are giving out through your body language are positive, confident, and engaging.
For example, making eye contact with students when you are talking to them shows that you are being supportive and attentive. Making eye contact is also important when you are presenting to the whole class – it motivates everyone to pay attention, which helps them to learn, as well as making them feel involved. In order to make more eye contact, you may have to learn your lesson content more thoroughly in advance, so that you don’t have to look away to read your notes.
As you teach, you should use gestures to emphasise your words. This increases the interactivity of the lesson, making it more visually interesting and hence, more memorable. Keep your arms open – do not fold them – and use smiles, nods, and thumbs up to encourage students when they participate. Moving around the classroom while you teach can help to remove the barrier between you and your students, and gives them less opportunity to zone out or get distracted.
Body language is also important when dealing with negative behaviour. To avoid being confrontational, ensure that you don’t stand directly above or in front of a student, point, or invade their personal space. It may be effective to get down to their level and talk quietly about their behaviour, or speak to them outside the classroom, to avoid drawing too much attention. Remember that students’ behaviour is also a form of communication, and think about what it is telling you.
You can find out more about dealing with challenging behaviour from our dedicated article: ‘How to Deal with Challenging Behaviour in the Classroom’.
Were there any findings that surprised you or challenged your assumptions about online communication?
We were surprised to learn that although a positive relationship was observed between the number of messages sent and student grades, it was not statistically significant. The uniformity in the number of messages sent by teachers may have obscured the relationship between grades and communication. Teachers indicated they used certain highly effective communication and relationship-building strategies with their students from the beginning of a course, meaning that all students likely had an opportunity to benefit from those strategies. Alternatively, this study was focused on the first four weeks of a course, so teachers may not have had enough data to identify struggling students. Despite the lack of statistical significance, the importance of communication remains clear. Teachers should continue using best practices—personalized, timely feedback and communication—as these strategies are supported by research and teacher experience.
Based on your findings, what practical steps can online educators take to improve communication with their students?
To improve communication in online courses, educators can take several practical steps. First, pairing communication tools like the Student Learning Portal (SLP) with email ensures that messages reach students effectively. Flexibility in communication methods is important, as students’ preferences vary, and teachers should be responsive to what works best for their students. Crafting communications with a welcoming tone and personalizing feedback helps build rapport.
Prompt responses are also key—replying to student inquiries within 24 hours shows attentiveness, while timely, constructive feedback (specific, consistent, and balanced in terms of corrective comments and motivation) supports academic success.
Finally, while no significant link was found between communication and grades, consistent, personalized communication remains crucial for building strong relationships that support student engagement and success in online courses. Michigan Virtual offers extensive training and support to our own teachers around communication and relationship-building and also shares best practices statewide through courses offered in our Professional Learning Portal, including a series of courses (written by MV teachers) specific to online teaching and learningand focused on these best practice strategies.
Letting Students Discover Things on Their Own
To my mind, shifting from a direct to indirect (or guided) teaching is essential. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” This is what the indirect approach is all about. The more the class is engaged in exploring something new on their own, the higher student academic achievements will be in the end.
Furthermore, when classroom activities are based on the material students already have a firm grasp of, their confidence becomes stronger enough to dive deep into the new topic even if it is rather complex to comprehend. The educator’s role here is to give the right directions and simplify the task by dividing it into smaller stages. The rest will be done by students. And believe it or not, the conclusions they will draw are sure to stay in their memories for a long time.
Initiating Interactive Activities to Increase Engagement
This is what I suggest my students do during each lesson. Having them all take part in interactive group discussions and exchange their life experiences proves to be very effective.
That’s why more and more educational institutions are replacing a teacher-centered approach with a student-centered one.
With so many interactive platforms at your fingertips, educators can enlarge the number of collaborative tasks by arranging them even during the out-of-classroom time. The only thing left for a teacher to do is to choose the simplest tool like Google Hangouts or WebEx Meeting Center and welcome students to participate in a real-time chat. By the way, the latter is a good fit for viewing videos too, which is also great for workshop series.
This is what I usually offer my students to do once we start learning another historical period in literature. This enables them to exchange their thoughts on a newly introduced topic and share newly acquired knowledge.
Giving Prompt Feedback to Students
Providing students with prompt feedback on any task they were assigned to accomplish is crucial. It’s a constituent element of an interactive approach which has a big impact on future academic achievements of each learner. Nevertheless, it takes extra time, it is worth the efforts you make.
During my lessons, I draw a list of all the mistakes made by my students. I arrange either an offline or online discussion to have them avoid these pitfalls and note down all possible solutions. When done, I usually suggest students review works of their peers or their own writings and comment on how to improve them.