Institute of Teaching and Learning
Deakin University
Blackboard provides a range of tools to support online communication:
Announcements: to send important notices to students and unit staff
Discussion: to enable your students to post and reply to messages on certain topics asynchronously (with a choice of threaded discussions, blogs or journals)
Chat and Whiteboard: the Blackboard synchronous communication tool - however, eLive is the preferred tool at Deakin
Mail: to enable email communication between staff and students within the unit
Calendar: to remind students and staff of key dates, and provide links to resources relevant to particular entries
Peer review: to enable students to grade and comment on each other's discussion messages, using either a simple rating scale or a grading form.
Non-Blackboard DSO tools to support online communication are:
eLive: to enable students and staff to communicate synchronously with audio, text messaging, a whiteboard and file sharing
Social software: to set up enhanced web-based discussion, content-sharing and image-sharing spaces outside of DSO. Deakin is currently piloting five new tools for this purpose: Drupal, Joomla!, MediaWiki, Gallery2 and WordPress.
Why have an online communication strategy?
Administrative communications
Technical support
Articulation and feedback
Social contact
Group work/collaboration
Assessment of communication skills
Communication is a vital part of teaching and learning, even (especially!) for wholly online units. Online forms of communication are no longer viewed as poor substitutes for face-to-face communication. They are certainly different, but have actually been found to encourage superior types of communication for teaching/learning purposes.
The DSO online communication tools may be used quite simply, but as they differ, it will pay to select the best tools for each communicative purpose. Adopting a rational and consistent approach will help your students find the different types of information they need. It should also enable both students and staff to feel they have a free flow of communication of exactly the kind they need for various purposes, whether they be private messages, social chat or contributions to collaborative projects.
From time to time, you will need to give your students important pieces of information, eg changes to assignment due dates. The Announcements tool 
is excellent for this. If you select the 'pop-up message' option, your students will see the announcement as a 'pop-up' the next time they enter the unit. The announcement will then remain accessible to students in the announcements list until the date you have chosen for it to disappear. If your message is important, don't rely on students finding it amongst the asynchronous discussion messages!
The Calendar tool is useful for setting out a study schedule for your students, including assignment due dates, eLive session dates and times, etc. You can even provide links to relevant learning materials from certain dates.
A dedicated asynchronous discussion category is a good place to address technical difficulties such as what students should do if they have difficulty submitting online assignments. You could start with a topic for FAQs, which you can add to during semester. If you lock this topic, only instructors will be able to post messages there, which should keep this topic organised. You could then set up a second topic in this category for students to post queries, and encourage students to answer each other's questions if they read them first.
The web is very good at providing subject-related information to students. It offers an enormous range of information and opinion, in formats including not only text, but pictures, audio and video. Blackboard tools and strategies for this kind of one-way communication are described in 'Strategies for providing learning materials online'. However, as you no doubt know, teaching is more than simply providing information. Most subjects also involve developing students' attitudes, procedural skills and strategies, which generally require activities with feedback and reflection. Even where students must develop a good deal of factual knowledge, it is rare for them to accurately interpret, the first time, all the information they are provided. Students' preconceptions, values and context will each have an impact on the meanings they create, and effective teaching should involve eliciting these meanings, then coaching and remediating as necessary, getting students to re-articulate their understanding and so on (Laurillard 2002). Both asynchronous discussions and eLive can be used to elicit students' interpretations and provide valuable feedback, though their strengths and weaknesses mean you should choose carefully between these tools, and set up your activities astutely to ensure the kind of communication you are after actually occurs.
Asynchronous discussions can encourage thoughtful postings and deep learning. This medium allows students time to reflect on and carefully articulate their ideas when composing their messages, and offers more timid or non-English-speaking-background students an equal chance to be heard. A well-subscribed discussion can expose students to a variety of viewpoints and alternative resources, and help create a learning community in which peers mentor, challenge and encourage one another. However, this does not happen on its own. The discussion topics you set must be interesting, clear, relevant and challenging; and you must moderate the discussion well. This involves modelling appropriate online expression, encouraging responses, addressing any queries or problems, sometimes guiding a discussion that is foundering or becoming unfocused, and where necessary summarising main points. The ideal group size for online discussion is around 20 - any more and students will feel less responsibility to contribute; any fewer and the range of perspectives may be limited.
You do not need to limit the forms in which students articulate their learning and gain feedback to responses to weekly discussion topics. The Blackboard asynchronous discussion tools also lend themselves to role plays, debates, web research tasks, problem-solving activities and so on.
Gilly Salmon provides a good deal of useful advice on moderating online discussions in her book E-moderating: the key to teaching and learning online (2004). 'Learning submarines: raising the periscope' provides an introduction to her ideas.
Any of the Blackboard discussion types (threaded, blogs and journals) can be used to support students' efforts to articulate ideas and receive feedback from both peers and teaching staff. The choice is mostly a matter of taste, and what your students are used to, but the discussion types do have different advantages:
A blog shows the seeding message at the top of the screen and each of the first-level replies. Comments on an individual reply are visible only when you click on its Comments button. Therefore, a blog can make it easier to access the range of responses to the seeding message without the distraction of having to sift through 'comments on comments' (especially if they are inappropriately positioned). At the same time, each individual who posts a first-level reply should find the feedback on their message grouped together in an organised way.
An important point to note about blogs is that the blog form is widely used on the Internet for casual, just-in-time commentary. Students tend to infer that the use of this form implies they can be more casual in the learning task, so it is especially important when using this discussion style to set clear requirements for the standards of expression and content you expect.
Example: A Blackboard blog
A threaded discussion shows the title of every message and the cascades of replies at various levels, so this structure can make it easier for students to browse between the various sub-threads that develop. Students can click on Expand All to see at a glance when new postings are made, by whom, and where each posting and reply are located, without having to search these out behind Comment buttons.
Example: A threaded discussion structure
A journal (set to public access) can make it easier for students to find individual students' successive postings on the main topic and encourage a focus on that individual's work. If you adjust the settings for students to be able to post replies, some valuable peer feedback can be generated.
eLive offers a different kind of forum in which students can articulate ideas and receive feedback. As well as supporting text, it enables students to use simultaneous audio, images, videos, PowerPoint slides, web tours and so on. A major strength of the medium is that it can provide instant feedback, from both students and teaching staff. However, it is important to be aware that synchronous media such as eLive tend to foster fast exchanges rather than deep thinking and careful articulation of ideas. Therefore, while eLive offers a valuable means for lecturers to check students' understanding, find out where they are having problems and coach, clarify, offer further resources and so on, it should not be the only means of communication used in a unit.
It is also worthwhile remembering that while eLive can be used to present information one way, whether it be from lecturer to students or in the form of student presentations, it is best used to support conversation rather than monologue. Active participation in sessions is vital, or students may succumb to the temptation to use other programs at the same time (eg email, web surfing, instant messaging, etc.) and become distracted.
Feedback and coaching provided via asynchronous discussions can benefit all students, saving you having to answer the same question multiple times for multiple students. However, if a student needs individual support, a private form of communication such as email is preferable. The Blackboard Mail tool enables you to send private messages to students and staff within the unit, however the tool is not in widespread use at Deakin, so if you use it you will need to inform students via other means that they should click on the Mail tool regularly to check their mail. An ordinary email to the student's normal private email address may be a surer way of communicating.
The journal asynchronous discussion type is an ideal way to communicate privately with students over the course of a semester (though it wouldn't be advisable to use it for urgent messages). You can set up a 'reflective journal' activity, for which you would adjust the settings so that students can see only their own postings (and your replies to their postings), while instructors can see, comment on and even grade the postings of every student in the class.
Students need to feel that their online learning environment is safe, welcoming and conducive to meaningful communication, if they are to be expected to take part in interactive tasks. You will need to devote some attention to developing trust, including using a welcoming, sincere tone in all your own online communications as well as getting students to introduce themselves early in the semester. Fostering positive social contact is more than making students feel 'at home'. Meaning-making is ultimately a social activity (Vygotsky 1978), and people learn more readily from 'salient' (ie real, important, consistent) others than from non-salient entities (Short, Williams & Christie 1976). Social contact has also been found to be a key factor in students' motivation to complete unit learning tasks and continue their education (Wells 1990).
The ability for students to hear each other's voices in eLive sessions will allow them to develop a fuller sense of one another's personalities than is possible with text communication alone. Getting students (and teaching staff) to use the profile tool to post a photograph will also help. Some 'getting to know you' time is necessary for any new group and will be particularly important when students are going to be working on collaborative projects. Apart from getting students to introduce themselves early in the first session, you could consider creating a session that is always open, and inviting students to communicate there amongst themselves whenever they wish.
Social contact and salience can also be generated through asynchronous discussions , whether they be blogs, journals or threaded discussions, though it is important to moderate them well to maintain a respectful culture. Social cohesion will be damaged if students post inflammatory messages, or post them in the wrong category (eg post social messages to serious unit 'content' discussions), and an important part of moderating is coaching students in the correct protocols.
Derek Powazek's Design for community: the art of connecting real people in virtual places (2002) provides more information on building and maintaining virtual communities.
Online collaborative work has had mixed success, but when done well, it can offer many teaching/learning advantages. Effective communication strategies are vital for online group work, and the Blackboard asynchronous discussions, eLive and wikis all offer useful features. For a range of strategies on online group work generally, see Group work strategies.
Wikis are designed to support web-based collaboration without the need for advanced computer skills. They create a web space to which students can upload text, links, images and media files, and then edit each other's work and add comments, all without any knowledge of html, and without any special software - just their web browser. Multiple users can work on a page at the same time, and they can view the page history to see who added which components. Though the DSO wiki tool is not yet in widespread use, if you think a web-based shared content creation space is what your unit needs, contact your faculty teaching support staff or the ITL Support Service.
For further information about wikis as a teaching/learning tool, see: '7 things you should know about wikis' (.pdf).
Asynchronous discussions have been used to support collaborative projects for several years. You can divide your students into groups and set up a private discussion topic for each using the Selective Release tool . Group members can then post their work to this topic as message attachments, and only others in their group will be able to view them. The other members may simply post replies or download each other's documents, make changes and then upload them to the topic (hopefully with a different version number) for further comment and changes. The final version can then be uploaded as the group's assignment and submitted online . The document-sharing process is more cumbersome than that of a wiki, and participants must be careful to keep track of the different versions, but the system has been used successfully for years. A threaded discussion would generally work better than a blog or journal for collaborative work, as the visible message structure should make it easier to follow the chronology of the development and locate successive document versions.
eLive also provides a forum for collaborative work, but whereas with asynchronous discussions and wikis students can only see each other's work after it is posted, eLive's application sharing function enables students to actually work on, change one other's documents or wikis while in real-time audio discussion. Synchronous communication is also very useful for project and group administration, meetings and catch-ups. You might find it useful to set up an ongoing eLive session for your unit's group work, to provide a meeting space with cheap audio contact and file sharing facilities (you will need to make each student a moderator of such a session in order to enable them to application share). Even if the students choose not to application share, they can save images they create on the whiteboard and the session's messages if they wish.
Many units list the development of communication skills as a desired learning outcome. It is possible to assess this development using postings to Blackboard asynchronous discussions and student-run eLive presentations.
The Blackboard asynchronous discussion tool offers several means to assess student messages (including attachments), including a simple teacher grade , simple-scale peer assessment and a more detailed grading form . However, these should be used with care.
The simple-scale peer review option offers the opportunity for students to rate each other's postings and provide a comment. It is useful for providing quick feedback, and would be ideal for use with online debates. The option is available with threaded discussions, blogs and journals. The list of hyperlinked student names provided in journals makes it easy for students to navigate between each student's postings and provide peer review on each. It is possible to adjust the settings so that students give their grades anonymously, and that students can see only their own reviews and no-one else's.
You can also set up detailed grading forms for students to use for peer review, which can be useful as a tool for students to assess each other's contributions to collaborative work. (At the conclusion of the assignment, each student in a group would be asked to post a blank message, to which each student would reply with their completed grading form. These can also be set up so that students give their reviews anonymously, and so that students can see only their own reviews and no-one else's.) Grading forms are also available with all three discussion types - threaded discussions, blogs and journals.
It is also possible to mark students' discussion postings yourself, using either a grading form or a simple mark, both of which automatically enter the overall score into the Blackboard grade book. This may seem a simple system to assess both communication skills and understanding of the subject - and ensure students make contributions to the discussions - but there are several reasons why this practice should generally be avoided:
A better way to assess communication skills and understanding of the subject, and encourage thoughtful postings, is to require students to prepare an assignment on a topic that draws on their own and other students' contributions to discussions, all properly quoted and referenced.
eLive offers a way to assess oral presentation skills without requiring students to send in home-made videos. You will need to set up an ongoing eLive session and give each student moderator privileges so they can record their work there. Students can then practise and refine their presentation as often as they wish, and send you a link to the recording of their best effort. Alternatively, they can present 'live' to the rest of the class in a populated eLive session, and receive instant feedback.
Laurillard, D (2002), Rethinking university teaching, a conversational framework for the effective use of learning technologies, Routledge, London.
Powazek, D. (2002), Design for community : the art of connecting real people in virtual places, New Riders, Indianapolis.
Salmon, G. (2004), E-moderating: the key to teaching and learning online (2nd edn), Taylor & Francis, London.
Short, J., Williams, E. & Christie, B. (1976), The social psychology of telecommunications, John Wiley & Sons, London.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978), Mind and society: the development of higher mental processes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Wells, R.A. (1990), Computer-mediated communication for distance education and training: literature review and international resources, US Army Research Institute, Boise, ID.
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