Creating Course Routines
Building Course Community
Further Reading

Advice for creating course routines and building course community in your online course is organized in the tabs above. Please be sure to click on all the tabs above to access the content.

Creating Course Routines

Just like in a face-to-face class, creating routines facilitates course management. This is particularly crucial because the experience of taking an online course can feel unstructured to students because they can't rely on knowing they need to show up to class once or twice a week.

The following routines can assist with providing structure:

Send a message to students through Canvas messaging at the beginning of each week by first thing Monday morning
- The content for this message can be drawn from the weekly note in your module ("Welcome to Week 2!").
- Give a quick recap of key learning from the prior week.
- Give an overview of the key learning for the current week.
- Remind students to check the week's module.
- Give the students a to-do list of the expectations for the week (reading, discussion, assignments).
- More advice on weekly notes is available on the "Structuring Your Online Course" page under the "Course Modules" tab.
During the first week of the course, give the students a quiz on course policies
- Ask students to identify post and assignment deadlines, initial post and comment lengths, required number of posts and comments, and any other critical information they need to know to be successful in the course.
- Don't include the quiz in grade calculations but require students to take the quiz until they achieve 90% so you know they have read the syllabus and familiarized themselves with course expectations.
- A sample course policy quiz is available from the School of Education's online asynchronous Canvas course shell.
Use consistent, repetitive due dates so the students (and you!) can develop a routine
- For example, all initial discussion board posts are due by Wednesday, all follow-up comments on discussion board posts are due by Friday, all additional assignments due Sunday.
If you are teaching multiple courses online, stagger due days to spread out the impact on your schedule
- For example, don't make every course's initial posts due on Wednesday or you will be slammed with work.
At the beginning of the semester, continue to remind students that they need to check the modules every week and cannot rely on the Canvas "To Do List" feature because it may not accurately display what is required of them (e.g. reading assignments will not be listed).

Building Course Community

One of the most challenging dimensions of teaching an online class is building a community. However, there are ways to convey your personality and teaching style and bring your class together. Consider some of the following tips:

Humanize yourself for your students
- Share information about yourself that you are comfortable with students knowing (e.g. identities, pets, hobbies, interests) so they know you're a real person too -- not a disembodied voice or talking head.
  - Your "About the Professor" page is a great place to do this, as are your weekly messages to the students.
- If you're used to sharing about something you've read or done or seen in a face-to-face course, do the same in an online course.
  - You can do this through your communications with students, whether weekly messages, other messaging you send through Canvas, or through virtual meetings.

Create opportunities for students to humanize themselves
- Ensure students post introductions in a discussion board during the first week of class (and model with a post of your own).
  - Ask them to share information about themselves, like their academic interests, where they're from, and other questions related to course material that will allow them to share who they are and what they value.
  - Asking them to share a "fun fact" or something similarly casual also can help build connections.
  - Respond to students' introductions, welcoming them to the course and connecting with them through the information they have shared.
Create opportunities for students to interact with you and each other
- Create a "Course Questions" discussion board as a space where students can as questions about the course and respond to each other and help find solutions to challenges they encounter with the course.
  - An example of a "Course Questions" is available on the School of Education's Online Asynchronous Canvas course shell.
- Use discussion boards with specific guidance on post counts and deadlines to ensure that students interact with each regularly throughout each week.
- Make space for community-building activities to build trust and rapport before moving students into the most challenging or risky-feeling learning activities (debates, discussions, presentations, tests, etc.). Visit Equity Unbound's Community Building Activities website for a wide variety of activities for live or asynchronous classes.
- Engage with your students frequently so they know you are present, working along with them, and care about their learning (e.g. by responding to their discussion board posts).
- Model the level and type of engagement you want them to achieve in your course.
Consider using Zoom or similar software (e.g. Skype or Google Hangouts) to hold virtual office hours or small group meetings with students.

Further Reading

Lim, Janine. "Essentials: Structure and Routine in Online Courses." Out on a Lim. Last modified July 6, 2014. http://blog.janinelim.com/essentials-structure-and-routine-in-online-courses/.

This short article offers a look at key practices that can establish routines for online courses. Lim "translates" a face-to-face classroom into components of an online course: "The Door" - gaining entry to a course; "The Walls" - organizing students within a course; and "The Furniture" - management of instruction.

O'Malley, Shannon. "Professors Share Idea for Building Community in Online Courses." Inside Higher Education, July 26, 2017. https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2017/07/26/ideas-building-online-community.

This article discusses an approach taken by professors to engage students in online courses. Particular attention is paid to building connections to students, creating social presence, building community, and using video and small groups.

Papadopoulou, Anthea. "How to Build an Online Learning Community (In 2020)." Learn Worlds, April 28, 2020. https://www.learnworlds.com/build-online-learning-community/.

This article offers eight suggestions for building community in an online course. Papadopoulou discusses establishing instructor presence, making announcements, incorporating ice-breaking activities, fostering active questioning by learners, stimulating synchronous and asynchronous discussions, facilitating peer learning, and using online journaling.

OneHE and Equity Unbound. "Community Building Activities." 2020.

This website offers an index of over 30 community-building activities developed specifically for the remote-learning classroom (although many would also work well face to face). Sorted into categories like "introductory activities," "warm-up activities," and "ongoing engagement," and shared with instructions and/or video examples, this site provides a wealth of choices for instructors looking to build trust and rapport with students.

Wolpert-Gawron, Heather. "Extending Classroom Management Online." Edutopia, September 27, 2017. https://www.edutopia.org/article/extending-classroom-management-online.

This concise article offers nine suggestions to ensure that students in online classes understand class norms and expectations and to help create a sense of community. Wolpert-Gawron covers building an engaging online environment, building community, establishing channels and norms for communication, and being present. While specifically for K-12, these practices are as critical in higher ed courses online.