hello and welcome to the penguin prof
channel for educators I'm Valerie
Pennington and today I'm going to talk
about regular and effective contact so
the learning objectives for us today
include an explanation of why regular
and effective contact is required and
necessary we're of course going to
define regular and effective contact and
identify lots of different things that
you can do to meet the requirements for
regular and effective contact in your
canvas course so let's get into it why
is it required and necessary
well it's required by the ACCJC that is
our accrediting institution and it's
also required by title 5 of California
edie code the relevant text is shown
here we're talking about regular
effective contact between instructor and
students synchronously or asynchronously
in groups or individually now in
addition to that federal financial aid
requires it and without regular
effective contact you're actually
teaching a correspondence course
Southwestern College also requires it
and in addition to all these
requirements regular effective contact
is good and many studies have shown that
the keys to persistence in an online
course include the need for regular
meaningful communication with the
instructor so that's the effective
contact that we're talking about ok so
in terms of defining what is meant by
regular and effective contact we're
talking about instructor initiated
communication and interaction we are not
talking about student interaction with
course materials this is probably the
single biggest misconception that
faculty have about this topic in my
experience so when students are reading
a textbook or your canvas pages or
writing a paper or studying for exams
and when students are interacting only
with each other without any direction or
feedback from you none of this is
effective contact the key is you must be
involved you must be involved in the
teaching of concepts in providing
feedback determining progress and
encouraging active engagement so
accepted practices include
both the type and the frequency of
contact so frequency we're going to
start with that it's it's pretty
straightforward the frequency in a
remote delivered course must be
equivalent to a face-to-face course so
each week the number of minutes that you
spend depends on the number of units in
the course now it must be ongoing that's
that's the regular part of regular
effective context so you can't just like
get all the hours out in the beginning
and say that that's out of the way it
doesn't work that way it has to be on a
regular weekly basis now it can be
synchronous which is in real-time or
asynchronous or a mixture of both now
you have to be really clear about this
you communicate with your students what
it is that you are going to be doing how
you're going to be communicating with
them and when how will you do it are you
going to have weekly videos or are you
gonna have announcements are you going
to have office hours how often when can
they expect this what are the best ways
for students to reach you and when can
students expect a response now this is
really important when we're talking
about remote delivery and distance ed in
general because as students are
interacting with the material it kind of
feels like well you know I can do this
24/7 but that doesn't mean that you are
sitting at your computer 24/7 I mean I
really hope you're not but you need to
let them know what your response time is
so do you only respond Monday through
Friday that's fine if they know that
then there won't be any problems I also
think it's important for you to let them
know what they should do if they have
written to you and you have not gotten
back to them I have my students send an
email with a particular phrase in the
subject line
second attempt because I tell them
sometimes emails get lost I get
overwhelmed if I see that second attempt
that goes to the top of my list this
clarity will save you and your students
so much frustration you have to set your
boundaries and you have to communicate
with your students what those boundaries
are how you communicate that it must be
in your syllabus
I also recommend
that you put it in your canvas profile
just make it really easy for your
students to know what your policies and
plans are what about methods of
effective contact so synchronous contact
first so obviously things that happen in
real time over zoom your lectures
problem-solving office hours canvas chat
is something you can enable in your
canvas course and that is synchronous
and the cool thing about that is that
students can be chatting live but they
can also scroll back and see the history
of the chat Google Hangouts and live
streams are also synchronous options I
guess the phone does anybody use the
phone I don't know now if you record any
of those interactions they can also be
used a synchronously for asynchronous
contact we have a lot of options so I
like check-in assignments especially at
the beginning a syllabus quiz icebreaker
that is kind of an attendance thing as
well so you you know who's there who's
interacting announcements in order for
them to count as effective contact it
can't be just logistic reminders like
quiz 2 is due on Sunday night it has to
have content there so what you could do
is include some extra resources that
they might want to look at in
preparation for that quiz number two
email or canvas inbox you can send
messages to individuals or groups
feedback on assessments podcasts
discussion boards now you must
participate in order for discussion
boards to count as regular effective
contact and I know it can be very
overwhelming but I try to set as a goal
responding to one out of every three
student posts and I do keep track so I'm
not just responding to the same students
over and over again you can create and
moderate small group activities lots of
options with virtual labs lab reports
group presentations with lab data peer
reviews remember you must initiate and
participate in these things case studies
and analyses problem solving journal
entries virtual tours and field trips
and some other really cool things that
you can build into your canvas courses
and we have trainings on the
is voicethread padlet collaborative
Google Docs and the cloud social media
blog posts and reflection discussions we
are actually required to document
contact hours first of all everything on
zoom' is recorded anyway so you don't
have to worry about that and for
everything else I use toggle it just
makes it really easy for me to keep
track of the hours that I spend and what
I'm doing you can also take screenshots
or take notes alright it's time for a
quick recap
so why regular and effective contact is
necessary it's required by law it's
required by the college and it's good
for your students when you think about
the definition of regular and effective
contact you need to think about the time
aspect meaning it has to be equivalent
to a face-to-face course and it has to
be regular that means it's ongoing not
just all at once and it has to involve
you not just students going through
course material on their home and
finally we looked at lots of ways to
include a variety of effective contact
options in your canvas course they can
be synchronous or asynchronous but you
must communicate with your students what
they can expect and what your boundaries
are try to use a variety of engaging and
interactive techniques as always I hope
that was helpful if you want more videos
like this visit the EdTech playlist on
the penguin prof channel and visit on
the web at edu penguin prof comm good
luck