2.4 Communication plan

Students need to hear from their instructors: you matter to me; your success matters to me. And they need to hear this again and again.

From Advice from advisors and student success professionals

 

The following content on this page is adapted from University of Minnesota's Applying lessons learned from ECoach to any Canvas course: Communicating a Growth Mindset.

This is what students have to say about the tone, timing, and content of messages in their courses:

  • Focused: Keep messages to the point. Less is more! 
  • Non-judgmental: Keep messages encouraging and informative.
  • Frequent: Check in with students often. 
  • Actionable: Offer ONE clear action that they might take, or idea they might consider. What is the one push or incentive you might offer students at a specific point in the semester?

 

Create an effective communication plan

Create an effective communication plan by identifying what students need to know and do at important points in the semester. However, you don’t need to do everything at once! A library of messages can be developed over time and used from semester to semester.

Identify your priorities

Before you begin drafting messages, we recommend examining your syllabus to identify key points in the semester when students could benefit from reminders, advice, and encouragement. Consider these aspects of your course structure:

  • What are the main pieces that make up people’s grades?
  • What’s the weekly cadence like? Are there readings, labs, and assignments every week? On an irregular schedule?
  • How many exams are there? Are they worth most of the grade?
  • How much of the points fall into a “controllable points” category? (These are things like homework, readings, attendance, or class participation where if you do it, you get the points.)
  • Are there projects or papers?

(University of Michigan ECoach Links to an external site.)

 

Identifying priorities based on what’s communicated in your syllabus will help you move on to the next step of drafting messages.

 

We need to contextualize behaviors that contribute to success. Students might hear about the importance of time management on the first day of the semester, but only when they have an exam coming up is that information important and relevant. Timely messaging and access to resources is important. 

From Advice from advisors and student success professionals

 

Draft your messages

When creating your communication plan, it’s useful to consider three types of messages: 

Supporting messages offer tips and advice and are generally delivered at the beginning of the term. Below are examples of topics that might be developed into brief messages released in the first days and weeks of the course. 

  • What to expect in the course / how not to be surprised / lessons learned from previous students
  • Homework best practices
  • How to use the textbook
  • Weekly habits to get into before, during, and after the lecture (or lab, or discussion)
  • Office hours best practices
  • Strategies for going after “controllable points” or low-hanging fruit (for example, attendance points)

Timed messages are published to coincide with course events. For example:

  • Tips for Exam 1: resources available and how best to study
  • Exam 1 reflection: what went well, how to improve for next time, how to put this grade in context with the rest of the course
  • Project tips timed with due dates for projects or segments of projects
  • Milestones in the course

Targeted messages address a subset of your students in order to address specific needs. Canvas makes it easy for instructors to reach out to students grouped by performance/grades. These messages can be delivered either before or after a major assessment. You might consider crafting messages that would be uniquely meaningful or helpful to students who:

  • are struggling (missed key assignments or are struggling with content) 
  • might improve their grade with some targeted effort and encouragement
  • are doing well

Imagine three students who match the profiles above coming to your office at a specific point in the semester. What would you tell each of them given their specific needs? 

Review some example messages. Links to an external site.

Develop a schedule

Based on the syllabus and course schedule, you can create a schedule of when to release messages. Here is a sample schedule for the first 5 weeks:

EXAMPLE SCHEDULE

  • Week 1 - Feature what to expect in the course, how to use your syllabus, resources available
  • Week 2 - Controllable points 
  • Week 3 - Targeted response to low-stakes exam
  • Week 4 - Tips for Exam 1: resources available and how best to study
  • Week 5 - Exam 1 reflection: what went well, how to improve for next time, how to put this grade in context with the rest of the course

 

Use Canvas to deliver the right message at the right time

Let’s review some of the functionality in Canvas that instructors can use to implement a communication plan. 

Announcements

Announcements are an excellent way to send out supporting or timed messages to your students. With announcements you can:

  • Easily create a talking-head video to communicate with your students.
  • Create your messages ahead of time and indicate when the message will be released to your students.
  • Copy Announcements forward from one semester to the next.

If Announcements play an important role in your communication strategy, indicate to your students that they should set their notification to receive Announcements. Learn how to add an announcement in a course Links to an external site..

"Message students who"

Targeted messages can be sent from the Gradebook or New Analytics where you can “message students who” 

  • Haven't submitted yet—students who haven't submitted the assignment, even if they have been manually awarded a grade.
  • Haven't been graded—students whose assignments have not yet been graded (submitted or unsubmitted).
  • Scored less than [point value]—students who earned a grade on their assignment less than X number of points.
  • Scored more than [point value]—students who earned a grade on their assignment more than X number of points.

Though you may be sending a message to many students, each student will receive an individual message. For this reason, do NOT name individual students in your message. Learn how to send a message to students from the Gradebook. Links to an external site.

Leveraging these tools in Canvas makes it easy to reach out to students, connect them to helpful resources and move them along the path to success.

 

From our peers: Applying lessons learned from ECoach to any Canvas course: Communicating a Growth Mindset

 University of Minnesota

 

About "Communicating a Growth Mindset" from University of Minnesota:

The University of Minnesota has piloted ECoach, a platform that provides timely nudges and messages to students, for three semesters. ECoach gives students advice on how to get through challenging classes, empowering them to make positive actions: “It helps you reflect on past assignments and change things for the future.” 

The ECoach support team gathered information from students about ECoach messages, including tone, timing, and content. In this post, we will consider how instructors can apply these lessons in any Canvas course site.

Learn more about Communicating a Growth Mindset from the University of Minnesota Links to an external site.

From our peers: ECoach

 University of Michigan

 

About ECoach from University of Michigan:

ECoach is a personalized, web‐based coaching tool that gives students in a course tips about how to best approach the course, personalized feedback on their performance, and tools to help them succeed, like to-do lists, exam playbooks, and a grade calculator.

Learn more about ECoach from University of Michigan Links to an external site.