My main suggestion for Trinh is to develop a routine and strictly follow it. My first year of teaching saw me teaching 300 students and it’s an understatement to say I was panicking about how to handle that many students and their many, many needs. However, a veteran teacher gave me the best piece of career advice that I have ever received—don’t smile for the first month. My colleague didn’t mean it literally, rather, the statement really means to get into a routine and follow it strictly for a month. My colleague explained that, if you can follow something for a month, it will become routine for the teacher and for the students. So, don’t smile, Trinh.
It’s hard to tell someone else what to do, but if I were Trinh, this is my suggestion:
Cut down and set boundaries.
Trinh’s students have multiple ways to contact her, and while that seems to make her accessible, I think it’s achieving the opposite. With so many ways for students to contact her, there is no way Trinh can keep up with the volume of incoming messages and something is sure to slip through the cracks. So, the first step is to choose only two avenues for contact: one for urgent matters and the second for less-urgent matters. I think Trinh should provide a single email address to students for urgent matters and a social media outlet, Twitter, for example, for less-urgent matters. By cutting down on ways for students to contact her, the barrage of messages should subside.
Which email should Trinh use? That’s up to her, but it should be one that she checks regularly and it should preferably be an email designated for work only. If Trinh uses Twitter, she should implement a hashtag so she can easily view all relevant tweets easily. I imagine Twitter would be used much like we’re using it in this class—students sharing interesting things and engaging in casual social interactions. The Twitter feed could also allow students to help each other—if someone posts a question or solution while using the hashtag, other students will benefit from the shared information. The Twitter feed will also help the students in different locales a way to create a sense of community, which is extremely important.
Now that Trinh has streamlined the communication methods, she needs to set boundaries for responding to messages. What I personally do is I tell students that they can email me anytime, but that I will only respond to emails between 8:00 am and 6:00 pm (my working hours). This is the same suggestion Jo made. Only responding during work hours probably won’t work for Trinh because of the various time zones she has to accommodate, so the best bet may be to have a 12 hour window (8:00am-8:00 pm)—this hits working hours in most time zones. Building on Jo’s suggestions, I would add that Trinh should set a maximum response wait time (12 hours, for example) and communicate this to her students. Setting a maximum wait time will cut down on students constantly messaging because they’re not sure if Trinh has received the message. If a student doesn’t receive a response within 12 hours (while also keeping the acceptable hours of response in mind), then they are free to email again. The time frame will also keep students accountable—they’ll learn not to leave things to the last minute if they expect a timely response.
Once these boundaries are explicitly stated, Trinh needs to follow them strictly. I don’t teach at the university level, but I think students are fundamentally the same—they like routine. A routine is comfortable and students want to feel comfortable, so they’ll follow the routine.
Anticipate and Prepare
Another suggestion for Trinh is to set up an FAQ page on Blackboard Learn. If it’s not the first time the course has been offered, Trinh can probably anticipate potential questions or problems. Addressing these directly on Blackboard Learn provides the students with a resource to consult before they resort to contacting Trinh directly. I’m not very familiar with how Blackboard Learn works, but I assume there is a way to “pin” the FAQ post so it is always visible?
This is an aside in response to Jo’s question about why the guest lectures must be viewed as a live stream. I realize this is just a case study for discussion, but as a student on the other side of the world from British Columbia, I find this requirement quite unreasonable and baffling considering Blackboard Learn has the Collaborate feature (although maybe this isn’t a feature included in all licenses?) Expecting students to make themselves available for live streams, even when it’s stated as a requirement of enrollment, is a significant demand with significant consequences. Having the Collaborate sessions recorded for this course was a godsend for me as there was no way I could attend the two scheduled sessions—one was at 3:00 am my time, and the other was during Lunar New Year where it would have been completely inappropriate for me to excuse myself from my partner’s family’s celebration. (I realize that I am responsible for setting priorities, but this was a special case—it was my first time visiting my partner’s hometown and the first time meeting his extended family.) The recorded sessions allowed me to feel included instead of feeling disadvantaged because the scheduling didn’t work out for me this time. I’ll be honest, if recordings weren’t available I would be feeling very resentful right now–either for having to wake up at 3:00am or for missing out. I think, with so many options for recording and sharing lectures available, that it’s an outdated notion for students to be required to view a live stream. What happens if technology fails? Do the students in locations outside the host university miss out? Additionally, requiring students to view live streams does help foster a welcoming community for learner, rather, it sets the students in other time zones up as outsiders.