How often you engage is course activities and discussions is your decision. Nevertheless, you should let your students know, up front, how often they can expect to hear from you. Checking in at least once each business day and once over the weekend is a good way to keep in touch and to keep the e-mail and discussion forums from piling too high! Some suggestion for daily course management include:
1. Monitor, contribute and reply to the Class Discussion Forums daily.
2. Have all discussion forum posts forwarded to your email. See how to “Subscribe to a Discussion Forum“. This is a preference not a necessity. With large classes your email may become overwhelmed.
Note: You will NOT be able to reply to the post via email but it is a way to be notified of class activity without actually logging into the class.
3. Monitor the class message received
Note: You have the option of forwarding a COPY of your class message to your personal e-mail address. See how to “to” Edit Notification Settings to Forward Course Message to Your Email“.
Note: You cannot reply to Connect class messages from outside Connect. You can only reply from within Connect.
4. Grade all assignments. Students appreciate timely feedback on their assignments…and will let you know if they feel they are waiting too long! How long it will take to grade assignments and send meaningful feedback to students depends, of course, on the nature of the assignment. However, students may not be able to proceed in your course until they get your feedback on how they are doing. As a general rule of thumb, it seems reasonable to expect students to receive their grades, including feedback, within one week of submitting an assignment. If one anticipates that it will take longer than that to return students’ work, it is best to inform them in advance when their grades and feedback will be available. It also is best to grade assignments in sequence (i.e., assignment 1, then assignment 2, and so on) so students can apply the feedback from one assignment to the subsequent assignment.
Note: If you use Assignment Drop Boxes in Connect, see how to “Review and Grade a Drop Box Submission“.