Supporting Online Learner Success

You can support learner success in your online or hybrid course in many ways. This article provides considerations for supporting learners through course interactions, course design, and by using just-in-time supports.

Interactions with students

1. Provide frequent, timely, helpful, and positive feedback.
2. Identify and positively recognize specific things in learner’s work.
3. Be helpful and encourage learners to do the right thing.
4. Raise questions that make learners really examine their ideas and what they are studying.
5. Be accessible.
6. Be present.
7. Be timely in your interactions and with your feedback.
8. Offer supportive comments, compliments, and encouragements.
9. Encourage high levels of helpful interaction between learners.
10. Encourage peer support, interaction, and collaboration in the course to address and alleviate the sense of isolation online learners may feel.
11. Maintain high expectations and communicate them to learners.
12. Encourage and reinforce the need for managing time well.
13. Ask learners for clarification to prevent misunderstanding.
14. Recognize and acknowledge learner success, effort, and accomplishments with course work, life challenges, and with technology used in the course.
15. Create an environment where learners feel they have access to you, their classmates, resources, and help – and where their questions can get answered.

Course design considerations

1. Pose challenging questions.
2. Encourage self-reflection and evaluation.
3. Encourage peer evaluation.
4. Provide options, and opportunities for learners to make choices in course assignments that allow them to relate their work to their real lives or to use their skills and interests.
5. Provide a course schedule with assignments and due dates to make planning and time management easier.
6. Use the grade book make student self-monitoring of progress in the course easier.
7. Provide exemplary examples, or model assignments to help learners better understand expectations for their work.
8. Provide opportunities and online course space for non-course related interactions between course participants.
9. Make sure students know how to get technical help. Recommend that they get help immediately and early.
10. Provide learners with information on tutoring services or where they can go to get help with their writing (campus writing center).
11. Draw learner attention to how the skills they develop in your course and the material they learn will be useful in their real life, and will help them be successful in the future.
12. Leverage early alerts systems, such as Navigate, to identify learners at risk and take preventive action.
13. Reassure learners that they can be successful in your course and give them tips on how (for example, collect stories and suggestions from learners in the form of advice for future course participants). Use strategies to foster Growth Mindset.

Questions to consider for just-in-time support

Proactive questions for online faculty to use on a  “just-in-time” basis—at the moments when learners could use the prompting most. Helping learners know not just what is to be learned, but how.

• What is the topic for our online discussions in this module?
• What will be important ideas covered in this module?
• What do you already know about this topic?
• What can you relate this to in your life or experiences?
• What will you do to remember the key ideas from this reading, module, discussion, topic?
• Is there anything about this topic that you don’t understand, or are not clear about?

Adapted from – Askell-Williams, H., Lawson, M.J. and Skrzypiec, G., 2012. Scaffolding cognitive and metacognitive strategy instruction in regular class lessons. Instructional Science 40(2), 413-443. (Table 2, pgs 56-57).