Online Course Peer Review

Rubric standard V.5: Directions for contacting the instructor and student mentor (if utilized) are clear and specific.

Are directions for contacting the instructor found easily within the course? We may think that students will know to automatically check the syllabus for our contact information, but it’s never a bad idea to have it provided in more than one place.

Examples:

• syllabus
• course homepage
• course overview
• introduction

Also, if you do not use the pager feature, be sure to make that very clear to students. On the flip side, if you will be contacting students via the pager, be sure to provide an explanation to them about how to use that course feature (I work from the Virtual Campus Center a couple of days a week and hear a good number of students asking questions such as “Why does my computer ring like a doorbell every time I log on to the class?”).