Teaching Excellence Handbook

Students have many different communication styles. There are generational differences as well as cultural differences. Often we speak in a language that is professional and relevant to our discipline and education. We need to bring into our interactions with students an awareness of appropriateness for the situation and the skills needed to adequately communicate. We carry many ideas about effective instructor-student communication from our own backgrounds, some of which may not be effective with todays’ students. 

First, we must communicate about our content and discipline. We need to be clear about our expectations, explaining concepts, and assignments. Second, we need to build effective and positive relationships with our students. Students need to know that we are concerned about them and value their work. Some of this we convey by our non-verbal behavior. Research has demonstrated that students’ feelings and emotions are important to their learning. “To become great teachers, we must become great communicators who are aware and adaptive to students and situations. And, we should always question our assumptions about how to bet teach our content and socially interact with students” (Waldeck, 2016, http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/untangling-web-student-teacher-communication/ )

Teaching International Students

Instructors should be aware they might have students in class whose first language is not English. Showing appropriate and respectful concern and awareness about students’ specific language difficulties will aid in their overall performance in the class.

In a class based upon students’ verbal participation, heavy accents may prevent students from contributing to the class discussion and may consequently affect their grades. Usually, accents do not change even when students improve their English skills. Certainly, instructors cannot correct accents, but they can encourage students to participate and help students with their efforts to express themselves. Instructors can help students in the following ways:

• Restating the student’s main point. An instructor should state openly if he or she does not understand the student’s point. One of the most frustrating experiences of international students is to talk without any reaction.
• Asking for further explanation. Many students, out of politeness or indifference or a fear of embarrassing their classmate, prefer to remain quiet and to give the impression that they understand.
• Correcting expressions or language that may help the student in the future. This, of course, is probably best done in private.

Pronunciation can become clearer to Americans if the speaker can identify his or her specific difficulties. In extreme cases, if a student’s accent is incomprehensible, an instructor can suggest ways of improvement, such as attending a course offered by the Intensive English Language Institute. (see: Other Helpful Facilities and Services).

When the course requires extensive written work such as essays or term papers, the international student may face an even greater disadvantage. The instructor cannot and should not exempt such students from these assignments, but there are ways of helping international students. If the midterm and final exams are taken in class, the instructor has only limited opportunities, such as giving some extra time to the international student or allowing the student to bring a dictionary to the examination.

If some of the assignments are take-home exams or term papers, the instructor together with the student can ease the burden of language. With the consent of the student, an instructor might ask for a volunteer among the American students to proofread the paper and to correct grammar, spelling and style. The student can also be referred to the UNT Writing Lab for assistance. (see: Other Helpful Facilities and Services.)

Mechanisms to Communicate With Students

All students are expected to activate their EagleConnect account provided by the university. EagleConnect is the official e-mail account and e-mail contact for all students at UNT. An EagleConnect account can be activated on the web at eagleconnect.unt.edu by clicking on [Sign into EagleConnect]. Instructors may send e-mail to students’ EagleConnect accounts via the official class roster generated in EIS.

Blackboard offers an e-mail feature that allows instructors to send e-mail to specific students, all students, TAs, etc. Students can set up their Blackboard accounts to forward Blackboard e-mail to any account they wish to use, or they can read and respond to the messages through the Blackboard system. These widely available resources offer two important means of communicating with students.

First, e-mail opens up the possibility for individual communication with students. Students can use e-mail to pose questions to an instructor, and the instructor can provide quick feedback. Using this approach requires that the instructor make a commitment to reading e-mail regularly and responding quickly to students. This opportunity for communication may be especially valuable to the shy or reticent student who would be hesitant to ask a question in class. Such students can use e-mail to ask the questions they would not ask otherwise.

A second resource e-mail offers instructors is the opportunity to send bulk e-mail. Through this service an instructor can send a message to all the students in a class by sending only one message. This makes it easy to send assignments, study sheets, or reminders to all members of the class. It is important to tell students ahead of time if important class information is to be distributed this way.

Three caveats about using e-mail to reach students:

1. You should remind students that you will not get e-mail the instant they send it (and remember that yourself). A student may e-mail you with a question at midnight, but that student cannot reasonably expect a response at that time. Be sure to advise students about how long they may expect to wait for a response from you and how often you expect they will be checking their accounts.
2. Remember that e-mail communications are not particularly nuanced. E-mail communications can seem brusque and impersonal, and the tone of the person writing the message is not always clear.
3. Do not communicate with a student about his grades via e-mail, unless you are using the student’s official UNT e-mail address. You have no way of verifying that other e- mail accounts are private or even that they belong to your student. If you use anything other than the student’s official e-mail address, you run the risk of disclosing confidential student information to a third party in violation of state and federal educational privacy laws.
4. Ask students to put their name and course number in the subject line. This practice alerts faculty that the e-mail is from a student. Therefore, faculty can make responding to students’ emails a priority.