I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the misconceptions–or complete mystification–some online students have about what their professors are looking for. In an asynchronous online class, there’s no regular meeting time when students can ask questions and professors can pointedly emphasize certain desired behaviors. I don’t want my students to have to guess what my expectations are for them–nobody likes that game. While every instructor will have expectations specific to each of their courses, there are some that, at least in my opinion, transcend contexts. In this post, I’m going to list and briefly explain several of these close-to-universal expectations.

1. We want you to write like a real person, not a robot. I’ve been saying this for years, but the recent revolution in accessible generative AI tools has made this advice particularly urgent and very literal! An essay written by ChatGPT and an essay written by a student in a stilted, impersonal academic-ese, while ethically different, are both really boring to read. I want to get to know you through your writing, especially in an online class where writing is about the only thing we have to build a relationship on. Let your own voice come through!
2. We want you to communicate with us. Often, students who email me will preface their message by saying something like “I’m so sorry to bother you.” I always reassure these students that answering their questions is what I’m paid to do and that my best teaching often happens through email. Again, since you’re not sitting in a classroom with me, I don’t have that weekly or daily time to check that you’re understanding the material and doing okay in life in general. If you’re turning in assignments, at least I know you’re alive, but I’ve found that the students who do best in online classes are those who communicate with me outside of assignments–asking questions, running ideas by me, letting me know what you think of the course materials, etc. And this might go without saying, but if you’re not turning in assignments and you’re not emailing me, then I have no choice but to assume that you’ve fallen off the face of the earth! I would much rather receive an email explaining that it’s been a hard week and asking for an extension than receive no communication at all. Talk to me!
3. We want you to read our feedback. This one may sound like a pet peeve rant (“I spent all that time writing feedback and they didn’t even read what I wrote!”), but there’s more to it than that. I guess I can’t speak for all instructors here, but I try to grade with the goal of helping my students on future assignments, both in my class and later classes. I don’t make as many grading corrections as I used to (I was trained in the bleeding red pen school), but the comments I do leave are substantial and, I sincerely hope, constructive. If you don’t read my feedback, you’re missing out on a big part of what you’re paying for in my class. If an assignment has a rubric (and I think rubrics are used pretty much across the board in online education today), find out how to open and read the filled-out rubric–otherwise, you don’t know why you lost the points you did, and you’re left to assume the professor just doesn’t like you. I can’t promise that I like all my students (that’s a different topic for a different post!), but I never deduct points just because–the rubric always makes it clear!

I’ll stop there for now, because those are by far the three biggest expectations I have for my online students. Of course, students also have a right to know what they can expect from their professors, so look for a future post on that!