What is Course Management?

Course management involves all of the aspects of facilitating your classroom dynamics and interacting with students, which includes setting expectations, communications in many directions, setting clear and fair policies, and sharing resources.

Provide clear expectations for performance and interactions. One important point to establish is expected response time for communications. If students know that you will respond within 24 hours (or 48 or whatever you choose), they will experience less anxiety. This also holds for establishing expectations for feedback. Will you return their assignments by the next day or the next week? Let your students know in advance, and you could minimize many questions and a lot of stress. You could also consider building some of your course expectations with students at the beginning of the course to give students some agency over their course experience.
Provide a variety of options and opportunities for student-instructor communication. This could be accomplished by having office (student) hours on a variety of days and times and in multiple modalities (in-person, video, or phone). Try to consider not just what works well for you but also what may work for your students. Student-instructor communication also occurs within the classroom. You may want to consider additional ways to give your students a voice in the classroom to increase their autonomy. Co-creating parts of the syllabus (Links to an external site.) or creating learning contracts (Links to an external site.) are just two examples of increasing student agency in your course.
Provide information about the academic supports that students have available to them. This may include your office hours, links to library resources and services (Links to an external site.), supplemental instruction and tutoring availability from the Academic Success Center (Links to an external site.), or access to additional accommodations through the Center for Students with Disabilities (Links to an external site.). For students learning remotely, remind them that many of these resources are also available online (several links provided here: https://uww.edu/students (Links to an external site.)).
Clarify expectations for student behavior from the onset to help prevent any number of issues. You should have plans in place, however, in case of issues with student behavior. Many minor issues may be resolved by reminding students of the class expectations, but others may require involving others. In cases of academic misconduct, there are established processes to follow with the Dean of Students office following UWS Chapter 14 policies (Links to an external site.). If students are having issues handling personal difficulties or are displaying at-risk behaviors, the CARE Team (Links to an external site.) may be a good resource. You could submit a CARE Team reporting form (Links to an external site.) to initiate a process to connect students with the support and resources they need.