10 best ways to improve communication in remote classrooms

March 03, 2023

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Effective teacher-student communication is the key to success in e-learning industry. During COVID-19 pandemic the demand on distance learning and digital education has started rapidly growing. Teachers all over the globe try to improve communication in remote classrooms and provide personalized teacher-student communication experience. Still, they face various challenges and growing requirements to the education quality.

Students expect the same level of teaching and communication quality as in traditional classrooms. At the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic teacher-student communication was not organized properly and teachers used only those technologies they had at their disposal. However, the time has passed and the requirements to the level of digital education have significantly increased. Thus, building effective teacher-student communication is number one challenge in e-learning industry today. Our 10 tips will help to improve teacher-student communication in remote classrooms.

Use separate workspaces for students

It is important to offer separate communication groups for students. With Virola corporate messenger it is possible to create topic-based chats and invite there students. At the same time teachers can provide consultations in private chat rooms. Virola makes it possible to limit user permissions and allow only account admin to add users to specific chat rooms. This is very convenient for communication in remote classrooms. Students who connect to their remote classrooms through Virola messenger will see only their chat rooms where they can send messages and start video or audio calls.

Deliver constructive feedback

While working in remote classrooms one of the challenges is creating the relationship based on trust and respect. Students have different skills and IQ level. However, with help of constructive feedback it is possible to build effective teacher-student communication.

To avoid frustration and embarrassment it is necessary to share feedback privately rather than in group chat rooms. This way there will be no discussion of other students' results and success.

Assign tasks and monitor progress

Task board in Virola allows creating, assigning and tracking tasks. Task filtering feature will make the monitoring process more convenient. Moreover, messages can be converted to tasks with a couple of clicks. Task board is very useful in teacher-student communication. It helps to build productive relationship and assignments monitoring process.

Make it easy to ask questions

Many students scare to ask questions in real time communication. To solve this problem, teachers can offer students to ask questions in private chat rooms or use a task board and assign their questions as tasks to teachers. In this case questions will not be lost and students will be able to monitor the status.

Improve your active listening skills

Active listening is very important skill for teachers working in digital learning. During online lessons it is difficult to have an eye contact and thus it is more difficult to build effective teacher-student communication. Students may feel awkward or scared of answering questions if they feel they have no connection with the teacher.

In such situations the right method is to listen without interrupting, even if a student makes pauses. In case of interruption, you need to apologize and ask the student to continue.

Offer a lesson quality checklist

The best way to solve problems is to do this proactively. If you do not ask, you will never know what went wrong during the lesson. Giving students an ability to fill out checklists about lesson quality is a great idea to solve problems proactively.

Though distance learning is a convenient way to get education from home, still teachers and students face various challenges either technical or communicational. For this purpose, you can offer them checklists which will help you see the situation and understand what may go wrong.

Use scheduler to remind about lessons

Virola corporate messenger offers an ability to create meeting reminders directly in chat rooms. It is a very convenient way to remind students about the next lesson or keep them updated about schedule changes.

Use different communication channels

Communication through e-learning platform does not give an ability to run video meetings or presentations.

Use screen sharing for presentations

Virola corporate messenger allows creating not only productive teacher-student communication environment but also lets teachers share screens and make presentations. This feature is very useful as screen sharing is a very important part of educational workflow. Teachers often need to share student-books or other materials which help to enhance the educational process.

Take advantage of modern teacher-student communication app

Distance learning requires powerful and reliable app for teacher-student communication. No matter whether students and teachers use a e-learning platform, it is important to have a reliable app for communication. In addition to phone calls and emails, messaging app will make the communication in remote classrooms more diverse and effective.