Two important benefits of online courses are their flexibility and convenience.

time managing

The online environment spans time and place to provide flexible and convenient access to instruction regardless of geographic location. However, those benefits can also challenge instructors and students to develop strategies to manage time and communications.

Without preset parameters for time management, the time spent working on a class may expand. The course can take up more time than is necessary when compared to the classroom setting. Additionally, the immediate access to the classroom that the online environment allows can lead students and faculty to “check” and monitor the course more frequently. These two features of the online experience can make it more difficult to distinguish between “class work” and private time.

However, if is important to note that compared to the weekly schedule of classroom teaching, the online teacher may participate more frequently in a course, logging in quite often for brief periods to respond to students and to monitor their work. If the short bursts of time were added together, the online teacher may actually spend about the same amount of time as the classroom teacher, but it can feel like more.

Need to Manage Rhythm of the Online Course

Many instructors find that online teaching may take more time than face-to-face teaching. The extra time is not so much due to technology itself but to greater communications with students. Rather than the routine structure of weekly classroom sessions and office hours, the online instructor may feel that students expect attention 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition, because students may post messages at any time, the instructor may log into a course daily to monitor the online discussions and grade activities. The online instructor, then, needs to develop strategies to manage time and to respond and provide feedback to students.

The online setting provides a great setting for new and varied interactions between class participants. Therefore, one strategy is to develop a weekly rhythm for course activities and for communication. Pictured below is an example how an online course can be organized to provide a weekly rhythm for students so they know what to expect on a weekly basis and to help both students and the instructor better organize time spent.

Source: Thank you to Professor Dietram Scheufele and Instructional Designer Kevin Thompson for this example.

weekly rhythm

Consider: How can learning activities and communication be structured within the rhythm of your course to better manage your and your students' time and best achieve your course objectives.

This Excel Sheet provides four different templates that you can duplicate and edit in order to plan your own course rhythm.

Examples of Strategies to Manage Time and Communications

The table below lists additional examples of strategies an online instructor can use to help manage time and communications. Notice that some of the strategies piggy-back on ideas discussed earlier, such as writing concisely and clearly, organizing and chunking content, and setting participation ground rules for online discussions or activities. In other words, good teaching practices for designing content and activities can improve both efficiency and efficacy.

Some Time Management Strategies Some Communication Management Strategies
Some tips for online instructors to manage their time include:
  • Write clearly and concisely so students understand expectations and directions. Also, organize content in an easy-to-follow order. Clear writing and organization help to avoid confusion and can save hours of clarifying later.
  • Be explicit about time requirements in the syllabus, such as assignment due dates, discussion participation timelines, office hours, response times to e-mails, and so forth.
  • Allocate set amounts of time for working on the course. Resist the temptation to be available "24/7" or students will expect you to be accessible at all times. Ideally, an instructor ought to try to enter the course from 5 - 10 times during the week. Instructors should adjust their own schedules to enter the course more often as assignment or exam deadlines come up, due to last minute questions that some students have.
  • Establish a "day off" during the week, announcing to the students that, for example, Saturdays you will not be checking the course activities.
  • Set virtual office hours and keep them in case a student wants to chat or conference with you.
  • Students like quick feedback. Set a maximum turnaround time, such as 24 hours, for grading and feedback so students know when to expect it. Also, let students know when you normally enter the course to respond to e-mails and discussion postings. If students know your schedule, they will likely be more patient waiting for your response.
  • Log into a course once a day to read discussion items, monitor messages, and check for questions or problems. A regular schedule of brief log-ins keeps up with messages and saves time in the long run.
Some tips for online instructors to manage communications with students include:
  • Good communication in the News tool can reduce the number of email messages you need to answer for individual students.
  • Keep News items and instructor comments from one semester to the next for reuse.
  • Post answers to frequently asked questions generic feedback for assignments in a public area, such as in the News widget on the course homepage, the overall Comments section in the Gradebook, or the generic feedback section in the Quizzes tool. The same question may come up repeatedly
  • Define what is acceptable language and tone and what will not be tolerated. Establish the rules of netiquette for the class. If exceptions are made, be explicit and carefully constrain the exceptions.
  • Closely monitor interactions early in the course in order to intervene if communication difficulties occur. Provide students with early feedback so they have time to adjust their behaviors.
  • Be aware of how you set the tone and demeanor with your communications.
  • State clearly how you wish to be referred to and consistently use your preference in communications.
  • To help create encourage communication and relationship, ask students to share some information about themselves, such as hobbies or favorite music. Share something about yourself in return.
  • Create templates for routine communications such as a welcome e-mail, deadline reminders, office hour reminders, confirmations of work received, and so forth.
  • Use the “track changes” or “add comment” features in Word to collect your comments and return the edited file to the student.

Recommended Resources:

1) Stavredes, T. (2011). Strategies for managing your online teaching activities. Effective online teaching: Foundations and strategies for student success (pp. 185-203). San Francisco, CA: Wiley & Sons, Inc.

2) Dunlap, J. C. (2005). Workload reduction in online courses: Getting some shuteye. Performance Improvement, 44(5), 18-25.

Stravredes and Dunlap provide useful information and checklists for reducing your workload, including making teamwork work, facilitating and managing discussions, and sharing responsibility for learning with students.

3) Working with Online Teaching Assistants

4) Strategies for Managing Large Online Classes (Boise State University)

One strategy for managing time and communication is by developing clear student policies and procedures, as we will talk about next.