When working with students in a course, it is important that communication within the course is smooth. The more online components the course has, the more important this smooth communication becomes. This way, we avoid surprises and misunderstandings, and at the same time help the users of our course not to feel alone but surrounded by a virtual community that helps, supports, and understands them.

Here is a list of useful tips for facilitating a course:

• Forums: Specify the time a student should expect to wait for a response: a common example is 48 hours during the week, and a bit longer during holidays or weekends. This will help avoid anxiety and misunderstandings.
• Chats / Web conferencing: where everyone can write or speak, smaller groups work better.
• Web conferencing: If there is a part where someone presents and then you move on to discussion, mute the microphones and disable chat for all participants during that first part.
• All: In debates, you need a moderator.
• Forums: Make the forum rules clear from day one, and act according to them.
• Forums: If you have a forum dedicated to questions and someone asks a question via email, answer it in the forum and invite the student who sent it to follow your example.
• All: If the class is large, it may be useful to divide students into groups, then share each group’s position. Therefore, appoint a group representative to speak on behalf of the group.