Tips on How to Communicate Remotely with Students

We’ve put together some helpful tips for communicating with students as you work with them remotely, whether that be in your role as instructor, advisor, or student service provider. Below you’ll find options for regular emails, online chats or web meetings, and regular phone calls.  (The Canvas instructions are for faculty interactions with students in their courses; all other methods can be employed for any type of interaction with students – whether individually or in groups.)

Options for Communicating with Students

Email
It is recommended that emails be sent through your Goucher email or Canvas. Using a personal email address makes it harder for students to manage their course-related email and to avoid losing messages in spam or junk filters.

Canvas Course Chat

The Canvas Chat tool can be used for real-time conversation with users enrolled in a course. Any user in the course can participate in a chat conversation and view all chat content. You may consider posting chat hours in the course calendar to let students know when you are available. You can also open Chat in a new browser window while viewing other areas in Canvas.

Web Meetings with Teams Meetings

Microsoft Teams is part of the Office 365 software provided to every faculty, staff, and student at Goucher. With Teams Meetings, you and your students can see one another, hear one another, share your desktops, and much more all in real-time. Meetings can also be recorded for sharing later. To get started, visit our Using Microsoft Teams in the Workplace or Classroom article. 

Phone

  • Typing in *67 before making a call will not send your phone number and caller ID information.  However, please be sure to alert the caller ahead of time about when you are planning to call.  People tend to not answer phone calls when they don’t recognize the caller ID.
  • Google allows you to set up a Google Voice account for your cell phone number so that the caller will not be viewing your personal cell phone number during the call.

What if I have a question or if I need technical assistance?

You can contact the Help Desk by email helpdesk@goucher.edu, visit https://www.goucher.edu/it, or call or text 410-337-6322 from 9am to 5pm, Monday through Friday.