In an online course, counterintuitively, you may find that you have more opportunities to communicate with your students than you do in a traditional face-to-face course. In addition to the content of your course, you are able to send direct emails, course announcements, social media updates, and post pictures and summary videos at any hour of the day. 

While you should not feel compelled to be present in your course 24/7, providing frequent and varied contacts with students will increase student engagement and learning. While many students will be getting used to immediate responses to emails and text messages, it is helpful to establish guidelines for how long it is likely to take you to respond at the beginning of the course. A simple note saying, "I will respond to all email messages within 36 hours," or "I respond to emails Monday, Wednesday, and Friday," can go a long way toward ensuring students do not feel ignored. 

Ways for ensuring effective communication with students include: 

• Scheduling announcements with the learning management system at the beginning of each module to announce the opening/availability of new content
• Creating a summary discussion post
• promptly acknowledging any technical glitches that occur (such as Canvas outages or incorrect or broken links)
• Planning for the unexpected
• Sticking to your guidelines for providing prompt responses to student questions
• Addressing areas where students are struggling and adapting content if need be
• Provide guidelines for online etiquette (while this guide was developed for online discussion moderators, it is a good practice to let students know how moderators will interact with the forum, and that moderator action is based on principles of good online etiquette)
• If you are worried about a student it is sometimes easier and more effective to reach out to a student individually by telephone (or other means) to check in on their progress and express support. While you might not be able to meet with every student individually, when the situation calls for it this can be an effective strategy to remember.