I use a variety of electronic communication tools to keep in touch with my students.
I like the ANGEL Welcome Page because it can be the first page students see when they log in to the course. It is effective for long-term announcements and minor notices about homework or lecture. For example the announcement below is a reminder that class is cancelled for Thanksgiving.
Many students have AIM accounts, so I shared my AIM account with students so they could be used for virtual office hours. Many students took advantage of this so, I was able to have more contact with them. I also cut and pasted each session and saved them in a text file, so I would have a transcript of what we talked about.
Although ANGEL has an e-mail utility, I prefer Penn State e-mail because I only have one class to monitor. I did set ANGEL e-mail to forward to my Penn State e-mail just in case a student used the ANGEL e-mail. I also asked students for their non-Penn State e-mail addresses at the beginning of the semester so I could use those for emergencies.
I posted lecture notes, homework assignments and the syllabus to ANGEL so students could download them as needed. I organized content into folders for "Lectures" and "Problem Set Assingments" so students could find what they needed. For each assignment, I also added due dates in the subtitles as an additional reminder.
Last Update: July 19, 2006