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Communication with your students is vital in online courses. Frequently check your course site and seek to maintain strong connections with your students. Encourage students to do the same.

Use Moodle for communication with students

• In your Moodle preferences set up Moodle notifications to support timely interactions with your students.
• Ensure students receive your communications promptly by directing them to set up their Moodle notifications.
• Use the pre-existing Announcement Forum to send course-wide communication. Your posts will be automatically emailed to students.
• Create a General Discussion Forum in your Moodle course for students to interact with each other and you on general topics (i.e. course logistics, topics related to ideas and issues in the course content, personal connections, prayer requests). 
• Subscribe to the General Discussion Forum so that you see and can respond to student questions promptly.
• Track unread forum posts to help stay on top of forum communication
• See the Prepare Your Online Course for information about using forums as class activities.
• Use Moodle Quickmail to email individual students and groups of students.

Use your Bethel email to communicate with students

• Your Bethel email is an efficient way to communicate with your students. It is a Gmail account.
• Filters in Gmail can help you manage a large volume of emails by setting up parameters to route incoming emails based on sender, subject, content, and/or size of the message.

Use Google Hangouts (Meet) or Google Chat for Office Hours

Consider using Google Hangouts (Meet), phone, or Google Chat to host office hours for your remote students. 

• Set up a recurring calendar event (this will allow you to use the same meeting link for all recurring events)
• Communicate with students ahead of time providing them with:
  • Date and time
  • Link to the Google Hangout (Meet), phone number, or Chat
  • Install mobile app if they choose

Hardware

• Internal or external web-cam
• Internal or external microphone
• Headphones recommended
• Headphones with microphone ideal if you have access
• Computer or mobile device
• A wired (ethernet) connection to internet may provide a better quality experience