Classroom Management Techniques

How to Handle a Difficult Student in Your Online Class

Setting the tone for your online classroom involves many components. You create a syllabus to clearly communicate the goals of your class and your expectations of the students. I usually going over the standards of my online class conduct and academic honesty with my students in our first meeting. It does not matter how well you prepare or what expectations you convey to your class, you will still have at least one student who is difficult. Disruptive students can dominate online conversations; make rude and offensive remarks, challenge your authority, submit plagiarized work, fall behind in class or just not submit assignments.

It is easy to get angry with others online. Text, images and other media can easily be misinterpreted. Maintain your professionalism in your online class as you would when you are with students face-to-face. Never write to a student if you are angry or upset. If a student is being rude to other students in an online discussion or challenging your authority, intervene to counteract the behavior. Know how to block the students’ access so you can remove the student if need be. Open a dialog with the disruptive student out of the public forum about what is acceptable in class. You might need to talk to the student face-to-face or call them on the phone. Know your institution’s policy on inappropriate behavior and have a plan in mind before you meet with the student. If you suspect substance abuse problems, refer the student to counseling services. Be sure to show support to the other students in class. If the difficult behavior created conflict within the class, seek discussions with the other student(s) affected to minimize the tension.

Monitor student progress and be sure to remind students of their course requirements. If a student is non-responsive or becomes abusive because they are frustrated by their own lack of progress, again, contact the student individually, not in a public forum. Offer the student extra guidance and point them to where they can find resources needed if their work is not satisfactory. Know what the guidelines are for helping a student withdraw from a course if they are too far behind.

Stop plagiarism by getting to know your students and their work. Give them clear information as what constitutes cheating in your classroom and what they can expect to happen if they are caught stealing another’s work. Your institution’s policy on plagiarism will give you clearer guidelines. Often, you must make decisions on what you will personally accept after a student is caught cheating. Be clear in your syllabus and in your first meeting about the standards and conduct you expect of students.

Modeling good behavior and professionalism for the students is part of teaching. Try to remember students are often passionate about subjects and debates online can get heated. Before you start class discussions or debates, have your students develop their own rules of acceptable behavior. Discuss with your students the rules of debate and talk about how to treat each other in a disagreement. If your students develop a list of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, they will often police each other during discussions and debates.

CourseInfo Lesson Plan

When you are doing a training session, start by introducing yourself and who is helping you in the session (if applicable). Write on the board where you can be contacted

I. What is CourseInfo (who makes it, what is course management software)

II. How to access the CourseInfo web site – what is the address

III. How to login

IV. Explain My Blackboard section

How to access their course
How to change their password, email address, and other personal information
Explain other categories – you might have them look at web resources for a few minute
Go to the course

V. Take a tour of the student side of the course so the faculty member understands what a student sees

VI. Control Panel

A. Site Management

Course Options (foundation of course – how the course looks and what is available, course information)
Communications (what do you want your students to be able to discuss and where)
Student Tools (what access will you give your students)
Course Utilities (batch uploading and exporting the course so you can save it)

B. User Management

How to add a single user (what are the problems with adding users – ids and password problems, different types of users, what do you do if student is already enrolled in another course – ask the student what id and password they are using and the system will add them)
Modifying users
Deleting users (only done by secretaries or system administrators)
Groups – creating, modifying, removing

C. Page Editors

Announcements, Staff Information, and External Links all work like each other, so choose one and show how to create text, modify text and how to remove text.

VII. Where to find tutorial or help files

Detecting Plagiarism

While I love to teach, one aspect I am not fond of is plagiarism. In 15 years of teaching, it still amazes me the inventive ways students try to take someone else’s work and pass it off as their own. One of my student’s even tried copying and pasting text from an online paper from another professor who I knew. Like most instructors, I take student plagiarism very seriously and I talk about it at the beginning of class and before each assignment. Some students plagiarize deliberately like purchasing a paper while other times it is accidental like paraphrasing another’s words. There are several ways to detect plagiarism in your students’ work including:

Assignment Criteria

Give very explicit instructions on how an assignment is to be turned in and how a paper is formatted. Papers with strange margins, varying citation references, and odd capitalization are signs that a paper is not original work.

Out-of-Date References

Look for dated references and hard-to-find resources in papers your students turn in. Strange references often come from papers purchased or borrowed online.

Work Progress

Since writing is a process, require your students to turn in all drafts of a paper. Single drafts of a paper are a red flag to any instructor.

Web Tools

Ask your students to submit their work electronically and run each paper through a plagiarism checking service to search for copied material. There are many web tools available to faculty members to detect plagiarism, some sites are free and others require a subscription service. Ask your college if there is a subscription service or use a free site to check the paper for copied passages.

Compare and Contrast

I start out the semester by having students do in-class writings and then compare the student’s written class work and compare it to assignments done outside of class. Sharp contrasts between in-class writing and outside work often indicate plagiarism.

Developing Connections and Cooperation Among Students

Teachers should encourage their students to work in groups when possible. You can assign students to study groups or case studies or have them form their own groups. What is the rational for having student collaborate?

Group Problem Solving is Better than Individual Problem Solving

This allows for more solutions (Two heads are better than one.)
Allows students to take leadership roles.
Allows students to collaborate and learn to work in groups.
Allows for a greater diversification of skill, and in the process, creativity.
Students come to a more complete understanding by explaining their ideas to their peers.
Students with better skills can serve as models.

Tools to use

Course content management communication tools such as email and group chat and discussion lists.

Online tools such as Dropbox, Google Docs and Hangouts, Slack, Trello, Skype, Popplet, Groupmaker, ePals, Classcraft and Genius.

Brainstorming Strategies

Start with a Warm-up Quick-Write:

“What kinds of writing do you do every day?”

Have class make a list of all the things they write during each day (e.g. email, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, grocery lists, to-do lists, memos, notes, etc.)

Make a list on board of everyday writing. Note which are informal and formal modes of writing.

Explain the Writing Process (include chart)

This was developed out of the massive British Writing Project in the 70’s and 80’s on how people learn to write and improve their writing. This research found that most good writers go through this writing process adapting it to their own individual styles. Thus, as teachers, we need to help students use the process, but help them find their own individual way within it IF they want to be competent writers. Addenda: American educators took the British research and did more research. From this most states have developed their own writing projects, based at universities, to do more research and to educate teachers.

Step I in the Writing Process: Getting Ideas Down – Generating Ideas

Some people make a list of their ideas. Some think of ideas while jogging, walking, exercising, driving, doing chores, etc. Others talk out their ideas with someone else or talk aloud to themselves. THEN – they go to paper and pencil. Others need to “scribble” those ideas down on paper in some way and use that as an organizer.

Give list of topics and tell class to choose a topics that they want to write about.

Clustering – demonstrate on board with a topic. Ask class to do the same on paper.
Do the same with the other strategies, using a different topic for each one. Demonstrate on the board for each one.
When finished ask students to decide which strategy worked best for them – that they felt most comfortable with. They should use this strategy for the first step when writing assignments.