Communication and community building

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Pre-arrival, induction and community building

Effective communication and support are central to student success in online learning environments. Clear, consistent and regular communication across the course helps reduce confusion and maintain engagement.

Effective pre-arrival communication and course induction sets the tone for the course and helps students feel welcomed, oriented, and prepared. It provides an opportunity to set expectations for engagement and communication, begin building early connections between students and staff, and empower students to be agents of their own learning and success.

Provide your distance learning students with sufficient, relevant, and practical information and support to engage with the course and the wider community of distance learners.

This might include sharing details of core textbooks before the course starts. Students often say they would like to read around the subject in advance, which helps busy students get a head start.

You are welcome to share the general induction webpages for distance learners. These provide early access to information about distance learning and studying at Leeds Beckett before their University login is active.

The induction webpages include a video tour of MyBeckett called “What will my distance learning experience look like?” to help students understand what to expect. You can see this video on the right. We recommend creating a similar video or guide tailored to your course.

Further guidance and resources

How to record a walkthrough in Panopto (video) that you can embed in your module (see step 3 of the Updating presentations in MyBeckett Ultra guide for details)
Induction webpages for distance learners

The course induction should introduce students to the course, MyBeckett, and key university services. Ensure that you provide your distance learning students with relevant and practical information to support them in engaging with the course and its community of distance learners.

Use a friendly, clear, and approachable tone throughout your induction content and materials. Avoid overly formal or academic language, which can feel alienating, especially for students new to online learning or returning to higher education after a break.

Ensure students know which skills are important for studying your course and for studying online. Offering a skills and knowledge audit at induction can help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and allow you to provide targeted support and resources.

We recommend sharing an introductory video or annotated image showing what students will find in MyBeckett and how to engage with it. A general walkthrough video is available on the induction website, but we suggest recording a similar resource tailored to your course as part of your induction materials.

Further guidance and resources

Create an induction checklist that introduces students to the key areas of the VLE they will need to use and essential information within these. This example induction checklist (DOCX) is for a module that uses a MyBeckett community space for course-wide content, and the checklist directs students to explore the areas within this.
Find out about Increasing agency in learning through the academic skills audit tool in this short video and take a look at the Academic skills audit tool itself
How to record a walkthrough in Panopto (video) that you can embed in your module (see step 3 of the Updating presentations in MyBeckett Ultra guide for details)
How to create a screen recording in PowerPoint (Microsoft guide) to show are part of an induction presentation (you can also export the individual recording and add it to Panopto)

This short video looks at the importance of introducing your students to the VLE, and discusses ways in which you could approach this.

This is the walkthrough video for students on the distance learning induction webpages called “What will my distance learning experience look like?” Find out how you can create your own introductory video under ‘Further guidance and resources’.

Communications from a clearly identified course team help to create a sense of shared understanding of course expectations from pre-entry onwards. The Course Leader should determine the overall academic communication strategy, including the use of any synchronous sessions.

Use planned, clear, accessible communications at critical times (e.g. pre-arrival, welcome and induction, assessment periods, release of marks)
Prepare key messages in advance using MyBeckett
Post a welcome message at the start of each module and follow up with weekly announcements
Use announcements or discussion areas to share academic insights, study tips, reminders, or links to relevant resources

Good practice guidance:

Set clear expectations early: Clearly outline participation requirements, deadlines, and communication norms at the start of the module. Let students know when and how they can expect responses to queries.

Use proactive and reactive communication strategies: Combine proactive communication (e.g. weekly announcements, discussion posts) with reactive strategies (e.g. timely email responses) to keep students informed and supported.

Include communication guidance in course materials: Include your communication policy and expectations in course or module handbooks to ensure consistency and transparency.

Use weekly announcements: Post weekly updates in each module to maintain momentum. These can include academic insights, study tips, or links to relevant resources.

Example welcome email

Dear students,

We looking forward to getting to know each of you this semester, and we are excited about the prospect of seeing you succeed.

And on that note, we would like to share with you the two things you can do to succeed in this online module.

Set a regular time. Decide on a regular place and time where you will do your work for this module. This may seem obvious and overly simplistic, but it’s really important. Without the rhythm of coming to a physical classroom each week, it’s easy for an online class to get put on the back burner. It is not unusual for otherwise brilliant students to fail at an online course simply because they forgot about it. We would recommend accessing the course site every Monday, on Wednesdays, then again on Friday. This is because we send out an important weekly message each week that will help you organize your work and review what is due.

The students who are most successful in online modules regularly do one more thing: they keep in communication with their tutor and with their peers. We want you to feel free to communicate using the discussions boards and email. Why? Because this is part of the learning process. We respond to emails within 5 working days, often a little faster, but you can always count on us getting back to you by five days at the very latest. However, we regularly participate in the online discussions, so feel free to ask us or your peers questions there, or share your insights. And it’s important to know that when we ask you a question via email or in a discussion, that we not just throwing it out into cyberspace, we really want to hear what you think. We learn just as much from you, as you learn from us and your peers. So, let’s all make this class a highly interactive experience by engaging one another.

Finally, you’ll notice that we have set up a question of the week discussion on the module site. The questions change each week, this week you are asked to discuss your favourite book. Each week we contribute to the discussion board, but the questions are designed to get you all talking to each other. Our hope is that they will ignite some great discussions. We are looking forward to reading your responses.

It’s going to be a great semester!

Explain course structure and assessment: Ensure all students know how the course will run, how to access and use course resources, and how they will be assessed.

Clarify support roles: Explain the roles of academic, technical, and pastoral support staff. Provide clear instructions on how students can contact each type of support.

Address common issues proactively: Identify and address common technical or operational issues early in the course. Highlight university support for MyBeckett and related tools to reduce technical queries.

Promote access to support services: Ensure students know how to access key services such as disability support, study skills resources, and wellbeing services. Reiterate this information at key points throughout the course.

Highlight out-of-hours support: As many students study outside usual university working hours due to other commitments or being located outside of the UK, ensure they are aware that Library and IT Advice offers 24/7 support, including help with MyBeckett.

Having a communication framework with a plan of scheduled communications to students is a really helpful method of maintaining engagement. Here are the basics:

Pre-course: Ensure that you communicate clear and appropriate messages to your students via Welcome and any other channels such as emails.

Course Induction: Use a course induction to share all relevant information (perhaps highlighting the key bits of information in a synchronous session) and to start community building.

Email announcements at the start of a teaching week: Use introductory emails to describe the content of a week, what you expect students to do and to encourage them to engage with activities.

Email announcements at the end of a teaching week to summarise: Use emails to summarise what's gone on in a teaching week - perhaps highlighting contributions or encouraging engagement where necessary.

General posts of interest in the online course community: Whether this is current news or posts highlighting things of interest to the students, relating their learning to current events helps students to see the relevance of what they're studying and engage with it on a deeper level.

Most importantly, set aside specific times in your week to do the above and remember to check in with your students.

A strong sense of community can enhance student motivation and play an important role in engagement, achievement, and retention. An effective distance learning course provides opportunities for students to build relationships with other students and the course team.

The following practices are recommended:

Create opportunities for students to get to know each other at the start of the course. Use simple, fun icebreaker activities based on reciprocal interactions.

Highlight the benefits of community engagement such as support, connection, and deeper learning and encourage participation.

Recognise that not all students will want to engage in community activities.

Incorporate group tasks, peer discussions, and collaborative projects to build connections and deepen learning. These activities encourage students to share experiences and work together.

Use the Course Community feature in MyBeckett to create a central hub for staff introductions, icebreaker activities, informal discussions, events, and resource sharing.

A course-based peer support or mentoring network can help students share experiences, offer support, and strengthen the sense of community.

At the beginning of the module, provide an example of effective online discussion participation to build confidence and encourage engagement.

Avoid overloading modules with discussion tasks. One or two meaningful activities per topic, based on open-ended questions, are more effective.

Your presence is essential, especially at the start of the course. Set aside time weekly to check, encourage, and participate in discussions.

Let students know when they can expect a response - your engagement helps foster theirs.

Include icebreaker activities within your induction material to help build a learning community, engage students from the very beginning of the course and motivate them to participate in future activities.

Activities should be inclusive, low-stakes, and designed to prompt reciprocal engagement. Here are some examples:

Ask students to share why they chose the subject. Module tutors also share their journey into that field of study
Invite students (and tutors) to introduce themselves and post a photograph
Ask students to share in their introduction how many miles they are from Leeds

You could also ask Copilot to generate suggestions. Examples of using AI to generate learning and teaching activities can be found in the guide: An introduction to Generative AI in Higher Education - AI as your assistant.