Online Courses

Parenting courses education programs that are delivered in an online environment rely on written communication as the primary interface among students and between students and the instructor. Every electronic communication, except some audio or video conferencing, requires some aspect of writing to be effective on the Web. You are communicating with writing in email, on courses discussion boards, in listservs, and in parenting courses chat rooms. Even when using the shared white boards, you will probably need to use some written communication along with the diagrams you draw.

The better your skills in written communication, the more successful you will feel in an online parenting courses environment. Each of the forms of electronic communication contains certain common requirements. The foremost rule for any communication on the Web is to keep it brief. Write with as much clarity and brevity as possible. Let's look at some good and bad examples of Web-based communication.

Discussion boards also follow the brevity rule. Because many people are posting to a discussion group, the board becomes difficult to follow when discussion points are long or several postings by the same person appear. Just as with email, it helps to provide some format to your thoughts if they are more than one screen. As most courses discussion boards provide the capability to link to Web pages, it would be best to format longer comments on a Web page and provide a link. Alternatively, you could attach a document.

Discussion boards are a favorite tool for asynchronous class discussions. Frequently, parenting courses instructors will post questions or points to ponder. They are also used as a place to ask general questions and see the instructor's or your classmates' responses. When parenting courses discussion board is used for a class discussion, you are frequently graded both on your willingness to participate and on what you actually post. As this is an asynchronous communication tool, you have time to formulate your response and post it in whatever format works best for you.

There are three ways to approach posting long discussion items. One way is to format your response(s) on a Web page and provide a link. The second is to compose your response in your word processor, then attach the document to your discussion board posting with a brief explanation about the attached document. The third is to organize and compose your response in a word processor, then cut and paste it onto the discussion board.