Communicating with Instructors

Teaching staff in each course are available to help answer questions, provide feedback and support your learning activity. In order to ease the communication process and to ensure your questions and queries are dealt with appropriately the following guidelines are suggested and will be followed for all courses unless otherwise indicated by the course coordinator

1. Don’t be afraid to ask a question. The ‘no such thing as a stupid question’ rule applies. If you need help or need information, please ask!
2. Don’t email teaching staff your questions unless they involve sensitive personal or confidential information.
3. All questions should be asked in an appropriate online forum unless the question involves sensitive personal information or confidential issues. Chances are, if you have a question, others do too. Asking in a forum and having it answered there helps you and all others who have the same question.
4. Choose the right venue for your question. All academic questions or questions about particular courses should be asked in the course sites. Each course has a number of Q&A forums for different topics (assessment, general course). General questions about administrative or technical issues can be asked in the program community site. Asking your question in the right place means you get the correct answer more quickly.
5. Give teaching staff (and your peers) time to respond, but, by all means, expect a response. Generally, UniSA teaching staff will respond to questions directed to them in 24 hours during the working week, but responses may take longer on the weekends or holiday periods. If you haven’t heard back after 48 hours, then redirect your question or ask for clarification. Sometimes, things get lost or missed and a friendly reminder (or re-posting the question) will help sort things out.