One of the challenges of teaching is reaching every student. This can be especially difficult in distance courses where you don’t have a chance to grab a student after class to check in on them.
I used a weekly exit ticket in my courses to develop regular connections with every single one of my learners in all of my course modalities. It included a quick less-than-5 minutes reflection on their cognitive, affective, behavioral, and contextual experiences that week. I set aside 30 minutes on Monday mornings to read and comment on each one and learned a lot from my learners about their experiences in my courses and how I could better support them. This regular communication helped to ensure that no student was left behind, and we got to see our conversation mapped out over the course of the semester.
I made a copy of this Google Doc for each student and shared it with them privately. If I wanted to ensure they saw my response right away, I could mention them in a comment, so they got an email notification. Feel free to copy and adapt. Take a look at this document to see some of the types of responses that students shared that helped me understand their learning experience
If you have large enrollment classes, you might consider objective-type questions in a Google Form that allow you to see summaries in chart form.