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One aspect of our daily lives that has significantly changed as a result of COVID-19 is education. As the world went into a lockdown, online learning was adopted on a global level and is now the norm.
But many teachers and students have struggled with this new form of learning. While technical issues and inadequate understanding of online learning technology are two major reasons for this, the fact that it’s difficult to engage students in an online classroom has also played a role.
If you’re using an online platform to teach students during the pandemic, this article will discuss 5 ways you can engage them better and increase the effectiveness of your lessons.
1. Sprinkle your classes with live questions
Making students attempt practice questions is a classic way to engage them. And you might think that it’s impossible to do this effectively during an online class. Well, we now have tools that allow you to easily administer questions during an online learning session.
After you teach a concept, it’s a good idea to have your students attempt a practice question that tests their understanding of it. In an online class, this is best achieved by preparing multiple-choice questions before the class and having your students attempt one after relevant discussion.
You can instantly see the number of people who chose a particular option. If the majority of your students choose the wrong answer, this means there is a problem with the way you’ve explained the concept (or that it needs more discussion). This allows you to spend more time on the right topics and help your students learn better.
2. Practise active learning
Online classes tend to be passive, where the teacher delivers a lecture and the students absorb it. You should know that this strategy doesn’t work well with all students. Some students are “hands-on” and learn the best by actually doing things that you discuss during a class. And active learning is an excellent way to engage these people.
You might think that active learning is impossible in an online setting but that’s not true. For example, you can assign real-life projects to students, where they have to go out in the field and either interact with people on-ground or collect data.
Cluey Learning recommends for teachers to avoid a ‘death by worksheet’, when it comes to online teaching, as it can create a stale and unresponsive classroom. By getting your students out and about, not only are you creating an engaging learning environment, but you’re also teaching the content far more effectively.
Now, this might not always be possible because of the pandemic restrictions.
Here are some useful active learning ideas that you might be able to incorporate into your online classes.
3. Provide plenty of feedback opportunities
Feedback opportunities are vital for good student engagement. In a physical classroom, students can simply walk up to the teacher if they have a concern. Facial expressions and the overall mood of the class are also good ways to receive feedback during a physical learning session.
It’s difficult for students to provide feedback during online classes, where communication is often text-based and restricted (to avoid distractions). And many teachers fail to compensate for this reduction in feedback opportunities, which brings classroom engagement down and keeps them from improving their teaching methods.
So one good way to engage your online classroom is to ensure your students have ample feedback opportunities. In-class feedback sessions, Google Forms, and emails are some of the ways you can receive feedback, so make sure your students know about these. Here are some more ways to get useful student feedback.
It’s also important for you — the teacher — to provide timely feedback to your students in an online environment. As a general rule, you should never assign students a new assignment before handing out feedback for the previous one. This is because your feedback is meant to improve their assignments, which is why they should receive it before working on the next one.
Depending on your class size, it might be difficult to provide individual feedback to each student, but a general email containing overall feedback is a must.
While giving out feedback, it’s a good idea to adhere to the sandwich principle. This is when you sandwich your critical comments between things you liked about an assignment. The sandwich principle ensures that your feedback is constructive and ends on an encouraging note.
4. Don’t let go of accountability
It’s very easy to compromise student accountability in an online setting. This can make students think their instructors don’t care about them, reducing student engagement and participation. So one good way to engage your students is to constantly check up on them and remind them that they’ll be held accountable for attendance (just like in conventional schooling).
Modern learning management systems allow teachers to send automated email reminders to students who don’t log in for a particular number of days. Make sure to use all accountability features your LMS offers to increase your online student engagement.
Asking questions randomly during an online class is also a good way to ensure that students are listening to you.
5. Tell stories
You’re probably rolling your eyes right now because you’ve heard this so many times. But it comes up again and again when we talk about engaging people because it’s so effective. Your students don’t want to listen to you ramble on about a topic when so many people on the internet are explaining it way more interestingly.
If you want to engage your students and make them attend your classes, you must hook their attention. And nothing hooks our attention better than stories. Some ways you can incorporate story-telling in your classes include:
- Sharing case studies
- Assigning cases studies to students as reading material
- Having alumni share their success stories and how your classes helped them (this might mean you’ll have to digress a bit from your curriculum but is an excellent way to engage students)
- Sharing videos from online learning platforms like Khan Academy (which might explain a concept better than you can)
