Student Expectations of Online Education Are Rising Fast
After the initial scramble, universities will now be expected to provide a dynamic and engaging learning experience
In March, with little warning or preparation, the vast majority of education institutions across the world went virtual. Students were understanding as educators did their best in the circumstances to keep the show on the road.
But now, as the world begins to digest this new normal in higher education, student expectations for the remote learning experience will start to rise. They will assume that institutions have now had enough time to create a more dynamic and engaging online experience.
Technological issues aside, maintaining a high level of student engagement in remote learning poses some unique challenges. Without any control over a student’s physical environment, educators must now compete with Netflix, social media, and a host of other everyday distractions.
Fortunately, it doesn’t take technological prowess to master online learning. In fact, the same strategies that great educators have been using to guide their instruction for years apply online. The tools and implementation may be different, but the theories are the same.
Here are five strategies you can use to create a dynamic online experience, increasing engagement, and maybe even improving learning outcomes in the process.
Keep it live
Moving a class from in-person instruction to online learning may seem so daunting that an educator may choose to record all of their lectures ahead of time. This has its benefits — students can learn when they want, where they want, and instructors can more easily control the content.
What is lost is the real-time interaction and social context that is central to learning, according to Dewey and Lipman’s Community of Inquiry Model for meaningful learning experiences. It has three elements: social presence, cognitive presence, and teacher presence — and can only be fully realised in a synchronous learning environment.
Pre-recorded lectures reduce a students’ ability to interact and collaborate with one another and to connect with their instructor to ask questions and seek clarification. Therefore, although the idea of recording lectures for absent students is good practice (with student permission, of course), students benefit most when classes are live.
Connect with students
An online audience needs to be engaged, but so does one inside the classroom. Many of the same techniques for engagement apply here: change the style and format often, and keep it interesting. Your online classes should be less keynote address and more late-night variety show.
Here are some tips for connecting with students online:
- Encourage students to use their webcams and refer to students by name in discussions
- Realise that the virtual classroom is an extension of your own personality and teaching style. You don’t need to conduct class exactly like your colleagues.
- Keep your virtual classroom open for students to ask questions after class.
- Most importantly, admit and embrace the challenges of this new world. Chances are, your students feel the same way.
Encourage participation
Student participation is a key feature of learning. In some ways, online communication tools can make participation easier. In an online lecture, an instructor has more control over how and when students communicate, giving less extroverted students more opportunities to express themselves.
With larger classes, it may be beneficial to have students mute their microphones during class. If they have a question or want to respond to a prompt, they can digitally raise their hand on most conference platforms, allowing you to maintain a controlled discussion.
The ‘chat’ function is another simple and effective way for students to communicate in a way that doesn’t discourage shy students and minimises disruption. Students can type their questions or comments into the chat, and you can respond when appropriate. For open discussion, keep that chat bar open on your computer at all times and keep an eye on it as you are lecturing. A dual monitor set-up makes this easier.
Using the chat feature can often increase participation. Within the classroom setting, you could pose a question and call on one or two students to respond. With the chat feature, that same question can be answered by the entire class in the same amount of time.
Another way to promote whole-class participation is to use polling tools like PollEverywhere, Mentimeter, or Kahoot. These tools give you more structure and flexibility around the types of responses you collect, and will aggregate and visualise responses automatically, so you can have a meaningful debrief afterwards.
You can use polls to assign problems to students, survey their opinions, or run a quiz or trivia challenge.
Facilitate collaboration
Remote learning doesn’t mean the end of real-time collaboration. As anyone who has tried to persuade students to stand up and assemble into groups will attest, this is another area where things are actually easier online.
Breakout rooms are ideal for splitting your class into small groups to discuss or collaborate and then report back to the main session. Forming breakout rooms is surprisingly frictionless on most platforms and groups or pairs can be randomly generated or created in advance.
In the breakout rooms, students can even collaborate on tasks using online tools such as Google Docs. Back in the main session, the instructor can then display the results of the work and offer instant feedback.
Breakout rooms can be one of the most powerful options in your online-learning toolkit, as long as you allocate enough time for them to be effective. Smaller groups of two to four typically work best.
Leverage instructional tools
Perhaps the greatest benefit of online learning is the accessibility of online learning tools designed to enhance or supplement instruction. Gamified learning, for instance, is a great way to increase learner engagement with a generation that in all likelihood spends much of their spare time playing games such as Animal Crossing.
I’m the founder of Catembe, which allows business educators to run real-time multiplayer game sessions with students in class or online. The example below shows a multiplayer version of the classic battleships game that we use to help teach marketing students Porter’s generic strategies. In the game, students hunt for major companies, which are hidden on the grid according to the types of strategies they pursue. After each round of play, the educator shows a heat map of where the students fired and discusses the results with the class.
Most real-time learning games are aimed at younger children, but there are a handful of similar offerings available for other disciplines. Chem101 helps students learn chemistry concepts, and Moblab provides a suite of interactive tools for experimental economics.
Conclusion
The transition to effective online teaching won’t be easy. However, with the right approach, you can ensure that the quality of your students’ experience is not significantly diminished.
The process may introduce you to a new world of useful pedagogical tools that you may find you like, either because they enhance your instruction or make it easier. This global crisis has taught us a lot about ourselves and our communities; it may also be a way to fully embrace the many benefits of online learning.
