3 Ways to Engage Students in the Online Classroom
We have been at this game since March 2020, and proven again and again that teachers are some of the most adaptable professionals out there.
It seems that with the Omicron variant, and who-knows-what-else coming next, we could very well see temporary on-campus shut downs for months or even years to come.
However difficult it is to switch to online learning at the drop of a hat…er… COVID variant, there are steps we can take to continue to engage students without having to mandate a physical presence in the classroom.
Enjoy this list of student engagement strategies, but as with all advice, take it with a grain of salt. This is just a list of engagement tactics that have worked for me, but you know your students best and how to create and share lessons they love.
1. Give Multiple Attempts
In the classroom, you would give students plenty of ungraded room to make mistakes. Your online classroom should be no different.
You can spend time making videos teaching concepts and giving tutorials, but your students need a chance to interact with the content without fear of failure. Think about teaching face-to-face. Don’t you spend time addressing the class as a whole? Asking students what they think? Giving them the “not quite”s and the “you’re half-right”s before passing out any worksheets that will affect their grade?
The same goes for the online classroom.
Try this:
Give students comprehension questions that correlate with the video or audio that you have recorded (or the reading you have assigned). You can give them points for these questions so they know what they got right and what they got wrong, but also give them the chance to repeat this same assignment one, or maybe even two times, before moving on. I think you will be happy with the number of students who participate in multiple attempts and improve in learning.
2. Meet Students Where They Are
Be honest — when you think of your typical online student, do you picture them working from a laptop or desktop computer in some home office? Or maybe just a desk in their room?
While this might be the reality for some students, it is likely that many students are working from their tablets or phones. In order to be engaged, your students have to be able to access the assignment material from wherever they are. This means creating assignments in many different formats. If you have a downloadable PDF, have that same document available as a Word Document, a Google Doc, and if possible built directly into the program you are using for online teaching.
This brings me to my next point: chunk your assignments.
If I had a nickel for every student that told me they do their homework from their phones during their breaks… well, I might have a few dollars by now.
Meeting them where they are would look like creating 5 short activities rather than one long one. Your goal is to create activities that can be completed in one short bus ride, or in line at the DMV.
Try this:
Put yourself in your students’ shoes by testing out one of your lessons on your cell phone. Are you able to access everything? Does it appear correctly? Are your activities chunked? Could you complete an activity on a 20-minute break during work?
It is understandable that this isn’t possible for every assignment, but it is good to get in the habit of getting in the heads of your students. Learning how to meet a student where they are will keep them more engaged with your online classroom.
3. Think Like a UX Designer
No matter how much time you put into your in-person lessons, you are going to have to change them if you want to engage students online.
First, you no longer have students sitting row on row with their faces turned toward you. Instead, your students are who-knows-where. You are competing with video games, television, cell phones, tablets, outdoor sports, trips to the kitchen, naps, and more. This is why you need to start thinking like a UX (user experience) designer.
Thinking like a UX designer is all about understanding the flow of your online website or classroom. Do your students easily understand that they need to watch the video first? This could be as simple as adding a call out headline on your page that says “Watch this video first!” They need to know to click on links to find review material, and those links should open in a new tab.
A UX designer trying to get a student to finish an assignment would never take the student away from that tab without an easy way to get back.
Try this:
Pretend you are an alien from another planet landing into your online classroom for the first time. Do you immediately understand where to click to find the most recent lesson? When you get there, are you drawn to click on the video first? Are there links that reference back to review material on your page?
Providing your students with a good experience — one where there is no confusion on where to click next — will keep them in your classroom for a little bit longer, allowing them to finish an assignment before they move on to more exciting activities.
These are just three of the many ways to practice engaging students online. While these have all worked for me, every classroom is different.
Thanks for reading!
