Professor Jeff Offutt on Holding Students’ Attention Online

Professor Jeff Offutt of George Mason University shares tips on holding students’ attention in an online classroom.

Shorten lectures and add more collaborative exercises

I’ve been using Webex to host class meetings and one of the first things I learned is that lectures should be even shorter online because attention spans are shorter online. I’ve done that by shortening lectures and adding more collaborative exercises. What I found was that I had fewer students working alone in the online setting. I use something called Socrative.com which is a very simple web app that lets you create quiz questions and does autograding so the students get immediate feedback.

Use chat windows for students to ask questions during an online meeting

In a meeting online, if everyone speaks at once it’s just chaos. It’s harder than in a classroom. I’m lucky enough to have two excellent teaching assistants — I have them come to the class and monitor chat windows where I tell my students to ask their questions.