If we talk about the meaning of Online Course Student Engagement with respect to education, it can be described as an act of the measure of a students’ participation in a learning process. Engagement in the classroom is the interaction and cooperation with the teacher and classmates.
Why Student Engagement Important?
The challenges of getting students to cooperate have increased during remote learning. We have discovered this from many teachers. Digital programs can create added communication obstacles by making it hard to grasp when to speak. It can also make it hard to read a person’s visual communication and facial expressions. Additionally, online conversations are often interrupted by variability in students’ access to technology and by privacy concerns. Due to this, many teachers have had to depend upon students’ submitting their work or concerns through isolated channels like email, which may leave back-and-forth between peers by the wayside.
This is why engagement and ways to engage students are important. It is important that no student is left behind and that everyone is taking part in the conversations.
Tips to Boost Online Course Student Engagement
Researchers agree to the fact that student engagement is eminent for a high-quality learning experience. These are some of the ways teachers can increase their engagement levels with students in an online class:
Provoke Conversations and Challenge Students
Students are going to be more motivated to communicate with course content if they feel that their instructor cares about what they need to mention. What you can do is that you can provide students with a touch of independence by requesting their opinion in discussion forums, peer collaboration systems, or oral discussions. A teacher can also post regularly to those conversation boards to maintain the conversations.
Moreover, they can combine situational learning activities that examine students quite traditional worksheets, then share important feedback with them in an exceedingly timely fashion. Technology sort of a learning management system (LMS) can yield close monitoring of ongoing coursework.
Communicate in Multiple Formats
Teachers need to provide students with different ways to communicate with them. It is fortunate that there are multiple places for the teachers for communicating with students. The most common way for students to communicate with the teachers is by email and discussion forums. But other than that, they can also communicate through audio and video, broadcast text messaging, chat rooms or instant messaging, and home page announcements. It has been observed that screen-sharing classes tend to be well received by students.
Encourage Social Media Usage
Nowadays, social media channels became the spot where many higher education students spend their time. A lot of important conversations and learning possibilities can happen there. A teacher can come up with a Twitter hashtag or private Facebook group to share important content along with your class straight through social media. This way teachers can maximize real-time conversations that are already happening by reliable leaders in your domain. But yes, a teacher needs to make sure that institutional policies are followed in terms of security and privacy interests.
Provide active learning Opportunities
A lot of people think that learning online is just sitting in front of their computers. To some extent, it is true. If the course is designed in an engaging way, then you can actually make the students get out of their beds and get them involved in active learning. A way to get students engaged is by asking the students to interview people working in the field. Another engaging learning can also be to ask the students to draw their learning out into the community where they live. More examples for engaging learning are case studies, group projects, or gathering and analyzing local data are just a few of the many examples of active learning.
Celebrate Greatness and Accomplishments
A good way to make online classrooms engaging is by finding informal locations since learning can occur anywhere. Sometimes students may also feel as if their offerings or moments of learning are going unseen. It’s essential to verify learning, irrespective of where it takes place. The more connected an educator becomes in students’ online activities, the more these students will feel validated for the education they’re showing. It is good to celebrate accomplishments as it can be one of the most effective ways to stay students involved in and pleased with the work that they, and their peers, are doing.
Provide timely and useful Feedback
It is important that the teacher gives feedback to students’ assignments and their performance in the classroom. Providing timely feedback by the teachers results in keeping the students engaged in the learning journey. So, as a teacher, you need to give fast responses to discussion posts and email questions. This will help the students to stay on track for the next assignment or activity. Teachers can turn around time on the grading of assessments can even have sway on future student struggles. Students should never be given the next assignment without receiving feedback on the previous assignment. The feedback that is more accurate and positive in nature tends to be more practical than faint praise or unclear messages.
Add self-assessment Opportunities
Being a teacher, you must also give the students some options and chances for their self-assessment. This can assist the students with assuming greater liability for their own learning. Some ways that you can introduce self assessment activities are by asking the students to grade their own discussion posts. Letting the students grade their own work can actually be a motivating and sometimes humbling experience. Moreover, the use of a learning plan can support students to develop their own personal learning plans. It will also help them in identifying their choices for multiple assessment methods.
Final Thoughts
So, these are some of the tips that teachers can use to boost Online Course Student Engagement. These tips can also work for the students of higher education. Another thing that we would suggest to teachers to take some time for fun too. It will also help you to engage with your students. Stay safe and keep learning.
