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How to Increase Student Engagement in Online Learning
- November 10, 2020
- Posted by: The Teachers Academy
- Category: All Blog Postings Educator Resources / News Online Courses
With the pandemic dominating headlines worldwide, many schools have turned to online teaching to continue educating young minds while ensuring their health and safety. Yet, how can a teacher keep students engaged when the environment is so fragmented and distant?
The Teacher’s Academy offers a range of continuing education credits online intended to help educators increase student engagement during online learning. We strive to provide a comprehensive curriculum designed around your needs.
Here we will discuss some of the techniques you can use to keep students engaged and eager to participate in your next Zoom meeting.
Building a Community
Teachers know that one of the significant advantages of a physical classroom is the ability to build a community of students. In the absence of said classroom, there are still several ways teachers can construct a learning collective of participants.
- Introduce yourself first: Take the time to individually reach out to all of your students before the course begins. Maybe introduce yourself in a video to add a personal touch. This will give your students the ability to assess your personality. Also, don’t forget to provide students with a comprehensive list of the actions needed to prepare for the class.
- Create a student introductory activity: Make sure to connect students with each other. You can design an activity that will allow students to introduce themselves to their classmates.
- Promote student interaction: Designate an accessible forum where students can interact with one another. The use of a comment thread or message board will give students the opportunity to exchange information among themselves.
- Promote sharing activities: Utilize social media to facilitate sharing between students. They can use these platforms to share course-related material. Social media provides an informal format that fosters a sense of community.
Minimize Administrative Obstacles
For most students, nothing is more frustrating than having difficulty reaching a teacher or accessing course information. If a teacher is ill-prepared for online instruction, administrative barriers can be amplified. There are some easy ways a teacher can get ready to instruct an online course.
- Institute clearly defined contact hours and methods: Make sure to provide your email address and phone number to all of your students. Let them know the hours that you are most likely to be reached. Always notify your class if you will be unavailable for longer than a 24 hour time period.
- Ensure timely responses to student inquiries: In this age of remote learning, it is essential to provide prompt feedback to questions. Classroom participants should be given regular progress assessments, and you should repeatedly ask students if they are keeping up with their work.
The Power of Motivation
One of the greatest challenges of online learning is overcoming motivational barriers. Your lessons must now compete with all the distractions found in a student’s home life. Here is a short list of tips you can use to keep your class motivated and focused.
- Streamline your teaching technique: Condense educational content into smaller sections that will enable the material to be more easily understood. Conceptual information should be clustered together to add meaning and clarity to its intended purpose. Video lectures should also be kept short and concise.
- Set reminders for students: The course calendar should be filled with defined deadlines for the return of class assignments. If a student falls behind, create reminders for them to achieve their objectives. You can also provide a summarized list of all assignments and tests for students to access easily.
- Vary your teaching methods: Be sure to alternate your content-delivery methods regularly. Different students require different tools to help them properly learn information. Changing up your presentations allows all of your students the opportunity to learn in their way.
As you can see, there are many different techniques to foster engagement with your students when teaching an online course. To effectively manage and engage your students, online instruction requires more than just converting classroom lessons into online learning. Teachers must employ a variety of techniques to maintain a productive learning environment for their students.
The Teacher’s Academy offers a wide range of courses catered to the ever-changing needs of teachers. If you’re looking to complete your ACT 48 hours online in Montgomery County or other parts of Pennsylvania, The Teacher’s Academy is here to help! For more information, contact us today!