A question that’s increasingly top of mind for educators at universities and colleges is how to engage students online. The number of distractions available these days, coupled with the difficulties of remote education, means that maintaining online student engagement is a challenge.
Today’s educational institutions must find ways to keep students interested in online learning throughout the year instead of focusing on how engaging their online curriculum is for engaging students for the entire year.
Capturing your students’ attention at the beginning of a module is one thing but maintaining that level throughout the course requires significant time and effort.
Top Ways to Engage Students Online
Here are some of the best ways to increase and ensure high levels of student engagement. At the end of the post, we will also highlight some ways to measure student engagement in online learning.
Offer Active Learning Opportunities
There is a common misconception about online learning. Many people believe that students don’t have to do anything to enroll in an online learning module. All they must do is sit in front of their computers and listen to lectures.
However, that’s not true. Even if an educational institution offers such course modules, they will fail. Hence, the goal of every online institution is to engage its learners and get them out of their chairs.
We can achieve this by offering active learning opportunities. For instance, your assignments can be interviewing people working in the field or out in the community. Group projects, case studies, and collecting data about social events can be other examples of active learning.
Communicate in Multiple Formats
Multiple channels of communication with students are available for instructors in online education. The typical communication mediums for an online course are email and discussion boards. However, you shouldn’t ignore embedded chat rooms, audio and video, instant messaging, broadcast text messaging, and home page announcements.
Students frequently respond favorably to explanatory screencasts, which are getting easier and less expensive. Teachers may also consider using voice or audio notes to engage students online. That helps connect teachers and students who may never interact in person.
Voice notes also have the advantage of being asynchronous. Students can listen to the recorded messages whenever it suits their schedules. Teachers don’t have to waste time scheduling meetings for live video calls in their calendars.
Awards and Badges Can Help You Gamify
Gamification is a growing trend in which game-based elements are incorporated into lessons to speed up student learning. Teachers and instructional designers are incorporating elements of video games into their lessons because of how effectively they retain students’ attention. That is a very effective way to raise online engagement.
There are many other ways to gamify online courses besides starting from scratch and creating an entire game-based learning program. If you want to take things a step further and recognize students’ progress, consider incorporating badges into your course.
Research reveals that giving out badges for achieving specific competencies increases student motivation. There is also a connection between attendance and student satisfaction.
Don’t use social media platforms as a place to repurpose content from your current courses. For instance, sharing a picture of a diagram the students have already studied in class may not spark much discussion.
It would increase engagement and pave the way for exciting discussions if you tweeted a relevant article for your class and invited students to respond in a thread.
How to Assess Student Engagement
Provide Timely and Useful Feedback
Providing students with feedback regarding their performance is crucial to maintain their interest in the learning process. The amount of time it takes to grade assessments can also affect how hard students work in the future.
Interactive Materials
Incorporate multimedia components such as quizzes, games, interactive simulations, and videos. Using these materials will make the learning process more enjoyable.
Clearly Defined Goals
Make sure the students are aware of the course’s goals and objectives. Students can better understand the value and purpose of their studies when they have clear learning objectives.
Regular Communication
Use emails, announcements, or discussion boards to regularly inform students of any changes to the deadlines and course. Answering and addressing students’ queries is critical and helps you assess their performance.
Exams and Quizzes
Online tests and quizzes are frequently used to gauge how well students have understood the material.
Ask questions, including true/false, multiple-choice, short answer, and essay questions. If necessary, impose time restrictions to mimic exam conditions. Online platforms like Moodle, Blackboard, or specific quizzes and exam tools can facilitate this assessment.
Assignments
Essays, reports, projects, and presentations are just a few examples of assignments. Use rubrics to lay out clear expectations and grading standards. Students can turn in assignments via email, the learning management system (LMS), or specific platforms for turning in assignments.
Discussions
You can evaluate students’ critical thinking and engagement through their participation in online discussions. Analyze the contributions’ frequency and quality.
Encourage Self-Evaluation and Peer Feedback
Peer evaluation includes group projects or presentations. Please encourage students to offer helpful criticism of their peers’ work, which can affect their grades.
Self-Assessment
Please encourage students to evaluate their learning and progress. Impose recurring reflections or self-evaluation reports.
Online Portfolios
Assist students in creating and maintaining online portfolios highlighting their work and development throughout the course. That will help them reflect on their development and education process.
Online Polls and Surveys
To get feedback from students about their learning experience, use online surveys and polls. Depending on their responses, identify any areas that may require improvement.
Peer Review
Implement peer review for assignments and projects. Each student evaluates and comments on the work of the others, adding to the assessment.
Tracking of Participation and Attendance
Keep track of the student’s participation and attendance during synchronous online sessions. Track logins and participation in discussions or live sessions using LMS tools.
Formative Assessment
Use formative assessment strategies to check for understanding and modify instruction as necessary throughout the course. These could be brief tests, polls, or in-class exercises.
Analytics for Performance
Some learning management systems offer analytics tools that track student engagement, progress, and completion rates. Analyze data to find students with difficulties and provide additional support.
