Nowadays, students seek enjoyment in every aspect of their daily lives. It makes no difference whether at home or school; the most effective method for capturing students’ attention is to make things fascinating.
Educators could use various strategies or technologies to realistically boost student engagement in online classes.
Firstly, what do you think student engagement is?
Student engagement is a student’s passion, interest, curiosity, and attentiveness while in class.
In other words, engagement refers to a person’s eagerness to participate in the learning or working process.
The engagement’s value is that it sparks curiosity among students and makes learning more enjoyable and motivating.
Significance of Engagement During Online Classes
Students’ recalling ability and attentiveness would improve due to their interactions in class, allowing them to improve their critical assessment skills.
This procedure would boost their confidence and inspire them to participate more in learning. Hence, they will have more opportunities to enhance their grades and gain new skills. Here are some ways through which instructors can increase students’ engagement in online classes or on learning platforms.
Ways to Increase Student Engagement in Online Classes
As there are endless benefits of online learning, here are some ideas to pique the interest of students and increase their engagement in online classes.
1. Using engaging stories to pique students’ interest
Storytelling is an excellent way to embed a concept or topic in students’ minds. Because listening through tales and stories is significantly more entertaining than learning through typical concept-understanding lectures, this technique compels students to pay attention.
Entertainment is a massive industry that draws viewers in by piquing their interest in what is about to happen. For example, Marvel and DC films provide their audience with a fantastic tale that keeps them thinking and discussing it long after the film has ended. It’s no different when it comes to using stories to help students understand a concept.
Consider the story of the Trojan horse, which is taught in history books and is well-known. Everyone knows it since it is intriguing and allows us to envisage the entire scene rather than simply explaining the Trojan horse battle concept and strategy to the kids.
By using visualization photos, videos, infographics, or animation as the medium, this learning approach can be applied to any subject.
2. Make the learning environment interactive with Prezi videos
Instead of simply going into your Zoom, Skype, or Google Meetings account and presenting boring lectures, it’s preferable to use Prezi videos to introduce visually appealing and inventive slides along with traditional slides in your presentation.
Advantages of Prezi videos
Instructors will be able to deliver via an interactive presentation layout, and utilizing Prezi will increase the student’s interest and attention in the presentation or lesson.
Students will be able to master new presentation styles, formats, and storytelling techniques, allowing them to make their presentations more appealing, user-friendly, and participatory for their audience.
Lectures in the classroom will no longer be tedious. Prezi’s creative and inventive presentation background will increase online interaction and cater to a broader audience by focusing on capturing students’ curiosity.
3. Bringing in industry leaders and influencers for a topic discussion
Special lectures given by renowned business leaders or influencers could help students to make better judgments in the future. Almost every kid aspires to have a bright future, and what better way to inspire them than to introduce them to those who have achieved professional success?
Giving students Ted presentations will encourage them to consider what they want to accomplish in life and how they plan to do so. Where can they go in a particular field, allowing them to plan their future careers and create goals! Get the most out of online studies by following strategies of collaborative learning.
Students can benefit from such mentors’ advice on time management, resource management, and the necessity of focus in their professional lives. Also, there are countless benefits for students to interact with industry professionals, which would, in turn, increase their engagement in the classroom.
After knowing what a particular course has to provide in the future, students would be more willing to participate in the class.
4. Debate is what will make them more engaged with the topic
Encouraging learners to discuss an issue can be difficult, but the advantages outweigh the dangers.
Pick a topic related to the subject and divide students into groups of four or five. Assign each group a specific issue to debate on and keep rotating subjects between all the groups that would allow them to start a debate among themselves.
They will present their own views and provide examples to back them, enhancing their critical thinking, debate, search, and brainstorming abilities.
Simultaneously, this method will compel students to participate in the classroom by offering their thoughts. This debating method would provide a competitive element, encouraging people to learn while conversing.
One platform that could help in increasing debating among students would be SimpliTaught’s book channel on discord. Students can communicate with other students or join a separate group to debate a particular book chapter. Educators are part of that discord group, and students can clear their doubts regarding book concepts.
5. Introducing Educational Games
This method would add to the overall wow effect of the lecture.
So, what do we mean by games? First, a tool that is preferred by thousands of educators around the globe, Kahoot, allows students to go through a sequence of questions and answer Multiple choice questions (MCQs) as they go.
Students can learn while playing the MCQs game because the multiple-choice questions are based on the lesson content.
The top 5 students who give the most accurate answers are shown on a screen for the entire class to see at the end of the course. This competitive learning game would encourage students to pay attention in class because there will be a quiz game at the end.
Another platform to increase students’ attentiveness is Quizlet, which helps them learn different topics using flashcards and quizzes.
6. Asking for Feedback from Students
Getting or giving feedback is a way to increase participation in online classes. Unfortunately, this strategy is underrated among students as they intend to provide non-constructive feedback about who they like or dislike. For that reason, only constructive and genuine feedback should be encouraged by educators.
Educators can ask students to evaluate the lecture material, while students can give innovative ideas on improving the lecture or resources for learners’ better understanding.
The traffic light approach can be used to identify what students like about the class, what needs improvement, and criticism which is constructive.
Finally, give students feedback on what the lecturer thinks, highlighting what a student can improve to better their grades or be more proactive. Educators can then advise the students to increase engagement to better their educational journey.
7. Assigning Students with Interesting Homework or Quiz
Giving students fascinating and unique homework is another approach to keep them interested in the subject and eager to learn in the next lesson.
One method to accomplish this would be by encouraging students to build a stand and sell food or any other product they wish. This allows students to think outside the box while also learning about marketing, product promotion, communication, and many other skills.
Another option is to make students spend a day work shadowing in an office to help them better understand the concepts related to engineering, mathematics, chemistry, or any other technical courses. This would give students a realistic view of a work environment and how businesses operate.
8. Making Short-Impactful Learning Videos
Students can study technical topics like programming (Object-oriented programming) or arithmetic courses like algebra and geometry by watching short, influential instructional films.
The advantage is that students are not bored by extended lectures; instead, they will listen to the lecture for 10 minutes and then try to answer the problem independently.
This learning method aids them in escaping tutorial hell by focusing on real-time learning and problem-solving since practicing a technical topic is the only way to learn it.
SimpliTaught is one of the best solutions to tutorial hell. SimpliTaught believes in learning through short videos of multiple educators to increase student engagement and interest.
9. Provide Career Counseling on the Subject Being Taught
While it is true that students achieve fantastic grades by working hard and learning what the lecturer is teaching them.
It’s also true that the majority of students learn solely to pass their respective subjects. They have no idea how this course or subject will affect their professional lives or how it will benefit them.
All that matters to students is receiving excellent grades, moving on to the next semester, and repeating the process.
You may demonstrate to your student what they can achieve if they focus on mastering the course contents and how it will benefit them by providing future prospects.
Asking kids what they want to do in the future and offering suggestions is an example of this.
10. Set Goals and Assist Students in Achieve Them
Educators need to be attentive and calm when using this way of teaching. Educators should focus on discussing course standards with students so that they are aware of their current academic status. Here’s a detailed blog that discusses challenges in online learning and their solutions.
Set short-term goals with kids and help them to achieve them. If this technique is used, students must be rewarded. For example, when a student completes pre-planned tasks, the instructor should praise them, give them a shout-out, or play a constructive game with them.
Students will become more engaged and motivated to reach their goals as they learn that the educator cares about them and their future.
Conclusion
While it is true that education is the key to learning new ideas and technologies, it is also true that education should not only be lecture-based, and based around classes, whether online or in person, rather, it should be exciting and participatory.
Teachers can increase student engagement by introducing different learning methods like storytelling, educational games, debates on various topics, taking their feedback, etc. Implementing such learning techniques would enhance learners’ interest and curiosity.
Two other alternatives are encouraging respectful discourse and enhancing group input frequency. Overall, students should have the impression that their teachers are involved with their career growth.
