10 Proven Tips for Increasing Engagement in your Online Class
1. Schedule a face to face meeting to help the group ‘gel’
Instructors consistently report that classes perform better when everyone has met each other and the teacher, even just once at the beginning of the semester. It should be optional, since a class coded as ‘online’ can’t require a face to face meeting.
2. Strike a balance when responding to discussion forums
Participate too little, and students feel abandoned or ignored. Good discussions, just like in-person, can be delicate and might not ever get off the ground. There’s a balance between responding too much and making it feel like 20 different conversations between you and students, and responding too little and making it feel like nobody’s watching. (a)
3. Give prompt feedback. Respond within 24 hours.
Research and student reports are very consistent with this. The quicker the feedback, the more involved the student feels, and the better chance for learning there is. This doesn’t mean that you have to be online 24 hours a day, but it does mean you need to check in at least every 24 hours. And preferably every 12 hours. (b)
4. Practice
Practice with the online environment before the semester starts, and decide which parts to use/focus on. And don’t let the rest distract you.
5. Set a positive, enthusiastic tone, starting on day 1
Just as your enthusiasm and tone will set the standard in a traditional class, your online tone (whether through writing, pictures, audio or video) will set the mood in the online class. It may be even more important, since we lack the face to face contact of a traditional class.
6. Gateway assignments
iLearn gives you a chance to say "Activity X isn’t available until you complete Activity Y..." There’s a few ways you can use this to your advantage:
- Require the lecture before the quiz/assignment
- Require a survey be taken before the lecture/assignment
- Require a pre-quiz -> lesson -> post-quiz (c)
See how do I restrict an activity?
7. Use multiple modes/media. Text. Audio. Graphics. And Video.
Your students prefer a variety of presentation modes. Some prefer reading text, while some like the freedom of audio. Others are most at home with video. Everyone’s tastes and strengths will vary, and the topic will usually have an "ideal format" as well.
With this in mind, try to create a variety of material, with some overlap between them. This presents a more interesting class to the students and gives everyone a fair chance to be in their preferred mode. The majority of your lecture/presentation material will probably be dictated by the course’s topic and your own preferences. However, as your material grows, do try to push beyond your comfort levels with creating new and different materials.
8. Use quizzes as reinforcement rather than evaluation.
With the simplicity of multiple-choice questions that are automatically graded, it is tempting to use them everywhere, especially if the textbook publisher is providing a question bank. However, you may want to look at shorter, weekly quizzes as another learning tool, rather than assessment. With a little more effort, you can give feedback for each correct and incorrect choice. This gives you a chance to give the student not just a score, but customized help based on their precise misconception.
Although it’s more labor intensive to begin with, these feedback quizzes are quite powerful tools to catch and correct student mistakes earlier rather than later. (e) and (f)
9. Look with fresh eyes.
When a student arrives, can they immediately answer the question "So what should I do now?"
Not every student will arrive at the class homepage and be able to get their bearings right away. Some will be in an online class for the first time, and won’t have the experience to determine what is important versus what is secondary. With these students in mind, look at your course homepage with an "innocent" eye (or ask someone with fresh eyes) and see what stands out as the most important thing, or the most attention-getting thing. Most importantly, can someone seeing your course for the first time answer the questions "Okay, what do I do now?"