10 Tips for Increasing Student Engagement in Online Courses

Education is the most powerful and important part we have of our life. We can build up a better world only on the basis of educated people and society. Our careers and future also vary depending on the education that we have learned. We can hope for a sustainable world only through good education.

The online education system is very popular known over the world. People from everywhere can join online courses without leaving their homes. It started to gain this popularity due to the coronavirus pandemic situation. Now, this digital method is used worldwide. The assessment in online education is quite different from the physical one.

You need to be updated with new online course software and support equipment used in online courses. You also need to hold onto students’ attention and make the study interesting to increase student engagement in online courses. To reach the student and increase their engagement in online courses you can follow some effective tips and tricks.

Here we present 10 ideas for increasing student engagement in online courses:

1. Communicate in multiple formats

A teacher can establish communication with students in multiple formats to increase their engagement in online classes. Course email and discussion forums are the standard communication tools that can be used. Apart from these, regular formats like embedded audio and video, chat rooms and instant messaging, podcasts, broadcast text messaging, and home page announcements are in the form to engage them.

The way used to communicate with students should be clear and concise. One of the well-received formats is explanatory screencast video and the trend is on upward. These videos are not so expensive and very easy to create and circulate.

2. Provide active learning

Active learning methods will help to engage students online in a more dynamic avenue and will never let them bored. People believe a misconception about online courses that here students need only sit in front of their computers all the time during online classes. It is true at some point but not all the time.

We need to try involving them in active learning in alternative to sitting on a chair or bed. One of the sure benefits of active learning is that it keeps the student engaged. Active learning is basically student-focused learning to increase students’ self-confidence and high-level thinking skills.

You can assign students some work that ensures make they are involved in physically inactivates. Active learning basically refers to hands-on learning. You can ask students to take interviews with people around them in the fields and learn from working. Case studies, group projects, and collecting and analyzing local data are a few options to include then in active learning.

3. Gamify with badges and certificates

Students are always fond of games and most of the time their love for games is more than studies. Some students become more encouraged if challenged. So adding a gaming element to online courses, become more interesting and effective. There are different ways to challenge students and to add gaming things to the courses to teach students.

You can try to engage them by playing games according to their intelligence quotients. There is no need to build full game-based learning. You can use some elements of the game. For example, Kahoot is a popular game used over the world for increasing the engagement of students in online classes.

As a more core step add badges to your course to recognize student accomplishments along the way. Badges can be rewarded on the basis of achieving particular competencies. It can also be a way of rewarding student performance and encouraging continued engagement in online classes.

4. Provide timely and useful feedback

Giving regular feedback is important in any kind of teaching environment. It’s a two-way thing where students need to take and give feedback regarding their consignments. When it comes to online teaching, giving regular feedback is extra important. It will also help students get more engaged in their learning.

It can help them adjust, communicate their concern and gain more confidence. They will be keen to engage in online learning if you can make them feel cared for. They can help you with their experiences by giving feedback whether it is positive or negative. Be prepared to take negative feedback in a positive manner and try to fix them.

Some good way in feedback management session can benefit student’s betterment and engagement is:

• Provide students time to improve their skills and set reasonable deadlines with them.
• Always be as constructive and sensitive as you can be. Describe your expectations clearly and try to assure that your student doesn’t have any bad intentions.
• Praise and give rewards to your students for well-done tasks and good behaviour.
• Make feedback expected and regular.
• Ask them questions to try to come up with new ideas that can make them deal with any issue in need.
• Keep one thing in mind student-teacher feedback sessions should be conducted one-to-one. Regular contact with the named person makes students feel satisfied and supported.
• Know about students and try to help them fight their weaknesses and insecurities by giving them more tailored challenges.

5. Give opportunities for self-assessment

Self-assessment responsibility or opportunity for self-learning can have a great effect on students which makes teaching interesting and productive as well. If teachers provide opportunities for self-assessment, it allows a student to take more responsibility for their own learning. Providing input for their own grade, or grading their own discussion post for course participation can be an encouraging and sometimes humbling experience.

Self-assessment and self-reflection are powerful ways to enhance students learning experience. It also promotes self-centred learning. Self-assessment can increase the interest and motivation level of students for the subjects leading to enhanced learning and better academic performance.

A course based on an ePortfolio or learning plan can be used to motivate students to build their own personal learning plans while identifying preferences for multiple assessment methods. It will help to increase self-awareness and improve their performances online. Design self-assessment carefully and ensure that you integrate its use into the online course plan.

6. Update the content regularly

Regular updating content is very useful and a must in online learning. You should not provide the same content you have already delivered in earlier sessions. The content should be updated based on the latest or trendy news, research and developments, articles, opinions, policies and regulations, podcast episodes, videos, emerging trends and practices.

Updating content regularly keeps your student informed. A regular update of content leaves a good impression on students. It also helps students to keep up to date with new information. The old program is not digestible, so for the sake of increasing student engagement try to update your content on regular basis.

7. Assign success coaches

Assigning success gurus can be an innovative idea. They can consult with students both personally and group-wise. Students can be benefited in any stage of online courses with this success coach who delivers online learning and studying advice. They can also help students to find a way of balancing time and responsibilities. They can guide students in identifying a learning pathway and other resources. They can also help students find out their lacking by own and work over them.

Sometimes students feel down after doing mistakes and they even get depressed for various reasons. With the help of success gurus, a student can overcome all of these problems and experience online courses that can go to the next level. It’s a student-centred approach to their well-being. This is an unexpected way to increase student engagement in online courses.

8. Assign some group work

Group work is something that you would normally do when you were in the physical classroom. There is no reason to stop doing this activity when you are in an online class. Group work gives students personal satisfaction and also helps to find out something new from their perspective.

Well-planned group work can be the perfect opportunity to polish students’ social skills and teach them to cooperate with one another. It helps to increase teamwork skills and students find the study interesting as well.

What prepares this strategy for increasing student engagement online? Peers trends to learn from each other, and being part of a group will encourage them to complete the task. The student will be happy to participate if they have a role that lets them put their best strength on display.

Students can be engaged in group activities like:

• You can start with a thorough discussion of the tasks and make students get into groups. Fix up a list of roles, but let them select their own role so they execute it better.
• To work on student groups and supervise them all synchronously, you can create a digital whiteboard project. Thus you can make sure of the participation of everyone in the group and has control over their cooperation.
• Supervise students on how to meet up with their group members online using secure meet-up tools or institution’s LMS like Microsoft, Canvas, and Teams. You can join students at any time to monitor students’ activity and check if they need you to help with something if you become the host create meeting links and set up the time beforehand.
• Always ensure that all of the students are taking part in the group task.

9. Encourage accountability

In online classes encouraging students’ accountability is an important task to increase their engagement. The course management system should have an email notification feature. Using this feature students will be enabled to get notifications of the class time, the status of tasks and assignment submissions, and also other things related to their courses.

Students always need well-timed feedback on assignments and replies to questions. Be proactive and notify students before starting any activity or assessment, and send reminders about due dates. Instructors should also be connected with this notification system thus they can reach out to track students’ progress personally. This will help in providing timely feedback too.

10. Create an online forum for discussions

Some students have a much easier time typing out their thoughts, rather than saying them loud out in front of the class. All the students can have a great opportunity in an online discussion space. Creating an online forum for discussions is a far better way to increase students’ engagement in online courses. You have to always get in touch with students with the help of a discussion forum.

Student can give their opinion, get to know the perspective of others and learn the way of polite conversation. Group discussion forum also gives students a chance to form their thoughts and opinions, and think about a matter at their convenience without any pressure.

The way you can incorporate this student engagement strategy into your online teaching:

• You can use social media platforms to create shared groups for your classes.
• Use reliable and safe tools that are approved by your institution or others. You basically won’t have to find anything new on your own. You can use a platform like an LMS with a forum that allows you to create an online discussion board.
• Motivate students to come up with their own ideas or topics if they would like to start a discussion.
• You can also create topics and threads connected to your course or the topic of a particular class.

Conclusion

In general, we can say that online education teaching methods are the need of the time and a wonderful opportunity for the teacher. This online market of education opens immense chances to make a career and it has been growing very rapidly. If you are an instructor or teacher, then you definitely have to know how to increase student engagement online and how to do proper online teaching. This is a digital concept, where you have to always be dynamic to take full advantage of offering courses online.