If Your Online Student Engagement Stinks; Here are 5 Tips That May Help

Getting students to engage with what they are learning as well as with the teacher has always been a challenge. While it is much easier to have a classroom full of first-graders respond to teacher’s questions than tenth graders, the challenge is always there. Multiple studies show that students who actively participate with the classroom and the teacher have significantly better grades and critical thinking skills than those who do not.

So yes, teachers have to bond with their students while creating excitement about various content. Bonding online may be a little challenging and can be perceived as a barrier schools must overcome. There were several tricks we used like proximity; walking towards students putting your hand on their shoulder or call and response techniques that allowed for students to quickly respond to your statement to provide teachers with a quick reset. The challenge now is, allowing students the freedom of not turning on their screen while finding ways to innovate the classroom ensuring they participate throughout your lesson. Luckily, there are several new ways teachers can build convince their students to speak up, speak out, and participate.

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 1. Conversation is key/flip the classroom: If students feel like you care what they have to say they are more likely to have autonomy for discussion. (discussion groups, peer-to-peer, debates) . Flipping the classroom allows for students to acquire new content for homework and during the daily lesson, students have experiences around the content so they can further digest new concepts.

2. Always Celebrate: Make sure your student knows how great they are and their accomplishments: Students feel valued and validated when teachers notice they were successful in demonstrating their learning.

3. Clarity, Organized, and being Present: From materials, discussions, assessments, and records: students should always know where to find them and how to tackle your online classroom structure. Teacher response time for an online environment should be less than 48 hours.

4. Bite-sized chunks for learning: Try to chunk content in 10min segments, allowing students to digest the material. Also think about different ways to introduce new content use-videos, voice-over slides, audio, text, and panel discussions.

5. Students Taking action on new concepts: Make sure students can apply their new learning to current situations in life. Help them figure out how they can apply what they’ve learned by sharing case studies. We want them to act on what they learned so it will transfer into their long-term memory.

There are three parts to student engagement, which are “academic behaviors, emotional expressions, and cognitive displays required to achieve success” (Fulton & Jenny, 2020). Much of online learning is understanding each child's environment and family involvement is key. One important way to promote student participation is to introduce yourself to their parents (OLC). Building a relationship with families are important when working to meet the needs of students. Educational institutions must include families whenever they work with students, there will be better outcomes, and “This is the year of meeting students where they are and providing them with the academic, emotional, and cognitive support that they will need to thrive in a K12 setting.

References

Fulton, Jenny. “What Does Student Engagement Look like? - Classcraft Blog.” Resource Hub for Schools and Districts, Classcraft, 12 Nov. 2020, www.classcraft.com/blog/evidence-of-student-engagement/.

“Ten Ways to Overcome Barriers to Student Engagement Online (Academic Technology: At the College of William and Mary).” OLC, onlinelearningconsortium.org/news_item/ten-ways-overcome-barriers-student-engagement-online/?gclid=Cj0KCQiA7YyCBhD_ARIsALkj54qkSW9bYHzH3z2xKXa927fD-6KadFb3z5qctv30VwQa3M6LEyQiwnQaApWUEALw_wcB.