One of my classes I teach has only silent students in it. I find it very difficult to get any interaction going with them and it is hard to know how much of the information they are retaining. Even when called upon most of them will mumble an answer to me, or stall by looking through their notes. The class only consists of 6 students so it is all ready a fairly small group. any suggestions?

I teach at an institution where most all of our classes require students to be on their laptops and most likely online during class. This makes it very challenging to keep students on topic when the subject matter gets a bit dry. Even the best students seem to multi task when they are on a computer and almost always have open their email or Facebook on another window. Do you have any ideas for keeping students off of Facebook and other distracting sites during class time?