I have noticed that some of the online learners tend to procrastinate more. I learned that it can be helpful to send friendly reminders of upcoming assignments that are due. The course mentioned using the Remind App. I am familiar with that app but never thought about using it for my classes. I also realize that the online students tend to be more quiet and don't ask each other for help. I'm going to try to get them involved more by having regular get to know me activities so they can get more comfortable around each other.
What I learned most from this course was in regards to 'Motivational Engagement'. The suggestions made to boost this type of student engagement opened my eyes to some concepts that I had not taken into serious enough consideration. The idea of presenting the instructions and material for assignments in different forms for different styles of learners is something that I will continue to expand upon in my teaching.
Students need a variety of assignments to keep them engaged. Also, communication is key to a successful online course.
Even in the classroom, especially with our larger classes, strong engagement is difficult, and online classes will challenge that even more. This year, I'm going to come up with more interactive exercises/activities for them, which will hopefully also help with assessments. There isn't a lot of time for one-on-one engagement in a traditional schedule and only 4 mins between classes. Written and verbal feedback with students, parents and administrators is going to be key. I'm setting our asynchronous learning days as the day I will focus on student feedback and reminders. Online motivation strategies will be something I will look hard at for tunring work in on time, etc. Our elective (JROTC) is normally 2 days of lessons and 3 days of hands-on, so the virtual start of this year is going to be quite interesting!
I have learned that just like in person learning, online learning requires different teaching styles to accommodate different learning styles. I will take into consideration that everyone's home environment is different and I will need to adjust for this and be available to help. I will need to give assignments to students using different methods like written and videos. I will need to adjust my lessons based on student needs and comprehension.
I've learned ways to engage students online. I think the most important is to make it as enjoyable as possible by including subjects or points of view the student is interested in. It is also really important to have straight-forward and easy to understand directions, so the student is not overwhwelmed and gives up.
I learned that everyone, just not students, get bored doing the same thing repetitively. In order to better engage the students, I need to vary my teaching style and use multiple resources.
This provided great ideas on how to stay in constant communication with your students. Starting the year online I realize that I have to treat this just like if I had the students in my classroom. Doing the simple things like introducing myself to them is so important. Sharing my background in life with them helps put that at ease in some way. Allowing all the students to share information about themselves with other students. Students can see how they have similar interests as the teacher and/or other students. It helps ease feeling like you're a stranger.
I understand a little more why making directions available in a variety of ways is very helpful for online learners. Not having acccess to a teacher does make it difficult for many learrners. This area I will definitely need to work on in order to help my students.
I have learned that there are many strategies to engage online learner and that feedback is a crucial part of the learning process.
I have learned that there are many ways to motivate your students and using some of these practices can really boost your productivity, in class as well as the productivity of the student.
This seems to be a well put together course. I am enjoying the course detail, and how it is problem focused. This should be a great help in my online teaching. That will enchance my online teaching presents.
I found a lot of this information to be a bit redundant but I'm glad it's helpful to others. Perhaps because I've already been teaching online for a while now and have taken training courses that were put together a bit more elegantly than this one.
Last quarter I learned that an entirely new set of classroom challenges arise when switching to online distance-learning. This course broke down some of the challenges and considerations for virtual teaching, and provided ideas for ways to approach these considerations.
Since switching mid-March 2020 to all online, I've learned that communicating content in the classroom, especially in a public speaking course, is vastly different from online. Breaking up the presentation and content into 15-minute segments is most important since students clearly are tuning out. In the classroom, a PowerPoint presentation lecture/discussion can work well if enough students participate in the reflecting on the ideas, relating them to textbook readings, and responding in front of their peers. Online students, like I, are staring at tiny video windows where there's a clear distance among learners. Breakout rooms in Zoom can help correct the distancing if enough students engage with each other in the groups, but I have to build in clear goals for each breakout session and clear instructions so students achieve the intended outcomes. For Asynchronous learning, the discussions within Canvas have worked the best since students are used to Facebook and other online forums asking them to comment and respond to other students' thoughts.
Effective engage is one of the keys to a a successful on-line class.
With the switch to online learning, I have come to understand how important timely feedback is to student engagement in the assigned activity. I think it is important that I develop a plan for providing feedback in an appropriate amount of time. Since we are using online learning management systems, it will be important for me to find a way to present the feedback in a meaningful and accessible way to students. To make larger tasks appear more achievable in the online setting, I will chunk large activities into smaller sections for my students. I like the idea of utilizing the online program called NearPod to present paced lessons to my students in a synchronous setting.
Transitioning from a face-to-face extensively hands-on classroom to 100% Distance Learning has been a difficult transition for my students. Working through the Engaging Online Learners course has helped me to think through using strategies that I left in the classroom, such as online games like Quizlet Live and Kahoot. I need to keep up the social engagement. The course also challeged me to look for other resources, like class wikis, to encourage more student-to-student engagement. One thing I had not considered enough before the course was that some students may be limited to their phone for access to the Internet and my LMS. I will make sure that I attempt to identify this limitation before the class begins in my welcome video.
Learning about motivational engagement was very helpful. The ideas and suggestions given were interesting and useful. I know when I have large classes giving effective and effiencent feedback it tough, but necessary. I think if I try to develope a bank of starter statements and categorize them, it might help me be more productive and give feedback in a more timely manner. I also liked the idea of an intro activity made to start the virtual class off in a productive way.
Engagement is created through student-to-student annd student-to-student interaction, adherence to social learning and other motivational theories, explicating relevance, and providing methods of active interaction with the content and the group.
Creating a LMS Sytem and using the fundementals taught in this online version. Using chunking to spread out the contents to make sure students are engaged.
