I enjoyed this course and it helped me learn that online engagement and motivating my students online is going to require that I think outside the box and get more creative to get students to find each other and work together. I have taught in person on campus class for so long that motivating and keeping students engaged in person is natural and ease for me.
I learned what engagement is all about. I learned the types of social engagement and the types of motivational engagement. I do think some of this is for college level learners but I can I apply it to high school. I need improvement on student-to-student engagement. To help improve this I plan to introduce an Introductory activity and encourage the students to share. Another improvement I plan to make is constructive feedback. I need to make a conscious effort to let the students know how they are doing in my class.
Social learning plat forms are needed in our classes to keep the student involved
Friendly reminders and social learning plateforms
Student engagement is key is ensuring that students are actively learning in an online platform. It's important for students to be able to communicate dirrectly with the instructor regardless of the platform. I'm currently teaching hybrid classes (some students in class and some students working virtually) through Google Classroom. I regulary post messages for all students to see in Classroom (upcoming assignments, answers to frequently asked questions), but I also email individual students directly to check in on missing assignments, provide encouragement, etc. I've also used the Remind app which allows my virtual learners to message me directly with questions. I think the students are more likely to not only complete the work, but also feel comfortable reaching out for assistance if I make sure to provide many opportunities for them to communicate with me.
I've found that breaking down the course material into weekly segments helps keep students on track without feeling overwhelmed. Along with written notes, I provide videos of lectures of new content and demostrations/examples of activities. Some students simply read the written notes, others spend a lot of time with the videos, and others do a lot of their own research. This combination seems to allow vortual students to successfully complete assignments and assessments on par with my in class students.
Improvements could be made to student-student engagement. Message boards and discussion questions may help students interacte with each other. This would help with a sense of community, and would allow students to support and assist each other. Weekly Google Meets could be used as a way for students to "see" me and each other, and would help create a more cohesive educational environment for students who are working on their own from home.
I have learned a good deal about how to better enage and motivate the students working online in my classes. My biggest "take away" will be the information about how to try to make the online content more enjoyable. I have come to realize that the online egagement and motiviating factors are much different than those in traditional classes. For me, I will utilze the strategies of providing for frequent friendly reminders and find ways to provide directions in multiple different ways. These are the two areas I believe will help my students most.
During this lesson, I learned that students can be engaged in many different ways and that motivation and encouragement is key when it comes to virtual learning.
I learned the importance of providing constructive feedback to the students after completing a project or other assignment. Second, I learned strategies for motivational engagement such as chunking lessons and providing several ways of explaining the instructions for an assignment to accommodate the various learners in the course. Last, I learned that knowing your audience would help you create appropriate lessons that are engaging and well received by your learners.
I've learned that there is no magical way to engage students. You have to dig deep in your bag of tricks and try everything. What works for one student, might not work for another. The key is to consistently use a variety of strategies. The outline of the course and expectations is clear and predictable but the engagement part is more unpredicatable and keeps them guessing so they don't get bored.
Communicating with your online students is very important and trying to motivate them while they learn.
I definitely gained some insight into new ways to improve feedback given to students. I did not even realize how much I needed to improve in this area until I took this module but will definitely work on applying it in the future.
Students are all different so you need to understand that what motivates one student may not motivate another. Look for ways to continually engage all learners in a meaningful way and to further utilize feedback to adjust/adapt.
I have a pretty strong line of communication with my students and in some sections, they are active participants. My two frustrations are first the occasional section of a course that does not want to hold discussions, and second, the students who do not read directions. I have one very active course and another section of the same course with a totally different vibe. They do not like to discuss, and in breakout rooms there is often somebody who will not/cannot participate. It seems to be luck of the draw with the personalities in the classroom and the best I can do is keep encouraging them.
I have discovered many different ways to motivate and engage online learners. I always found discussions challenging and this course has shoed me different ways to keep students engaged.
It is important to provide various interactive opportunitites for students for student-teacher and student -student. Getting ahead and providing social engagement from the beginning is imperative. This helps to builf trust and a rapport with the students.
I enjoyed this lesson pertaining to on-line learners, I found it helpful. I am most concerned with procrastination or unsuccessful submissions with our students, so the second video was beneficial in helping our students to be engaged during our class sessions and remain motivated throughout their studies. I also appreciated the recommendation of remind.com, I heard about this previously from our Curriculum Director. We do post reminders weekly and use our dropdowns to message students who haven't yet submitted their assignments, this seems as though this would be a great alternative tool to use to "remind" our students effectively and efficiently via text message. If there are any additional ideas or thoughts as to how to further engage and motivate students to remain excited and current in their studies, I would appreciate your share. Thank you.
I have learned how important group work is during online learning. As an instructor, it is easy to assign individual work when they are working from home, but it doesn't guarantee positive student engagement. Putting the students in groups increases engagement, because they have to interact with each other. It also increases their social engagement.
Content chunking is also an important concept. It provides a sense of accomplishment and makes things less overwhelming when broken down into bite size chunks of information or activities. It really resonated with me when working adults were reference and catering to the small chunks of time they have during the work day or evening. If you can get something done in 10 minutes on a break it feels like you are making progress and it is less daunting than trying to do it all at once.
We do a good job of communicating with students after they start class but have an opportunity to put out a welcome message to students before class starts. We had a challenge sending Welcome emails through the LMS because the student doesn't receive it if they have not accepted their course. We will be providing rosters to our instructors in order to have access to email students prior to the beginning of the course. The other thing that really stood out to me is the recommendation to provide instructions in different formats and be aware that students may perceive the meaning of the insturctions differently but that does not mean one is right and one is wrong. I would love some suggestion about how to make online discussion questions more engaging and fun for students and instructors to participate. I also have many instructors that ask for advice about how to keep students on task with their asynchronous work. We work in a blended environment and some student are great at showing up for class but lose focus when they leave and vice versa.
I feel like online learning can be a great experince for people as long as they have the right internet, techology, time, a quiet set up and any other supplemental materials that is needed in the course. The challenges come when these technologies don't work or you can't afford them and that really hinders their learnings.
