Distance learning has been a growing trend over the last decade. With the outbreak Coronavirus pandemic, however, educators have had to choose distance learning as one of the major options to help learners stay connected and offer a more streamlined learning experience. This, in turn, has posed a serious challenge of keeping the learners engaged.
If you or your institution is offering remote learning, particularly during the current pandemic, it’s possible that you are struggling to keep the learners engaged. But have no fear! This post explores some of the most effective ways of maintaining student engagement in remote learning.
Utilize Remote Learning Tools
Students need to access the university data while off-campus to make the most out of the remote learning experience. Therefore, there is a need for you as an educator to understand the available tools to make accessing their respective learning content easier.
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Keep Track of Participation and Engagement
Even in physical learning, keeping students engaged and away from distractions can be a challenge. By adding the element of remote learning, the distraction can become even worse. As an educator, you can help reduce distractions and at the same time encourage participation by ensuring that every student uses a video conferencing tool and keeps their camera on during class hours. Some of the most common video conferencing options include Google meet, Zoom, and MS teams.
Use Formative Assessment
When teaching remotely, it can be challenging to gauge how much information the students can process and retain. To ensure that students are engaged and able to process the concepts taught in class, you can try using various quick formative tests.
Some eLearning tools like google classroom provide an option where you can ask students questions with short or multiple-choice answers and gather their responses in one place. That way, it becomes a lot easier to gauge how much information is being retained, which can help you develop future lessons.
Create an Interactive Learning Experience
The average student will experience attention lapses of up to 5 minutes. This calls for ensuring that your online class is as interactive as possible. If you are not sure how to maintain interactive learning and keep your students engaged while learning remotely, the following tips will help you:
- Create small groups on whatever video conferencing app you are using where students can freely discuss the subject learned. You can also jump in from time to time and moderate.
- Instead of using slides all the time, you can switch to digital whiteboards to illustrate complex problems while at the same time creating a visual learning experience.
- Incorporate visual aids like videos, gifs, and pictures to capture their attention.
Gather Feedback
Remote learning is relatively new to almost everyone in the education system. This includes the educators and students. Gathering feedback from all stakeholders can help you in creating a better remote learning environment. Therefore, ask your student to freely share their thoughts about lesson lengths, class hours, or any adjustment they think would make the learning environment more engaging.
Summary
Keeping students engaged is key to ensuring that the information taught is processed and retained by the students. With so many distractions in their remote environments, educators must develop creative ways of ensuring minimal distractions while ensuring maximum engagement. The tips highlighted in this post will help you keep your online class engaged and with minimum distractions.
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