Six Essential Strategies to Keep Students Engaged in Class
Are your students highly engaged, motivated, and performing to the best of their abilities? In a perfect classroom setting, all students will participate in the course, become interested in the subjects, and perform to the best of their abilities. That is what every educator expects when he begins to teach a class.
The reality for most classes is that while some students may be highly engaged and motivated, others will base their participation on what is being experienced in the classroom and whether or not their expectations are being met. While addressing student engagement can be challenging for traditional classroom educators, it can be even more difficult for online educators who are unable to see or meet their students during a scheduled class time.
At the beginning of a new online class, educators generally find that students are engaged in the class with mixed feelings of excitement, apprehension, and uncertainty. From a student’s perspective, staying motivated and engaged in class requires substantial effort. While many students are self-directed by nature and have the ability to stay engaged, there are often others who lack self-motivation and begin to tune out over time. As many educators realize, when a student disconnects from class, it is often too late to get them back on track.
One challenge for instructors is that facilitating online classes can take a significant amount of time. With a busy schedule, it is natural to focus on contractual obligations and classroom management, and not notice that a student is slowly withdrawing from class until they are completely absent or have withdrawn. So it becomes important to take a proactive approach with students online and establish an instructional approach to help them stay focused and engaged in class.
Definition of the concept of student participation
When educators define the nature of student engagement, it is usually done from a tangible perspective (what is seen) and this can be a subjective assessment. For example, if a student posts engagement messages online almost every day of the week, they could say they are highly engaged. The question is, how active must a student be to meet these criteria? If you post in five days, do you have the same level of engagement as a student who posts in six days? As a general guideline, it can be evaluated based on how engaged students appear to be in your class. This includes their participation in discussions, asking questions, turning in assignments on time, and how responsive they are to other students and their instructor. If a student is to be considered highly engaged in class, an instructor must observe various visual cues.
Why is student participation important?
Participation is important because it indicates that students are involved in the class. When students are fully engaged, a distance education class begins to feel like a community. If students are not actively involved in your class, especially an online class, they can easily disconnect, lose interest, and eventually drop out. If the instructor does not intervene, these students may drop out of the course and a continuing pattern like this can also lead to disengagement from their syllabus. Visual cues are important then because they are indicators of how involved students are in the learning process. These signals include qualities like your level of effort, along with your responsiveness to feedback, communication, and training.
Find out how to measure student engagement
When visual cues are interpreted, it is often done subjectively, looking more than the product of the student’s tangible work or written articles. The purpose of measuring class participation is to increase the educator’s awareness of students and to track their participation. It’s easy to get so busy managing class operations and discussions that students who are not present end up being overlooked when they are not actively present. For those instructors who are concerned with details, they can create a spreadsheet and track their students’ progress. Some learning management systems provide analytics that allow the instructor to verify student progress in the course. The purpose of doing this is to pay attention to your students and how they are progressing.
To help educators with the process of promoting student participation in the classroom, I have developed a model called COMMIT.
meExamine the conditions of the class, since they can favor or discourage active participation. For example, do you run ads that include a preview or summary of the week’s topics or concepts? Does it provide additional resources? Do you provide multiple contact methods so that students can communicate with you easily? All of these strategies can help create the conditions conducive to learning.
NOTObserve student participation and pay attention to their activities. If you wait for feedback to determine who is active and who is not, it may be too late to intervene. If there are features built into the learning management system that allow you to keep track of students and their access to the course, this can help you identify students who are disconnecting. You can also check who has completed the learning activities before the deadline and develop a list of students who are behind.
GRAMIncrease the level of activity expected for an average student to set a standard. As an instructor, you develop a feeling for the online class over time. You have a general idea of how much activity in the online class is indicative of a student actively participating. Take that knowledge to help you develop a basic model and checklist that you can use, either mentally or in writing, to help monitor your students’ progress.
TOAssess students and look for visual cues as you monitor their progress. As you monitor your students’ progress and consider how active they are based on your expectations for participation, also consider how well they are performing. For example, a student may communicate with the class at times by posting a short response to the discussion and still not participate in a substantial way. A student who seems to be getting ahead is someone who requires your time and attention.
GRAMGet students’ attention through some form of communication, such as an email or phone call, if they appear to be absent or are disconnecting from class. With an online class, it is important that you proactively reach out to your students whenever you notice that they are struggling, are not performing well, or are not posting important contributions to class discussions.
If you have developed a positive working relationship with your students, they will likely respond to you when you contact them by email. If you haven’t been able to make that connection, a phone call could be a helpful way to communicate and establish your willingness to help them. One of the main challenges in making phone calls is finding a time when both the instructor and their students are available, especially if they are in different time zones.
meJoin the class as students will follow your example. As a faculty director, I have observed many online classes with students who were not actively participating and it was a reflection of the level of participation from their instructors. Students often develop the perception that their instructor does not seem to care about the class if they do not appear to be actively present. However, even if an instructor is highly visible and engaged, it does not guarantee that students will also respond with the same level of engagement. What an active presence does is encourage them to participate and get involved.
Always participate in your class
For instructors, being heavily involved in an online class requires proactive effort and participation. Struggling students can be caught before they tune out; however, it can be challenging because keeping track of students takes time. If you are allocating just enough time to complete the required facilitation tasks, you may find that it is not enough to take the time to communicate with students and conduct outreach activities.
One of the first steps you can take is to develop an acceptable participation standard for an average student. By developing this standard, you can observe patterns and communicate with your students as needed. In general, you need to establish an awareness plan for your students if you want to keep them involved. Student participation in an online class is related to their participation in the learning process, their retention in a degree program, and is a contributing factor to their overall success.
As an instructor, you have a direct impact on the performance of your students. Take the initiative, teach them how to commit a lot, and show that you care when they start to tune out. It may take longer, but teaching and nurturing your students will take time and effort on your part. While you may not see the immediate result of your efforts, if a student continues to participate in the course, you will have had a direct impact on their lifelong learning experience and that is probably why you have become an educator to begin with – to make a positive contribution to the academic growth and development of your students.
