Strategies to Increase Student Engagement for Your Online Course or Workshop

Why does student engagement matter, and how can I achieve it?

If you have taken a continuing education class, you know that students lose interest and motivation over time. This can be because they get busy, have trouble making classes and keeping up with coursework, or don’t receive the support they need to keep motivated.

In today’s competitive lifelong learning market, an online course that merely provides information is no better than any other. Your association must offer online courses that engage, connect, and transform students in order to distinguish itself from the competition.

Students who are engaged are:

• More inclined to purchase future workshops
• Likely to finish your online course
• More likely to recommend it to others

Thanks to educational technology, many active learning methods can be easily and effectively moved to the online realm and used in online and hybrid teaching. Most strategies that you can incorporate into your non-traditional classroom will require some basic tech-savviness but most of all – your engagement, creativity, and maybe a bit of general knowledge about how the internet works. In this article, you’ll learn how you can increase student engagement for your own workshop!

What are the strategies to achieve student engagement?

How to Increase Student Engagement: Prepare Your Students

Students who are used to learning in a classroom or meeting room may have trouble adjusting to the online learning experience. To help them succeed, give them an introduction to online learning, your association’s LMS, and your online course.

It is important for students to understand what is expected of them while taking this course and how they can meet those expectations. Additionally, it is helpful to include discussion etiquette guidelines in your syllabus or specific attendance requirements before a virtual class meeting.

How to Increase Student Engagement: Be Organized

Your students need to be able to easily find their course materials, discussions, assessments, and records in your workshop. Everything they need should be right where they would naturally look for it.

Instructors should organize course materials in a way that reduces student confusion. This can be done by labelling materials and using checklists to help students know how far they’ve come and how far they still have to go.

How to Increase Student Engagement: Interesting Course Material

Providing your students with engaging and interactive materials can help them better absorb information. In particular, using interesting visuals, simulations, or games can ​​increase student engagement in your workshop.

Open educational resources can help broaden the perspective of content that is typically provided in textbooks and journal articles. This type of content can include multimedia and interactive learning objects.

Active learning strategies help students to think and reflect on the content of a course, as well as their own participation in it. By providing specific guidance on how the course materials align with objectives, instructors can help students focus their attention on what is most important.

How to Increase Student Engagement: Be Engaged With Your Students

Instructors should talk to students in a personal manner, using instructional videos to create a sense of connection with the audience. This allows students to feel as if the instructor is right there with them, which will increase student engagement.

Develop a communication plan with your students so they know the best way to reach you and when you will return their messages. You can use email, text messages, teams, or any other form of communication. Make regular announcements and remind students to ask questions through a discussion forum or contact you directly. Keep your announcements concise and informative

Allow for timely grading and feedback that helps students track their progress. If possible, grade papers within one week of submission. Beyond that, students may begin to lose focus on what they have submitted.

How to Increase Student Engagement: Student Interaction

When working on group projects in a classroom setting, it’s important for students to develop their social skills and learn how to cooperate with one another. This can be done effectively online as well!

You are more likely to increase student engagement if students can learn from each other. For your students, being part of a group will motivate them to complete the task.

Encourage group activities among the students:

• Begin by thoroughly outlining the assignment before assisting the students in forming groups. Make a list of possible roles, but let each student pick one so they can better relate to it.
• Create group projects for the students to work on on the digital whiteboard, and synchronously monitor them all. In this manner, you may manage their cooperation and guarantee that everyone is taking part.
• Always check to see that every student is contributing to group projects.

How to Increase Student Engagement: Student Participation

Encourage your students to ask questions during office hours and breakout groups, as well as in discussion forums. All of your students can benefit from a question asked by one student.

Metacognition is a key factor in student success, so ask students to reflect on their goals for the course and write about their progress.

In order for students to cross the knowing-doing gap, they need to be able to apply what they’ve learned in a practical way. Each lesson should consist of a piece of information and action that the student can take immediately.

These might be the following:

• Taking part in a forum online.
• Supplying situations or instances.
• Fixing a dilemma.
• Writing a brief essay or statement of view.
• Conversing with a fellow student, whether online or off.
• Making notes or journal entries to reflect on their learning.
• Addressing inquiries from the teacher.

How to Increase Student Engagement: Build Community

Some students find it easier to type out their thoughts instead of speaking them aloud in front of the whole class. An online discussion space can be a great opportunity to increase student engagement.

In these spaces, everyone has the chance to participate, give their opinion, understand the views of others, and learn some polite conversation rules.

When an online course includes a community component, students are found to be five times more engaged and 16 times more likely to finish the course. This increased engagement was seen as beneficial due to the sense of belonging and connection that is fostered in such a setting. Students who take online courses benefit from the opportunity to connect with their instructors and fellow students, discuss coursework, help each other through struggles, and share ideas. This will increase student engagement by making the student population more engaged overall.

Klatch is the perfect platform for engaging students!

Klatch is a small, fast-paced team that focuses on building the model for live, interactive group workshops for adults to learn nearly any topic. We believe lifelong learning should be social and interactive, not one-way pre-recorded hours of laborious videos.

Klatch is a social learning platform that enables experts from across nearly any topic to simulate an engaging classroom through an integrated cohort-based platform, social tools, and best-in-class facilitator training. The platform provides users with the ability to connect with like-minded individuals, access expert content on any topic, and receive interactive feedback from their peers. Klatch also offers a range of facilitator training programs designed to help educators create engaging classrooms using Klatch‘s technology.

Facilitators usually speak less than 50% of the time in Klatch sessions, relying on hands-on exercises, discussion, and breakout groups to engage their audience. Before and after Klatch sessions, you can use the virtual Workshop Studio to provide a continuous learning experience for your network.