Interactive online teaching is the new hot topic that all the schools are talking about. There are numerous barriers that stand in the way of interactivity when it comes to online teaching. The key to breaking these barriers down is motivation. I have compiled a list of 40 different ways you can make your online classes more interactive. Some of these ideas were taken from articles, some are questions you can ask yourself, and others are simply my own ideas. Use them all or just a couple, but remember that if you want to advance your online teaching practices, there aren’t any shortcuts. You must roll up your sleeves and do the work so you can get better results for your students.
Below are useful tips to make your online classes more interactive:
Integrate real-time interaction
When online courses are completely asynchronous, there is often limited interaction between you and your students and class members with each other. Consider, for example, that real-time conversations don’t occur during a video lecture, when you post announcements, or when students post on a discussion board. That lag in response time kills the momentum of a back-and-forth discussion and can sometimes lead to misunderstandings.
Integrating opportunities for real-time interaction into your online course can help change that and develop a sense of community in a course. Consider how impromptu conversations outside the traditional classroom forge relationships, clarify ideas, and spark new insights. You can facilitate these interactions by setting up opportunities for class members to meet online synchronously both formally and informally. Using webconferencing applications, you can create a variety of synchronous interaction opportunities, such as office hours, small group discussions, whole class discussions, and study groups.
Get creative with discussion boards
Discussion boards have long been the communication staple for online courses, but there are ways you can make this experience more interactive for much wider and deeper participation. In a traditional classroom, it’s common for only a small percentage of students to participate in discussion. In an online environment, you can structure your discussions so that everyone contributes, plus they’ll have more time to consider what they want to say before responding. Class size helps determine how you organize discussions. In a larger class of, say, 100 students, you can set up smaller discussion groups of 20 or so people so that students can get to know their fellow classmates. You can also create even smaller groups (5-7 people) for more intimate interaction, and rotate these groups to expand interactions. This approach also works with smaller class sizes.
One technique that fosters richer dialogue is creating discussion prompts that are open ended, such as requiring students to provide examples or asking them to interpret a concept from a variety of perspectives. You could also set up student-facilitated discussion opportunities where students craft the discussion prompt and guide the ensuing dialogue.
Maximize engagement with non-task interaction
Non-task interactions are those exchanges that are not part of the direct learning, but help create a supportive learning community. You can facilitate these types of interactions by leveraging the social networking capabilities that are available in many learning management systems, such as chat and webconferencing. Using the group functionality, students can create special interest groups or study groups. If your LMS doesn’t have the functionality to support a social network, you can still create one with a private Facebook page or one of the many group messaging apps available, such as Telegram and Slack.
Of important note, academic social networks require planning and ongoing maintenance. The value of the social network needs to be explicit before it will become a common destination. Many schools begin by asking students to create bios and add profile pictures, but these activities alone will not encourage students to keep coming back to the network. Techniques for transforming the social network into a destination include frequently updating content (on a weekly or if possible daily basis) and incorporating contributions to the social network into classes (e.g. using the social network tools for group work; asking students to post their discussion contributions into their social network feed).
Use multiple communication tools
You’re not alone in wanting to increase and enhance student engagement and interaction. For example, schools can create a program-wide social network that allows students to continue their relationships with other students from course to course. Within this private social network, the administrators and support staff can use direct messages, announcements, and live events to enhance student engagement in the program.
This sort of institutional support is not necessary, however, for your class to be interactive. In addition to external social networking tools, such as Facebook, Telegram, Slack, and WhatsApp, students can meet each other in real time on Skype and Google Hangouts. Preprogrammed communication, such as introductory videos, content presentation, and email, are still important components of online learning, but student interaction can take the learning further, faster.
5. Have a plan around the tool
A tech tool is only as good as you the way you use it from a pedagogical perspective. When you move a face-to-face course online, or create an online course from scratch, consider how interaction will support the learning goals in your course. By enhancing the opportunities for interaction in your online classrooms, you can take an already powerful learning opportunity to the next level for all of your students.
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Pick The Right Tool (& Test It!)
Before you can host your first online class, you’ll need to find a video conferencing tool that enables you to connect with your students. Luckily, you have a variety of options available to you.
Market leaders include Zoom, Webex, Adobe Connect, Google Hangouts, and others. Many of these tools have a free option, although you may require a paid subscription to properly meet the needs of your students.
Regardless of the tool you select, you should take the time to learn how to use it properly. Read the instructions, view the tutorial videos, and test out functionality for yourself. Your goal should be to know the tool well enough to support your students if they have any questions or difficulties.
Send Invites & Clear Instructions
Once you’ve set up the classroom event, you’ll need to get invites out to your students. This is typically done within your video conferencing tool. Your invite should include a rough agenda, joining instructions, and a list of anything your students will need to bring with them.
If they’re expected to be on their webcams or to utilize their microphones during the classroom session, then you should let them know this. This will give them an opportunity to prepare accordingly.
Finally, you should send out a reminder, approximately 15-minutes before the classroom session is scheduled to begin. This will jog their memory and ensure that the joining instructions are readily available to them.
Stay Secure:
COVID-19 has facilitated a bump in online meetings and classroom events. In turn, increased scrutiny has been placed on the security offered by video conferencing tools. Luckily, there are actions you can take to secure your online classroom and ensure it is a safe space for you and your students. We recommend following these steps to keep your online study sessions safe:
- Don’t share meeting invites in public forums.
- Password-protect your meetings.
- Use a ‘Waiting Room’ to control who joins the meeting.
- Make sure you know all participants in the room.
- Ensure you know how to manage (and remove) participants.
Show Your Face
A disembodied voice is not half as engaging as seeing you in action. So turn on your camera and engage directly with your audience. To maintain their attention, you should ensure you are talking directly into your camera. This will help you to stimulate a more personal connection with your students.
But the considerations don’t stop there. Don’t sit too close to the camera. Don’t sit too far away. Find the comfort zone and stick in it. Check the lighting in your room. Ensure the acoustics are good. It shouldn’t look like you’re broadcasting from a dingy basement or a messy room. If you can remove distractions like these, you’ll help your students to apply their focus in the right way.
Set Ground Rules
Successful online classrooms require a teaching strategy. This means you need a clear structure and structure requires rules. Having clear ground rules sets expectations for your students and encourages them to take your classroom event seriously.
These rules should help to limit unnecessary interruptions and distractions, ensure a safe learning environment and provide equal opportunities for all to participate.
You should discuss online etiquette with your students and make your expectations clear. How should they ask questions? Should they be on ‘mute’ whilst they are listening? Are they allowed to use the ‘Chat’ functionality? If so, what limitations will you place upon it?
We recommend writing up a list of ground rules and running through them at the start of every classroom session.
Follow Microlearning Principles
No matter how good a teacher you are, you can only maintain a student’s attention span for a certain amount of time. Child development experts note that attention spans vary depending on the age of the audience.
For instance, 6-year-olds can pay attention to a subject for 12 to 18 minutes. On the other hand, 12-year-olds can pay attention for 24 to 36 minutes. Consider your audience and bear this in mind when creating your lesson plan.
To help better support your students stay focused, we recommend the following microlearning principles. This requires chunking up your content into small focused bursts that can be consumed quickly. Think about how you can break large topics down into their smaller constituent parts. Then think about how you plan to communicate each element.
Try to vary the medium wherever possible to maintain engagement. Fun online classes require variety. For instance, you might start by introducing the concept, then play a video, then solicit questions before conducting a breakout group session and finishing with a quiz.
Record Your Lessons
Here’s a simple, practical piece of advice: record your online classroom sessions. These recordings are useful for a number of reasons. For example, there will be occasions when one or more of your students are unable to attend. Whilst this is not ideal, they will at least be able to catch up with the session in their own time by viewing the recording.
What’s more, these recordings may prove to be useful resources. When they need to study, your students may dip back into your lessons in order to recap certain topics. You could also watch the recordings to help critique your own technique or approach.
Doing this may also help to uncover things you’ve missed. Perhaps there were students who didn’t get their questions answered. Now you can take the opportunity to respond outside of the class.
Check-in Periodically
You should check in with your students on a regular basis, just as you would in a physical classroom. Take care to ensure your audience understands what’s been covered so far. Ask some challenging questions. Solicit further questions from them.
It’s important to ensure students don’t get left behind in the online learning world. Equally, it’s important to establish what your students should do, if they feel they don’t fully understand any part of your lesson.
Many video conferencing tools offer some type of polling functionality. We recommend using this to determine your audience’s level of knowledge on a particular topic, before moving on to the next item you have to cover.
Monitor The Chat
Many video conferencing tools also offer a social media-esque ‘Chat’ area, where participants can communicate with each other. You should first decide whether this functionality will be used within your online classes. Following that, you should set some clear guidelines on how it should be used.
Ask your students to use proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Make it clear that inflammatory or disrespectful language will not be tolerated. With these rules in mind, check the ‘Chat’ area on a regular basis. It can be a great way to monitor the temperature of the room, solicit questions from your audience and check their knowledge.
Provide Interactive Activities
We learn best when we’re active participants in the learning experience. As such, you should seek to banish passivity by incorporating interactive activities into your online classroom. Examples of these include icebreaker activities, puzzles, presentations, pitches, peer reviews, quizzes, brainstorm sessions, games, and even virtual field trips.
Look for ways to involve students who are less outgoing than others. Review different activity types and make a note of which ones really resonate with your audience.
You will be able to conduct many of these activities directly through your video conferencing tool, regardless of internet connection. For instance, you could task a student with solving a puzzle via the ‘Whiteboard’ functionality. Alternatively, you could use a free third-party tool to capture your learners’ imagination (more on this in Tip 13).
Assignments & Breakout Groups
As a classroom-based teacher or instructor, there’s a good chance that you’ve previously split up a bigger class into smaller, task-oriented groups. This works well because it inspires peer-to-peer participation, encourages mentoring, and drives creativity.
There’s no reason why this approach should be dropped from the online classroom experience. Indeed, most video conferencing tools offer ‘breakout room’ functionality. Zoom, for instance, enables up to fifty separate sessions per meeting.
As the host, you will be able to switch between sessions as you wish to check on progress. Once your students have had a chance to discuss a topic within their groups, they can return to the main classroom session and present their findings. Whilst it can take some configuration, this is a powerful weapon to have within your online teaching arsenal.
Explore Other Free Tools
Whilst your video conferencing tool will help facilitate your online classroom sessions, supercharging engagement levels and making your online classes fun may require additional support. Luckily, there are a variety of tools out there that can aid you in your quest for online learning perfection.
For instance, Animoto empowers your students to create 30-second video clips of what they’ve learned. Alternatively, you could utilize a word cloud tool, a quizzing solution or even learning games to capture your student’s attention.
We particularly recommend implementing some game mechanics within your online classroom. There’s a wealth of research that shows us that gamification is a useful engagement tool. This is particularly true if you’ve taken the time to craft your gamification strategy based on what you know about your students.
For instance, you could use a free online badge-making tool to provide virtual badges to students who ask good questions. Or you could keep a virtual leaderboard based on quiz results. Just make sure this is regularly refreshed to prevent disengagement or demotivation.
Seek Feedback From Your Students
Last, but certainly not least, don’t forget to solicit feedback from your online students on a regular basis. This will help you to ensure you are meeting the needs of your audience and improve your approach.
There’s a good chance that hosting an online classroom is new to you. As such, this feedback is invaluable. It will enable you to address concerns, make subtle changes and build your confidence. You’ll need all the help you can get to make your online classes as fun as possible.
How you gather this feedback is up to you. You could do it at the end of the classroom session, request that it’s put in an email, or send out an anonymous survey. Just make sure that you give due consideration to all comments and demonstrate an open mind when it comes to making changes going forward.
Conclusion
As new technology evolves, the Internet is offering new methods for teachers to educate their students. From videos of lectures to online quizzes, the Internet has given students more interaction with their teacher and their peers. This interactive learning experience can give students more leeway to express themselves. It can also better prepare them for future classes that are taught on line. With the help of the Internet, unique material is being created for unique students.