A few years ago, those who took online classes were considered lazy or busy people. Online classes come with many benefits, especially for those that have other priorities too, such as family or a job. But now, everything has changed. With the global pandemic that started one year ago, everything has changed. Not only the way we eat, go out, and wash our hands but education too.
Many teachers have now found themselves in the situation of teaching via the internet. And this has changed everything. In face-to-face classes, teachers might have an easier time connecting with their students and interacting with them. Moreover, it is easier to capture and maintain their attention, and the whole learning process is more efficient. But as physical distancing becomes the new normal, online learning has become normal too.
We all know that the attention of anyone can easily be lost online, as today’s attention span is only 8 seconds long. This might raise a new challenge for teachers that need to make online learning more engaging and fun. Students can easily switch between tabs or do something completely different and not related to the classes while they are also attending the online meetings. So, how could you, as a teacher, make online learning fun and more engaging?
Here are seven ways that can help you add a little salt and pepper to your online classes and capture the attention of your students.
1. Interactive Lessons
Many teachers find themselves in a moment where drastic changes need to be made to their teaching methods. The level of interaction surely suffers some changes when this shift from traditional to online learning takes place. Interactive lessons are something all students are looking forward to. This way, they can learn new things and improve their knowledge of a subject. Asking your students questions and encouraging them to answer is something all teachers should do.
Simple questions open the door to online interaction between teachers and students. As time passes, more complex questions can be asked. This will also encourage students to consider other points of view and improve their critical thinking skills.
Another trick to make online learning more enjoyable and fun is organizing debates. Presenting hard to believe facts or choosing problems of morality can indeed create some controversy. But usually, controversies capture attention and also create the perfect opportunity for students to engage, participate, and share their opinion.
However, it is essential to know when discussions should be stopped. Now that students are behind a screen, they might feel more courageous. Make sure you stop the activity when they adopt an aggressive speech.
2. Break The Lessons into Small Chunks
As a teacher, you might need to adapt your lessons to the online world. And the most important factor to not forget about is the timing. Consider buffer time as you might experience some delays if students have connectivity problems.
It is also important to break the lessons into small chunks and allow your students to address questions. Some concepts might be not so easy to explain, especially because there is little body language involved. Teachers usually create some slides that help them deliver the information, and it is useful to avoid creating walls of texts. These types of slides usually keep students away and bore them, so they keep you far away from making online learning fun and engaging.
3. Be Encouraging Towards Your Students
One of the reasons many students do not interact with teachers or make their presence known is because they are demotivated. The global pandemic came with many consequences, many of them on the mental health of many people. Not having contact with your friends, family, and colleagues means they are not benefiting from social support. Social support is known to have mood-boosting properties, and also to lower stress levels.
Many students are feeling lonely and this loneliness can be the main reason for their demotivation. As a teacher, you have a great responsibility towards involving all the students in the learning process. Moreover, a teacher should also be motivational and encouraging towards students, and a positive presence. This way, their motivation will increase and they will involve more in the online learning process.
How can you do this as a teacher? Well, you could offer your support to students that are experiencing difficulties. You can also have a time slot dedicated to recaps, to remind them of the most important information they have learned in previous classes. Make sure you know and address them by their names; this is easier now that all video conference platforms show the name of every participant.
4. Become a Storyteller
You may think that storytelling is obsolete. Or that students can find a lot of stories online and read what appeals to them. Yes, while this is true, the goal of teachers is to send information to students and help them gain it. You can teach your students a new skill or share essential information that will help them later in life. But one thing that should always be considered by teachers is that people learn more from examples.
Storytelling helps you deliver the information in a digestible way. At the same time, this is also a great way to make the learning process more fun and engaging, and also more efficient. It also helps you bond with students and gets them closer to you, which will also increase engagement.
5. Introduce Virtual Trips
One of the many things students miss about school is field trips. Those few days or moments when you spend time with your teachers and colleagues in a non-school setting. Field trips help students discover more about each other, but also about the world and nature that surrounds us. Many miss traveling and for some of them, this was the only occasion when they did get out of the town.
While group trips are still not allowed, other options might meet the needs of students. There are virtual trips which are videos with tours of museums, cities, and even mountain peaks. You can save some time for this and help your students relax, but also bring more fun to online classes.
6. Gamification
Gamification is not a new concept, but it begins to be introduced in the learning process. It is a nice way to engage students during online learning while making it fun. Depending on the subject you teach them about, you can organize small contests. And, to make things even more entertaining, promise some rewards (a bonus point to their final grade, for example).
For example, you can organize vocabulary contests, storytelling, memory games, and many more. The options are diverse, you only need to unleash your creativity.
7. Set Goals and Measure Progress
One of the things that help students stay on track is setting goals and measuring progress. As a teacher, you surely have experience with these activities as you need to build your yearly curricula. Sharing a bit of your experience can help students be more engaged. But you can make this process fun too.
There are two types of goals: short-term and long-term. You can work with your students on the short-term ones by encouraging them to note down two things they have learned during the online classes. If they do this at the end of each lesson, it will be easier to measure their progress themselves. Depending on the age of your students, it is wise to adapt the delivery method. For example, if you teach kids, you can ask them to draw their tree of knowledge. Or maybe, a shelf for trophies. And at the end of the lesson, they can draw something they have learned.
When it comes to adults, noting down a few things they have learned might be among the best solutions. But when talking about long-term goals, things might get a little bit more difficult. The most efficient way to set long-term goals is by setting SMART goals. These should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bounded to help them channel their resources and measure their progress.
Conclusion
The world is constantly changing and so do the things that encompass it. Education is one of the things that changed drastically over the last years, with its most abrupt change during the last year. A global pandemic changed the way we live and learn maybe forever.
People are trying to find ways to cope with the new reality and also adapt to it. Teachers are among the people that need to make, maybe the most important changes to their jobs. Now that face-to-face learning is only a matter of the past, online lessons come with new challenges. To make online learning fun and engaging, teachers could aim to make them interactive by introducing gamification and organizing contests. Become a storyteller, share your experience, and aim to be a positive presence that motivates the students. Break your lessons into chunks and introduce virtual trips as means of bonding with the entire classroom.