25 ways to engage and motivate your students
Stephanie Payzant, Post Unversity
Building community in an online course can take a one-dimensional course, where students interact with each other based only on requirements, to an engaging multidimensional experience. Students interact with each other to share a vast variety of ideas, opinions, and life lessons using the content. They utilize other students, and the instructor as a springboard to make the course come alive! Here are some ideas that can help you reach that goal.- Send a welcome email before the course starts introducing yourself and reminding students of resources they will need such as software and signing up for a library barcode; include the syllabus so they can start to orient themselves to the course. This serves as a reminder that they signed up for the course as well.
- Get advisors involved if any student emails bounce back or if students identify an issue that you need help with.
- Set up your instructor email on your phone to alert you with a special sound or vibration.
- Set up a Gmail account for instant messaging via Google Hangouts with students so you can address any critical problems quickly.
- Create (if necessary) and subscribe to an ungraded forum, “Ask the Instructor”, where students can post questions for everyone to benefit from the instructor’s answers.
- Track student access and introduction details in a spreadsheet so you know who is having trouble getting started. This will help you to focus feedback based on their program or personal situation throughout the course.
- Set up an introduction forum and include your own introduction answering the same questions as the students. Consider encouraging everyone to post either a picture or a video in their introduction post.
- Respond to every introduction with a welcome and a short comment, remarking on any students that have something in common.
- If the Introduction forum is graded, give them those points as soon as possible so they see 100% for that first grade.
- Send out an email midweek to those yet to log in or yet to complete any work to offer your help to get them started.
- Add a Twitter widget in an Announcement sharing your Twitter feed or the course Twitter hash tag. Make sure to post regularly to it sharing comments and resources related to the course.
- Using the Video Everywhere tool in the Blackboard text editor, include a video of yourself explaining a difficult concept.
- Record a screen recording demonstrating a difficult task using a screen capture tool such as Jing or Screen-Cast-O-Matic.
- Share current and engaging resources in an announcement to augment the unit resources, possibly asking them to comment on it later in the weekly discussion.
- Explain how to subscribe to their own thread so they are notified when someone replies to it.
- Remind students on Saturdays to make sure to check on their threads and respond to any questions posted.
- Ask questions, share experiences and resources, and note what others said in other threads in your discussion interaction with students.
- Bring the discussion back up to the forefront by creating a new thread summarizing the main ideas and asking questions. This will help to focus student interaction with each other on those key points.
- Privately prompt a student that is struggling in a discussion to post about a specific point that has yet to be covered; sometimes students pay closer attention to their peer’s posts than yours!
- If something is particularly challenging to students, consider asking them to find additional resources and share them with the class either via a discussion or Twitter (and they will show up in the feed).
- Set up study teams of two-three students in small groups to talk about any problems they are having with assignments and allow for informal peer reviews.
- Grade as soon as possible so students know you are interested in seeing what they submitted, providing targeted feedback using the student’s name in the text and ending with yours.
- Setting a daily routine to work in your course can keep you on track with your grading and student interactions.
- Check in on students who are struggling or falling behind. If needed, ask their advisor to check on them as well.
- Check in with all students mid-course and have them share their challenges and successes via a discussion or Twitter.