Engaging students in the classroom, when teaching was face-to-face, was hard enough, but now teachers have to find a way to engage students in remote online learning. The current situation caught off guard both students and teachers. It’s a turbulent period of experimentation and frustration, which is why feeling lost or overwhelmed is more than understandable.
However, schools are closed indefinitely, which means adaptation is crucial. The silver lining in all of this is that we already have a lot of data from online courses and universities that can help you engage students in remote online learning. What’s more, technology is so advanced today, that you’ll be surprised how many opportunities it provides for learning in ways that may be more appealing to younger generations.
It seems like the problem is not a lack of possibilities, but too many of them. The questions that most teachers have in their minds are: “But, where do I start?” “Do I have to spend hours learning how to use these programs?” “Are they effective?” “How will my students perceive them?” “How can I engage students in remote online learning?”…
If you have doubts about some of these issues, keep reading! In this article, we’ll break down the most effective strategies for engaging students in remote online learning, share a lot of virtual teaching resources, and discuss tips that will make your job a lot easier!
Adopt Lesson Plans for Remote Online Learning
The first aspect of online learning is how you present the lesson, the information you choose to be part of the presentation, and the children’s role in all that.
Post a Schedule and Reading Materials in Advance
Once you have your schedule for the next month, make it public, and let students see the topics and reading materials necessary, so they can prepare. This is something that happens spontaneously in face-to-face teaching. However, remote online learning is different. It’s a good idea to even assign specific paragraphs or chapters for the classes a few days to a week in advance. This way, students will be familiar with the topic, they can ask if something was unclear, and follow your teaching more easily.
Hold Students Accountable
Posting a schedule and preparatory reading materials (also, additional reading materials for those who want or need them) before the class begins is a good idea because it also allows you to hold students accountable. How to do this? Simple, ask them to send you two questions from the reading materials before the lesson takes place. It’s an amazing technique that has many benefits. First, you’ll be sure that the students have read the preparatory materials. Second, you’ll get valuable feedback from students and see how they perceived the topic. Finally, you can use that feedback to adjust your lecture and focus more on the things that students found unclear or confusing. It will save both you and your students a lot of time and will make the lesson a lot more effective.
Make the Lectures Short and Clear
Each of these pieces of advice builds on the one before. Making the lecture short and clear is only beneficial if you have good knowledge of your student’s skills and progress, which you’re going to get if you hold them accountable and analyze the feedback. When you’re in a classroom, face-to-face, this is much easier because you can see all of them and follow their non-verbal behavior. However, engaging students in remote online learning is different because you can’t really pay attention to how much they’re engaged in the class. This is why our recommendation is to make the lectures short and clear, leaving time for discussion and questions where you can elaborate on some details.
Take Advantage of Everything That the System Offers
Knowing how the application where you hold your classes works is imperative. This is something that can make or break your lesson. Video communication applications, like Zoom, have special options for hosts. A very basic example would be the host’s ability to mute or unmute students. You can’t expect all of the students to know their way around the app, which means that sometimes someone will leave their mic on and you’ll all hear distracting background noise. However, if you know and use your permissions as a host, you can easily manage your virtual classroom. You can call-out students, mute, unmute, make polls, permit students to draw or write on your presentation, make breakout rooms, and so much more!
Use Educational Games and Programs
In the physical classroom, you can easily hand-out printables and work individually, in groups, or all together. In an online class, this is very messy and will cost you a lot of time. To use your time in a smart way, and engage students in the topic, you can prepare games, quizzes, and other exercises in advance, then simply share a link in your chat. Not only will everyone enjoy them, but you can compete for knowledge in a fun way. Google Arts&Culture, for example, allows you to visit museums together, which is extremely beneficial for some classes. Basically, there are so many options and possibilities, that we decided to share some of the most popular educational apps for engaging students in remote online learning in a separate section of this article. Keep reading to find out what the internet has to offer!
Use Different Tools for Different Things
Let’s talk about virtual teaching resources for a couple of minutes more. While they’re amazing for some classes, they can be incredibly wrong for others. We encourage you to try them all, find what works for you, but please, don’t use one type of application for all the subjects. Kahoot is great for biology, geography, history, science, and many other subjects, but it’s not so good for arts and sports. Google Arts&Culture, on the other hand, is amazing for art, sports, and history, but bad for math. Take the content in mind when choosing an application for the class.
Encourage Students Presentations and Group Work
If you thought that working in groups is an office activity, think again. Many video communication applications have an option for breakout rooms. This is a feature that allows you to create as many virtual rooms as you like and send as many students as you like in those rooms. You, as a host, can then visit the rooms and check up on the progress of the group.
Another thing is letting the students present and summarize the topic at hand. This is an amazing way to get them involved and make sure they actually pay attention or read the preparatory materials. There are three ways to do this:
- Introductory presentation – In the first 5-10 minutes of the class, one or two students present the topic for that day. They use preparatory materials to create a presentation.
- Topic presentation – You can assign one or two students a specific topic, and ask them to present it during the lecture after you have introduced and explained part of the lecture.
- Summary presentation – You ask one or two students at the end of the class to summarize everything that you’ve talked about in that lecture.
Give Clear Instructions for Offline Activities
To avoid misunderstandings, make sure you publish a presentation about the rules, homework, and everything else that’s expected from the students. Pin it somewhere where your students can’t miss it and they can open it at any time. This will also prevent them from using excuses like, “but I didn’t hear”, or “I wasn’t aware this is how we were supposed to do it”. It will also serve as a clear guide for parents, so they’re aware of the student’s responsibilities.
Design a Reward System
There’s no better motivation than a reward, especially for children or teenagers. You can use reward systems in so many ways that engaging students in remote online learning is going to look like a piece of cake. Just one simple example would be using the Kahoot app. In the app, students answer questions, and at the end, three people who answered the most questions, correctly and fast, are on the podium. You can give these students points, so when the exam comes, students with the most Kahoot points receive some benefits.
Communication Tips for Engaging Students in Remote Online Learning
There are many ways in which you can optimize your lesson plan, or create opportunities for students to take part, but at the end of the day, effective communication is key for a successful online year! Here are some ways in which you can improve your communication with both parents and students.
Establish an Open and Frequent Communication With Parents
Make sure parents have access to the server where you post assignments and give reading materials. Children spend all of their time at home, which means parents must take on some responsibilities used to belong to the teachers. This is not easy to organize, as parents have no idea what’s their role in these circumstances. We recommend that you create and manage a social group with all the parents, where you’ll post updates, exam schedules, class requirements, and anything else you think is useful. On the official server, parents should be able to see the reading materials, homework assignments, and other assignments’ due dates.
Maintain an Informal and Friendly Atmosphere
Being formal in a physical classroom is one thing, but being very formal and serious on a video platform can really take a toll on the student’s motivation for listening to you for a whole hour. We’re sorry if this sounds harsh, but it’s the truth, and we can’t really blame them. So, what can you do? Be natural and friendly. Let the communication be easy-going. Show your favorite coffee mug, your pets, share something else from your life, or ask students about their day and their struggles during this time. After all, you’re all in this together.
Start a Community
Social life is one of the most important aspects of schools, especially for teenagers. Having all the classes just as usual, but none of the regular communication with their classmates and peers is devastating for their mental health and motivation for learning. This is why we encourage you to be creative. Opening a discord community is an amazing way to engage with students on a deeper level and let them build relationships. Discord is a digital distribution platform designed for creating a community. You can all open channels, private or public, on absolutely anything. You can have official channels for each subject, where students can send questions, or ask for advice that either you or the other students can answer. You can also have social channels, where students can send photos of their pets, their favorite music, their day-to-day activities outside school, and so on.
Collaborate With Others
Getting someone important but relevant for your class to come to your school was next to impossible, but the situation with remote online learning opened so many opportunities for networking and getting in touch with people that were otherwise unreachable. What we mean is, sending an email and asking someone to spend just 30 to 40 minutes of their day to speak about a topic on which they’ve dedicated their career is not much, but for students can be an incredible inspiration.
Useful Teaching Resources for Online Learning
Whether you’re a fan of fancy new educational apps or not, it’s time to embrace them and give them a shot! Although it’s hard to sort out the workhorses from the wimps, here are some widely popular apps among teachers.
- Kahoot – game-based learning platform.
- Quizlet – create flashcards, games, and other learning tools.
- EdPuzzle – interactive beautiful video creation.
- Google Arts&Culture – content from over 2000 leading museums and archives.
- National Geographic Educational Resources – maps and reference resources.
- Discord – instant messaging and digital platform for creating communities.
- Google Classroom – free web service for creating, distributing, and grading assignments.
- KidsKonnect – worksheets, lesson plans, curriculums.
Before You Go
Just like we said in the beginning, engaging students in the learning process is hard in normal circumstances, let alone during a pandemic outbreak. Don’t be too hard on yourself, and accept that there will be an adjusting period before you find the things that work best for you and your students. Everyone is different, and there’s always room for improvement. Our list is a helpful guide, but you don’t have to do it all at once! Most experts advise for a slower pace and a lot of flexibility.
Hopefully, this article will help you overcome your doubts. Our team at KidsKonnect supports all teachers and homeschool parents during these hard times. We regularly expand and keep our worksheet database up to date, while on our blog you can find many other guides and pieces of advice.
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