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Online Student Engagement
The document discusses best practices for engaging students in online education, highlighting the importance of instructor presence and student connections. It offers both asynchronous and synchronous strategies, such as utilizing pre-recorded media, social media, and live webinars. Additionally, it emphasizes innovative learning activities and tools available for effective online delivery.
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Online Student Engagement
- 1. Good practice inonline delivery http://people.unisa.edu.au/Kerry.Johnson KerryJ, Online Education Designer
- 2. How do youengage students online?
- 3. The problem (Lewis andAbdulHamid, 2006; Ortiz-Rodriguez, et al., 2005; Russo and Campbell, 2004; Song and Singleton, Dixson, M. D. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Vol. 10, No. 2, June 2010. www.iupui.edu/~josotl 8 2004)
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- 5. What NOT todo about engagement
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- 7. What can youdo about Instructor Presence? Asynchronous • Pre-recorded media • Photos of yourself • News updates • Social media connections • Forum summaries • Micro blog tools Synchronous • Webinars • Live text chat
- 8. What about studentconnections? Asynchronous • Pre-recorded media • Photos and bios • Forums, Wikis, ePortfolio comments • Social media groups Synchronous • Webinars • Live text chat • Skype • Google video hangouts
- 9. What about learningactivities? Activities • Project-based learning • Inquiry-based teams • Debates • Co-construction of learning artefacts • Audio and video learning tasks Tools available • Office 365 free to all • Google Tools suite • Wiki, Glossary • Webinar tools • FOSS such as Audacity, GIMP
- 10. A program viewof communications and assessments VC= Adobe Connect Virtual Classroom TC = Moodle Live Text Chat
- 11. Vital to remember •New environment = new opportunities • Mix it up along the continuum • Engage students with each other • Your presence matters
- 12. Good practice inonline delivery http://people.unisa.edu.au/Kerry.Johnson KerryJ, Online Education Designer
Editor's Notes
- #2 I’m KerryJ, an Online Education Designer with the Teaching Innovation Unit at the University of South Australia. This is a very brief overview of some ways to engage students online. Keep in mind that the pedagogies and thus the tools for student engagement will vary from course to course. There is never a one size fits all answer – but it is important to look at courses in the context of a Degree Program in order to ensure students are overwhelmed and that the use of technologies is scaffolded at a program level.
- #3 Is it all about great content? Making learning “fun”? Pretty, shiny tech? All of these can contribute, but not to the root problem.
- #4 According to research, a feeling of social isolation is the root problem with students not engaging online. https://www.iupui.edu/~josotl/archive/vol_10/no_2/v10n2dixson.pdf
- #5 The solution is to engage students not just with content, but with each other – and for them to feel a sense of your presence.
- #6 In face to face, on-campus tutorials – discussions are a big part of helping students to co-create learning and engage. So what typically happens to translate online? Forums. Lots of forums. Week after week, topic after topic. Online students do so much reading and writing anyway – that their enthusiasm for having MORE reading and writing to do quickly winds down and they cut corners, doing only the work that is going to be assessed. Even worse – some tutors and instructors don’t engage with the forums either. And if ALL your courses in a study period have weekly – or topic by topic forums – would you engage that readily? That’s a lot of reading and writing.
- #7 The solution is a combination of making your presence felt, of engaging students with each other AND having multiple communications channels. Engage them in smaller sub-groups rather than expecting they co-mingle with everyone.
- #8 What can you do about your presence? Here are a few ideas. What’s important here though is to ensure you use both Asynchronous AND Synchronous tools. We’ve got a range to choose from that are fully supported.
- #9 When it comes to connecting students, again – there needs to be a mix of synchronous and asynchronous approaches – here are some suggestions for both.
- #10 And online learning activities such as PBL and IBL are supported with a great range of UniSA and third party tools.
- #11 In this simplified example of a full time course load, you can see that each course is holding 1 Virtual Classroom – the blue VC – and one Moodle Text Chat- the red TC - each over a 5 week period, but students get the chance for live engagement in their courses twice a week. When talking to students, they suggested that you take a poll of when would be best – as those students with kids and jobs often don’t sit down to study until 7 or 8pm at night. Because LC and TC can be run from anywhere – you could run sessions from home if your internet connection were robust enough for Live Classroom. You could at least run live chat sessions.
- #12 What’s vital to remember is this brave new environment online has a fantastic new range of tools and approaches for you to use. Mix it up along the continuum from Instructor led to Instructor guided group work to Student led activities – remembering to engage students with each other as co-creators of knowledge. And finally -
- #13 Any OED you engage with is most useful at the planning stages of your course – and preferably at least 3 months out from the start.