Small tips for increasing engagement and interaction
This list will give you practical, easy-to-use solutions, for making your online teaching more attractive:
- Begin the lesson with something that engages everyone: a problem to be solved, a question that helps you understand what students are thinking.
2. When presenting theory, ask questions from time to time. They can be answered in the chat. Sometimes you can ask all students to submit an answer - you invite them to write their answer in chat, not press ENTER until you tell them to, and at your signal everyone sends their answers in the chat.
3. If you use a visual presentation, you can prepare breaks after major theory points. Underline the most important info. Or give students a multiple-choice question (maybe to answer it in an app that also records their answers and rewards them points?).
4. When presenting visual information (slides, maps, graphs etc), ask them to make sense of the information before you explain them. It will support their understanding. Also, you can use closed questions - when you show a graph you can, for example, ask “What is the direction of the data: increasing? Decreasing?”. Remember, though, that the most important questions are the investigative ones: “If you would want to solve the mystery, what would be the first question you would ask?”
5. To enable participation of the students that are more introverted or need more time to formulate answers, use some time for reflection - give them a question, put on some music, and invite them to write their answers down. When the music stops, they will be ready to articulate a response and share it with their colleagues and with you.
6. You can also try surprising questions like "What is the probability that two people in this room have the same birthday?". As Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning states, “generally, questions are more evocative if you are not looking for one right answer. The most fruitful questions are thought-provoking and, often, counterintuitive”.
7. Link answers to previous students’ answers: “This is a good point. Can you relate to what Maria said earlier?” Also, you should be prepared to remind them what the other student said, but once they get used to this type of discussion they will be more attentive.
8. Use short lively activities to energise and refresh the participants - do not be afraid of physical movement - anything it takes to keep students… awake.