Promoting Interaction and Engagement in Synchronous Classes: Four Examples

Description Planning synchronous classes, such as Zoom sessions, can be challenging, especially for instructors who are accustomed to on-campus instructional interaction with their students. To facilitate planning synchronous sessions, we developed four example “lesson plans” that illustrate strategies to promote interaction and engagement. The examples draw on McAlpine’s (2004) four-part model for designing instruction: engagement, …

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Peer review badge Using Zoom Polling Feature to Increase Student Engagement and Learning

Description Quizzes are a well-established method for testing student understanding, in both forms of summative and formative assessments. To ensure that the quizzes are impactful for students, intentionality is required (Ebner & Efron, 2012). Instructors must consider that the timing, modality, and approach all influence its effectiveness. When using quizzes in alignment with learning objectives, …

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Peer review badge Create Intentional Communities through Meaningful Student Introductions

Description Student introductions are a high-impact practice: they build community within the course, set the stage for more substantive forms of student-student and student-instructor engagement, and can reveal unknown issues or strengths on the part of students (Dolan, Kain, Reilly, & Bansal, 2017). Building community in online classes (Nelson & Goodson, 2018) through introductions helps …

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Using Video Discussion Boards to Increase Student Engagement

Description Discussion boards in online courses are widely known to encourage higher-order thinking and reflection. However, text-based discussions may not be the best choice for all students or all learning outcomes. Student-created video is used increasingly in the form of video discussion boards. For example, instructors may have heard of Flipgrid, a popular video discussion …

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Incorporate Online Debates to Stimulate Critical Thinking and Engagement

Description Online debates have been found to elicit higher levels of cognitive presence in online discussions versus the more traditional question-and-answer format (Zydney, deNoyelles, & Chen, 2014). This can be explained in several ways. In a debate, students must argue for or against a position, with the intention of persuading others to assume the same …

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Preparing Students to Facilitate a Webinar

Description Today’s technological environment requires practical skills in online competencies; one of these skills is webinar facilitation. Facilitation is a useful skill to support group in meeting an objective, making a decision, or collaborating more effectively. Facilitation is also the teaching strategy that can be selected for assignments in order to: (1) model for students …

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Use Role Play to Increase Student Engagement in Online Discussions

Description As faculty, we are always trying to both stimulate student engagement and assess learning. One method for increasing student engagement that has been gaining in popularity is engaging students in role play activities. These activities can vary in scale from large, multi-day events (such as Reacting to the Past) to smaller activities contained within …

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Assign Collaborative Experiential Learning while Partnering with Clients

Description While there is sometimes resistance to group collaborations in online learning (Smith et al., 2011), adding a collaborative experiential learning component can more deeply engage students AND provide them the opportunity to develop an array of competencies including “coordinating across time zones and geographic locations, developing computer skills, enhancing internet search skills, and interacting …

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Increase Participation and Engagement in Student Introduction Posts through Narrative

Description It can be difficult for students to connect with each other and with instructors in web-based courses. A number of strategies, design-decisions, and activities can be used to alleviate this issue (Vonderwell, 2003). One commonly used activity is the introduction post – the digital correlate of the in-class introduction. The instructor creates a discussion …

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Set Up an Online Conference for Student Orientation

Description One of the primary concerns of online learning reported by students is feelings of isolation (Abrami & Bures, 1996). Instructional media such as online conferencing could help students feel connected and decrease the sense of isolation (Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer, 2001). Typical Web conferencing tools allow instructors to communicate with students via text, …

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