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ARTICLE 12

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Keeping students motivated during online learning

Teaching online is rather different than teaching in person. Students are sitting in from of computer screens; the wi-fi connection sometimes is unstable; creating the presentations to be clearly seen through the screen sometimes is tricky; also, it is more challenging for the teachers to interact with their students and observe them. These are only some of the obstacles the teachers and the students need to overcome during online learning.

But there are many possible ways to help the teachers to engage the students to actively participate in online learning. Let’s talk about some of them.

  1. Making online classroom more interactive.

The simplest way to make your online classes more interactive is to ask the questions. As the learning sessions are rather long and it is hard for students to stay concentrated on the information showed up on the screen for ex. 2 hours, the teacher could maintain their engagement by asking content related questions. Event the idea that the students could be asked some questions during the lesson could keep them a little bit more concentrated and engaged throughout the lesson. Also, the students could be encouraged to ask the questions during the lesson – this will not only keep them engaged, but also help them understand the topic better.

  1. Adding quizzes, competitions to online lessons.

Including some interactive quizzes into online lessons spontaneously could help motivating students a lot. The quizzes also help to test the students’ knowledge from previous lessons. It is really good motivation method especially for the less engaged students who could come unprepared for the lesson. The short quiz at the beginning of the lesson could help them to get a short summary of the topic and be more focused during the remaining lesson. Organizing the quiz as a competition (by rewarding students with some prizes or bonus points) could make the online lesson more engaging for the students – they could have some fun by competing and the hardest working students could get the rewards.

  1. Encouraging students’ collaboration.

One of the possible ways to ensure students’ engagement is by making them work together on some task or project. Collaboration is an essential skill for all students and could be developed through group discussions, team building activities or group assignments. In regular classroom it is easy to divide the students into the groups and make them work on some tasks. It is also possible to ensure the same group work in online environment by using some digital tools – ex. splitting the students into different online rooms by using online conferencing programs’ features and giving them access to the online space for working together (ex. by using Google Jamboard or some other tool). After the students complete their group task, the teacher could bring all them together for discussions and feedback on the tasks done.

  1. Hearing students’ opinions

One of the possible ways to increase students’ motivation is letting them provide their feedback and take it into account. In such way you will involve the students into the teaching and learning process and let them take an active part in it. The students could express their opinion about the course, also if they could change something in it and teacher could adapt the course accordingly to better suit the students’ expectations.

When the students will know that they will be asked to express their feedback from time to time and that their opinion will be considered, they will be more engaged into the learning and stay more focused in order to check if their suggestions have been implemented. The feedback questionnaire could be sent to the students in the middle of the training course for collecting their feedback and finding out if the learning process meets the needs of the class or if some teaching patterns need to be changed.