Keeping Students Engaged and Productive in Online Programs
Watch this short video for an overview of six suggestions for how instructors can keep students connected and engaged as online learners.
Keep it simple and engaging
Make your (virtual) space clean and comfy
Set norms
Foster belonging
Be present
Plan for interactivity
Online Instructional Tools
Polls Keep students engaged by frequently stimulating their attention. Polls are a simple way for instructors to break up their lesson and regain students’ focus during the class session. Instructors can push out a poll for students to answer and then review live results immediately, giving students a way to participate in class and providing instructors with insight into student comprehension. Many videoconferencing platforms, like Zoom, have a built-in polling app; however, there are also free and easy stand-alone polls such as Poll Everywhere, PollDaddy, Flisti, and Micropoll.
Chat Use chat tools to regularly check for understanding, develop literacy skills, and strengthen student connections. Students can ask classmates for help, share notes, discuss poll results, and more. Instructors and admins can also use the chat to share supplemental course material and make general announcements. Encourage students to make comments or ask questions in the chatbox; this is especially helpful for shy students who are uncomfortable speaking. Look to see if your chat tool has a GIF option and use GIFs and emojis to liven up the conversations.
Quiz or Review tools The following websites allows teachers to create multiple choice/quiz games for students. Many also have games that are already created that can be used by teachers. It may be best if students have a secondary device, but they can split the screen and participate that way as well. Kahoot, Quizziz, Socrative, Quizalize, Quizlet, Gimkit
Interactive Presentations Use nearpod to create interactive presentations that allow students to directly participate in the class through quizzes, games, etc. There is a teacher and student view, so the students log on to their own view of the presentation which can be confusing for students if not well detailed.
Interactive Bulletin Boards Students and teachers work collaboratively to create boards on Padlet. The sticky notes students create can contain links, videos, documents, and pictures. This would be a great way for students to collaborate on a project, a museum display, brainstorm for KWL, etc. Check out these recommendations for creative ways to using padlet in a virtual classroom. Another virtual collaboration tool teachers use is Nearpod Collaborate.
Interactive Videos
edpuzzle allows you to choose a video, give it your magic touch and track your students' comprehension.
Flipgrid is another video tool where instructors can share discussion topics and share it with students who record and share short videos in response.
GooseChaseEDU allows you to create virtual scavenger hunts for learners. They submit photos as evidence. Could be used for vocabulary, foreign language, real-life situations, just for fun, etc! Check out a similar resource Zoom Scavenger Hunt.
Interactive Timelines: Use Sutori to create an outline for learners to move through, or students can create outlines themselves. You can aggregate multiple resources to put on the timeline. This can be used for anything you would teach in a progression.
Museum Distance Learning The American Alliance of Museums' EdCom created a Repository of Distance Learning Programs and Resources for students. As of October 1, 2020, there are more than 1,000 resources or experiences listed in this repository, representing sites across the United States and in Canada, Argentina and Mexico, including eight languages and American Sign Language. Lessons focus on a wide array of topics, including history, STEM, literacy, art, and civics. Sort by age range, resource/program type and content areas to find appropriate programs and resources. (souce: afterschool alliance)
Learning Management Systems Mizzen by Mott is a free and innovative tool designed to help afterschool program serving grades K-12 plan and deliver engaging courses, lessons and activities.
Instructional Strategies for Online Programs
The following strategies have been pulled from Emelina Minero's "8 Strategies to Improve Participation in Your Virtual Classroom." These instructional strategies have proven to be effective when translated from in-person to online classrooms.
Discussion mapping: Before class starts, students answer questions independently. When class starts, students share their responses as a jumping-off point for a broader class discussion. While students converse on video, instructors listen closely and draw lines on a sheet of paper tracking the flow of the conversation, resulting in a spider web. At the end of the discussion, instructors shared the drawing over video, and ask students to reflect on the experience and what they learned about who talked, who listened, and who built on the ideas of others.
Flip your classroom: Students watch recorded videos and participate in online activities before the live class. At the start of live class, students briefly summarize the concepts they had learned and then are divided into breakout rooms to work on related tasks in small groups.
Think-Pair-Share: Students are given a prompt, broken into groups, and then placed into breakout rooms to discuss and record their answers on a shared Google doc, which allows students to share their thinking in writing or read aloud. Since instructors aren't in each breakout room to listen to the conversations, the Google doc keeps students accountable. Once students return to the whole class, volunteers from each group share their answers with everyone.
Show-and-Tell: Students find a photo, painting, or drawing that represents a concept and independently respond by writing to the following questions from the Making Thinking Visible Framework before discussing them over video as a class: What are we looking at? What makes you say that? What do you notice (see, feel, know)? What more can we uncover? What do you wonder?
Virtual Gallery Walks: Each student provides a short presentation and is also required to give feedback to at least two other students on their presentations. Using a tool like Google Sheets, students provide feedback to their peers by answering the following prompts: What’s something new I learned about this topic?; What’s something that surprised me about this topic?; What’s something I liked about this presentation?
Station Brainstorming: Divide students into groups and create shared Google docs—or a series of Google slides—for the prompts/questions. Each group writes their thoughts under the questions and follows up by commenting on the other groups’ responses.
Professional Development Webinars and Youtube Videos for Teachers The Outschool Youtube playlist contains links to past webinars that teachers can use to learn about different aspects of Outschool and get tips to improve the teaching methods online. This public Facebook group from Outschool provides a community for new virtual educators to get support and help from experienced virtual educators.
References This list of resources and related language is sourced from a review of the following websites.
Afterschool Alliance, Virtual Programming: https://afterschoolalliance.org/covid/curriculum.cfm (retrieved December 23, 2020)
Outschool, Online Tools for Teaching: https://support.outschool.com/en/articles/2620590-online-tools-for-teaching (retrieved December 23, 2020)
Minero, Emelina. 8 Strategies to Improve Participation in Your Virtual Classroom. edutopia: https://www.edutopia.org/article/8-strategies-improve-participation-your-virtual-classroom (retrieved December 23, 2020)