Many of us who teach online have been there: all of a sudden, a student stops turning in assignments and then disappears from the course altogether. Or maybe another student posts to discussion boards enthusiastically at first, but their responses slowly trickle into sporadic, barely-there participation. 

While we can’t control for disruptive events in students’ lives that might impact their engagement in our classes, we can look at how we intentionally incorporate best practices around engaging students in online learning environments. 

What does student engagement even look like?

In a study for Online Learning, Marcia Dixson gives us a snapshot of student engagement in an online class: 

Engagement involves students using time and energy to learn materials and skills, demonstrating that learning, interacting in a meaningful way with others in the class (enough so that those people become “real”), and becoming at least somewhat emotionally involved with their learning (i.e., getting excited about an idea, enjoying the learning and/or interaction). Engagement is composed of individual attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors as well as communication with others. Student engagement is about students putting time, energy, thought, effort, and, to some extent, feelings into their learning. 

Dixson’s description lines up with the online engagement framework’s five key elements for student engagement: social, emotional, collaborative, cognitive, and behavioral (Redmond, Heffernan, Abawi, Brown, and Henderson 2018). Each of these play a role in designing effective online learning environments for students. 

What are the best ways to increase online student engagement?

Student engagement often involves several types of interactions: student-instructor, student-student, and student-content. Use the tips below to increase your students’ opportunities to interact, collaborate, and participate in your courses. 

1. Set clear expectations and goals.

As instructors, we are great at setting expectations through syllabi and assignment guides. When we move into online learning spaces, it is important to guide students through not only the course expectations but also the course structure. How did you set up the class in Canvas - by modules? by weeks? Where can students find materials, assignments, and communication tools? How much time should they expect to spend each week on this class? Consider including an introduction module with video tours of your Canvas course.

Remember to review learning outcomes and how they’re connected to activities, assessments, and - when possible - contexts that students will encounter beyond the classroom. What will students be able to do after they take this course? Students are more likely to engage with material when they understand the impact of what they’re studying.

2. Use a variety of tools and methods.

Deliver content in bite-sized pieces through different formats: videos, voice-over slides, audio, text, images, etc. Chunking your content in 10-minute segments allows learners to take the content in and process it, making connections between current content and previous work or other contexts. 

3. Build a sense of community. 

Use your discussion boards strategically. Harmonize is great for enhancing online discussions because it mirrors popular social media platforms. It provides an easy way for students to respond to posts using images, video, audio, and surveys.

This tool also allows instructors to review students’ participation and flags high and medium-risk students to follow up on. 

You might also consider providing feedback to the class on major assignments or discussion posts that seem to have gotten more traction than usual via a video response announcement. Audio comments on assignments also allow students to hear tone better than written comments (just make sure you’ve considered any accessibility issues for the individual students in your class here). 

4. Incorporate gamification and fun.

The term “gamification” in online learning began picking up traction around a decade ago, but instructors have been incorporating elements of game theory into their classes for much longer. Karl Kapp’s definition - “Gamification is the cover to add the interactivity, engagement and immersion that leads to good learning" - provides a great starting point for thinking about how to incorporate game elements that complement course content. These elements can look like a blend of any of the following: competition and collaboration, a driving narrative, challenges to accomplish, choices along the way, ongoing feedback, and rewards. Visually, they often align with popular game constructs (video games, comic books, D&D campaigns - you get the point), but they don’t have to. 

5. Empower student choice and voice.

One of the checkpoints for making course content accessible to all students through frameworks like Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is optimizing individual choice and autonomy. According to CAST, the organization that created UDL, one way to do this is to:

Provide learners with as much discretion and autonomy as possible by providing choices in such things as:

• The level of perceived challenge
• The type of rewards or recognition available
• The context or content used for practicing and assessing skills
• The tools used for information gathering or production
• The color, design, or graphics of layouts, etc.
• The sequence or timing for completion of subcomponents of tasks

All of this is contextual, of course. It has to work for your class, your goals, and your students.

6. Monitor and adjust your strategies.

Just as you would provide regular feedback to students, consider collecting feedback from your students about what’s working for them and what’s not. This could be something more formal, like an anonymous mid-semester survey, or it could be something as simple as having students include a writer’s memo or a reflection about the content that they’re learning and/or how they’re doing in the class so far. Use this feedback to adjust your approach as necessary.

How can I make sure my courses are engaging?

If you’re interested, you can request that one of the COLRS staff members review your course using the UIS Quality Assurance Rubric. UIS subscribes to Quality Matters (QM), We love the chance to work with you on your courses - from troubleshooting day-to-day issues to thinking through instructional design strategies. 

Increase Student Engagement with COLRS

This is the first in a series of teaching tips connected to online student engagement. Keep an eye out for more teaching tips and related workshops from COLRS this academic year.