Tips to Create Engaging Online Courses

In the digital world, we are living in, leaving behind the conventional methods of working, technology is being used everywhere. The same goes for our education system. Online education is spreading at a faster rate. With the better flexibility, convenience and comfort offered,  educators create online courses by using platform to sell courses online for students of all age groups. 

For effective teaching and learning here as well, having student participation in the online classes is very important. With active speakers, many students are not very interactive in the classes. To have a hundred percent class participation, following the right teaching strategies is important. Let us discuss some tips that educators can follow to make their online courses more participatory. 

Tips for teachers to make online courses more participatory

1. Use technology to teach 

The printed textbook content is not very understandable to students. Also listening to the teachers, and reading out the textbook material becomes boring and less engaging too. Therefore to make your online course more participatory, don’t limit your teaching to the textbooks. Switching to technology is beneficial.

 By using online teaching apps and sites, teachers can access several audio-visual tools like educational videos, modules, demonstrations, picture cards, PowerPoint presentations, visual notes, graphs, and more. With the help of visualization, students tend to understand the concepts better and quicker. Classes become more interesting and engaging for students. 

2. Conduct interesting class activities 

The teacher-centered approach of teaching that is starting a class, explaining the topics, and making students sit as mere listeners won’t work to have a participatory class. The course selling website or educator must conduct interesting class activities for students. Some of the examples are group discussions, recitations, question-answer rounds, presentations, debates, quizzes, etc. Practice time management to make out some time to have these activities regularly in the classroom. 

3. Allow students to know each other 

Many students initially are less participative in the online courses. This is because students don’t know each other and don’t feel comfortable speaking up and interacting in the classroom. This hesitation affects their communication, public speaking, and other learning skills. To overcome this problem, teachers should allow students to know each other. First, you take the initiative to call out students’ names and introduce them to one another. 

• You can ask students to introduce themselves on the first day of the course. With self-introductions, a healthy social environment will be developed. 

• Allow students to interact for some time in the chat box related to classroom discussions. With the exchange of ideas, videos, agreements, and objections, students will get familiar with each other. Their confidence level will be boosted which further enhances their class participation. 

4. Ensure proper doubt resolution 

To participate in the class activities and discussions, having clarity of mind is important. When dealing with theoretical and applicative subjects, facing doubts is common among all students. To make your students interact well in the classroom, ensure to have proper doubt resolution. 

After teaching a particular topic, give students time to ask doubts one by one. You can ask them to use the app hand raise option to ask doubts. They can also write their doubts and queries in the chat box.  Re-teach the tougher topics, summarise once again and answer in detail the doubts of all students. With a proper academic understanding, students surely become more active in the classes. 

5. Keep it fun 

The more interesting and fun the learning, the better the class participation. Teachers should practice game-based learning. Today all kids are highly attracted to technical games and using the same in the classroom is very advisable. Teachers can have online quizzes, puzzles, and riddles in the classroom. Along with games, another way to keep the classroom fun is to keep changing the teaching tone. Don’t be serious all the time, instead of this, crack some jokes and have a smile on your face. This will surely help to make classes participatory. 

Conclusion

For effective teaching and learning, having active student participation in the classroom is very important. The same goes for online classes too. By following the above-mentioned tips, educators can make their online courses more participatory. This will help to provide students with proper academic understanding and make learning interesting and fun. This works to make students more interactive in the class discussions and activities.