8 Ways To Make Online Classes More Interactive"
Many online course creators struggle to keep their courses interesting How can you make yours pop? One strategy is to make it more interactive. Here's how!
Innovative course designers have shifted their focus to an immersive and engaging student experience. Getting the experience right will result in valuable moments of insight, deeper knowledge or skills acquisition, as well as the most memorable student experience.
With the right tools and some simple techniques and tips You can quickly find ways to make your online classes more fun and enjoyable.
In this blog, we'll share eight strategies to make an online environment that is more engaging and interactive:
- Incorporate Active Learning
- Combine different media types into engaging learning scenarios
- Consider running a group-based course
- Incorporate live lessons
- Make use of Microlearning
- Make use of storytelling techniques in instructing
- Utilize Gamification
- Pause to ask chat questions, and to answer live chats
Benefits of making courses more engaging and immersive
Many students find that learning doesn't work while they're listening to a lecture and simply not taking notes. For today's students, learning (from every generation!) involves integrating diverse sensory and multimedia experiences. Interactive learning environments that promote participation, choice, collaboration, and discussion are much more stimulating. In fact, interactive learning helps students learn 6 times more efficiently over other methods of learning. There are numerous benefits to the method of learning that is interactive:
- Improved emotional connections Students feel more emotionally connected and invested in an educational program when they have a connection to their teacher and their peers. When compared to learning in person, where students physically interact with their instructor, online environments could be a challenge in creating meaningful connections among cohorts. By using interactive elements like a brief intro video of students and the teacher or a game of meet and greet to connect with the group, students can feel more at ease with you and your class.
- Enhanced learning outcomes - Students' learning is accelerated when they're actively involved and they're thinking on a higher levels. If your students are active engaged in the class, they are more engaged and develop the new abilities.
- More involvement of students Interactivity can encourage higher-order thinking at a deeper and more profound level than passive education. When you add interactivity to your online classes, your students will be stimulated to think and get them involved in the learning process.
- Focusing on the task - get away! Interactive elements are game-changers that keep your students entertained and avoiding that tempting afternoon trance. In a virtual setting it's not difficult for students to drift off from the task at hand. Utilize gamification as well as other strategies that involve interaction, such as polls and discussions boards to help keep focus on what's most important.
- Accessibility: Many students face diverse learning needs like a requirement for translations, while others may understand the content more effectively through a variety of mediums. Learning through multimedia interactively can offer ways to present identical information in a variety of ways.
Learning online can be enjoyable
When your course is self-paced, it can be difficult for students to remain active and focused. However, there are methods that you can employ to make your course more interactive. While engaging narratives are excellent for keeping students engaged however it can hinder the ability of them to remember knowledge. Instead, focus on learning objectives and giving learners time every so often to assess their understanding of those objectives. In order to ensure that students are understanding your points You can include quizzes during your class or group discussion, or perhaps tests after the course has concluded.
The difference between active and passive learning is the level of engagement students are engaged throughout the lesson. For example, if you actively ask them questions, you can add a question or scenario, it means that they're engaged in active learning. Passive learning is when your students are responsible for taking notes or asking questions as well as understanding the material they need in order to succeed.
The distinction between passive and active learning
Active Learning:
Active learning is a process that involves students directly in the class by actively interacting with them. The possibilities include problem-solving, group discussions cases studies, placing them into scenarios, taking a quiz and more.
While it requires a little more creativity and thoughtfulness to build into your courses, the inclusion of active learning will make your course stand out the rest and provide a much more engaging experience for your students.
Passive Learning:
The concept of passive learning means that students get information from their instructor and use it to process information internally, like lectures. Although it can be beneficial when you have a lot of information to go over but they are a little less interactive and stimulating. As a result, students might find it difficult to assimilate information and develop the skills taught in the course.
8 Strategies to create more interactive online learning
1. Incorporate Active Learning
Directly engage students with learning through problems-solving group discussions and case studies. Put them in situations. Learning through active participation has been proven to be an efficient and effective way of teaching because students are engaged in the learning process and much more.
It is possible to start with smaller, active learning-based activities like group chats on specific topics covered during your course as well as a brief test.
"Active learning and not passive [learning] makes it impossible to sleep through the class." Eric MAZUR Prof. of Physics at Harvard
2. Combine different media types into engaging learning scenarios
Students are always engaged with videos, photos graphs, infographics and 3D models, but we don't know that they are able to comprehend them as we intend them to. If you want to ensure that they are engaged with your content, try adding hyperlinks, notes or explanations in voice directly onto images. Interactive elements help assist the reader and aid in making them pay attention to the material we want to highlight.
Through ThingLink it is possible to embed diverse types of multimedia like videos, images, 360 media and 3D models into your online courses. ThingLink integrates seamlessly with . Head over to the App Store, and then click on these interactive hotspots to explore the various uses of ThingLink for online classes:
Incorporating these elements of interactive technology to your course material online is easy to do through embedding the final style into your curriculum. ThingLink can be used to make interactive tours, infographics presentation, as well as different types of interactive content by adding hotspots to multimedia files.
3. You can try running a course with a group of students
In cohort-based learning, students follow the same curriculum as a group and graduate in the same way and in a group. There is an emphasis on the importance of collaboration and teamwork, rather than individual content consumption.
4. Incorporate live lessons
There is nothing better than real-time interaction as well as Q&A's. You can also meet the other students involved in the same educational experience.
The Zoom app allows instructors to incorporate break rooms directly into the experience. This not only helps instructors run live classes which include quizzes discussions, and games, however, students can communicate with each other in a whole new way.
5. Microlearning
6. Use storytelling methods of teaching
7. Use Gamification
8. Answer questions in pause and live chats
Learn with instead of towards your students. Courses that are pre-recorded are excellent, but they leave out valuable opportunities for students to get their questions answered in real-time. This feature can be derived that you teach in person which allows students to have questions during the time that the instructor is lecturing and bring it to your online courses. When you incorporate interactive components into their courses, certain instructors have seen 4x more engagement and interactions because students who are attending your class are fascinated by your teaching and want to inquire as often as they possibly can.
Binding it all up
There are learning design methods, tactics, and tools that you can use to make learning more interactive. Just by reading this blog and you've taken the first step towards creating a more engaging learning environment for your students and improving your online course. Applications such as ThingLink as well as other educational tools will help make your online courses shine as well as improve the student's engagement as well as experience.
Check out the rest of the methods you can enhance your online courses to be more interactive in the App Store!
Through this, you can build and market interactive online classes for free!