5 Effective Ways to Keep Students Engaged in Virtual Classrooms

 

COVID-19 has forced schools to conduct virtual classes to ensure students’ progress towards learning and education doesn’t stop. But with online lectures come significant challenges, and it is essential to address the issues faced by students during learning. Virtual classrooms offer numerous benefits, but they also come with significant challenges, such as lack of engagement between peers and teachers. Therefore, the best school in Dehradun, The Heritage School North Campus, is sharing five ways by which virtual classrooms can become more engaging and interactive.

 

1. Break the Ice

Create a fun and engaging atmosphere at the starting of the course or semester so that students feel connected to the class and you (as a teacher) by offering some simple ice breakers. You can either ask students to pair up and interview each other or ask students to choose their favorite color.

 

2. Foster a Community

A sense of belongingness to a community is vital for effective communication and forming connections with each other during and outside the class. Students feel more engaged when they feel they are a part of the larger group or something bigger than themselves. Creating a community structure such as message boards, where they can share what they feel about each other can be helpful.

 

3. Create Individual Learning Plans

One of the benefits of virtual classrooms is that it offers individual learning plans based on competency-based learning methodology in which student’s performance is assessed by determining what type of learning they respond to and discovering the holes in their knowledge. Teachers can make use of individual learning plans by incorporating technology in education to track each student’s performance.

 

4. Integrate Face-to-Face Virtual Interactions

A big downside of virtual classrooms is isolation, which can quickly lead to disengagement. Online educators should combat isolation by encouraging or adopting virtual face-to-face interactions such as by recording video lectures or communicating via video conference.

 

5. Solicit Feedback

The best way to know whether your students feel engaged is by soliciting feedback at the end of the lecture. One can do so by creating anonymous polls that allow students to let you know how effective and engaging the learning materials are. This is a great way to assess if a topic needs more discussion, what types of assignments they want, and if anything needs to be changed at the end of the class.

 

A premier CBSE school in Dehradun, The Heritage School North Campus, believes that engaging students during virtual classrooms can significantly impact student’s learning and growth in this time of COVID-19.

Info Source: edutopia.org

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

 

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development was developed by Jean Piaget, a psychologist who became famous for creating his scientific theory about the intellectual development of children. According to Piaget’s theory, cognitive development is not a steady process, but rather the child develops in leaps and bounds. The best school in Dehradun, The Heritage School North Campus, embraces the child’s intellectual curiosity, creativity, strengths, and interests combined with Piaget’s theory. Let’s dive deeper into the stages of cognitive development of a child.

 

Stage 1: Sensorimotor Stage

The sensorimotor stage allows people to learn to differentiate objects with an existence out of the individual’s perception. The core idea for this stage is object permanence.

 

Stage 2: Pre-operational Stage

In the pre-operational stage, children start to develop imagination, and things can start having more meaning. Their thinking begins moving towards symbolical stages.

 

Stage 3: Concrete Operational Stage

At this stage of concrete operational, the child starts showcasing logical or operational thought, and the thought patterns continue to be rigid. Children begin to understand their thoughts, feelings, and ideas are unique, and at this stage, the diminishing of egocentric thinking starts taking place.

 

Stage 4: Formal Operational Stage

The final stage, i.e. formal operational stage in a child’s cognitive development, is the ability to increase logical thinking, understanding abstract ideas, and using deductive reasoning. This stage doesn’t end as one continues to gain new knowledge and experience long into adulthood.

 

Based on Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, the ideas have been applied in classrooms dealing with young children, but the views and concepts at play can tell a lot about training and development in more general. One can make use of props and other aids to support the learning of the child in the earlier stages of development and then combining actions with words as it is especially important to keep things short and simple. Teachers and educators need to be conscious of the importance of understanding different experiences people have, and students might occasionally need assistance to ascribe different meanings to words and situations.

 

The CBSE school in Dehradun, the Heritage School North Campus, aims to nurture the child’s cognitive development and enhance their uniqueness.