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