Engaging Students Online During Covid-19

As schools throughout the United States continue to provide online instruction in response to Covid-19, it is important to continue engaging with students in the online environment, both to provide academic instruction and support and also emotional and psychological guidance.

Instructional Presence

In online education, instructors are encouraged to develop “instructional presence” by providing information about themselves, creating customized learning content, and interacting with students in the online class.  Instructional presence is created when instructors present themselves as real people that students can interact with.  It is created through:

• social presence – humanizing yourself by presenting information about yourself
• cognitive presence – providing meaning to course content
• teaching presence – interacting directly and being involved in the online class

Creating Social Presence

Students already know you from the in-person class, but look for ways to include your social presence in the online class as well.  For example, create an “About Me” page, add a photo to your User ID, upload videos of yourself, and share your experiences of working online.

Providing Meaning to Course Content

As you move to the online environment, continue to provide instruction.  A tempting approach is to broadcast your lecture “live” (in an attempt to replicate the in-class lecture) by using live video conferencing, but consider these asynchronous methods for providing instruction as well.

• Provide Lecture Notes – Provide students with typed documents, PowerPoints, and recorded videos.  As you do so, make the information customized to your specific class.  Avoid using generic PowerPoints and chapter summaries provided by the textbook publisher.  You develop a greater sense of instructional presence by providing your own content.
• Divide Learning Content Effectively – In class, you do a great job of identifying and speaking about the most important concepts, and you divide discussion of concepts throughout the week.  Do that in the online environment as well.  Create shorter PowerPoints, lecture notes, and videos.  Don’t use content that covers the whole chapter at once; instead, divide the material into portions so students can learn incrementally.
• Use Variety – As you provide content, use text and video features to create meaning.  Use separate files for separate concepts.  Within a text file, use different fonts for headings and important concepts.  On videos, use labels and video transitions (if possible).
• Summarize Discussions – If you use online discussions, it is not likely that students will read everything.  Provide greater meaning by summarizing major concepts across all of the discussions.  Or, assign one or more students to create a summary of the week’s discussion.
• Create a Weekly Pattern – Try to maintain a weekly rhythm to the class so students know what to do on each day.  For example, learn new content on Monday and Tuesday, participate in discussions on Wednesday and Thursday, review course content on Friday and take the chapter quiz.

Focus on Learning Outcomes, not Replicating a Face-to-Face Class

As you move to the online environment, optimize features of the online environment rather than attempting to replicate aspects of the in-person class.  For example, live lectures, group experiential activities, and synchronous class discussions are difficult to replicate online, especially if students are in different time zones.

Instead, look for ways to achieve learning objectives by using features that are unique to online learning.  For example, instead of a “live” lecture which students must attend at once, create a recorded video.  Instead of a “live” discussion, create weekly discussion boards.  In general, try to incorporate evidence-based learning strategies that work in the online environment (such as providing multiple opportunities for recall, creating practice activities that are similar to graded assignments, using a variety of instructional methods – text, image, video, activity) rather than trying to replicate activities of the in-person class.

As you move online, try to incorporate evidence-based learning strategies that work in the online environment (such as providing multiple opportunities for recall, creating practice activities that are similar to graded assignments, and using a variety of asynchronous instructional methods) rather than trying to replicate activities from the in-person class.

For example, in a science lab class, you may want to have students purchase a lab kit, lab equipment (overcoat, safety goggles, heating plate) and replicate the lab experiment at home.  This can be an option.  However, students don’t have to recreate the science lab at home in order to meet learning objectives.

Here is an alternative.  Instead of having students design their own lab setup, they can describe it in writing; the assignment could include all of the materials and steps they would need, plus a rationale explaining why they setup the experiment in that way.  Next, instead of actually conducting the experiment and collecting data, the instructor could provide data in a data table or data file, and students could complete relevant portions of the lab report, such as the data analysis and conclusions.  Instead of performing the experiment, students could watch a video (created by the professor or on YouTube) about how the data is collected.

Interact Directly with Students

The third strategy for building instructional presence is to interact with students.  You can do by grading assignments and providing feedback and by engaging in live or asynchronous discussions and Q &A.  Here are a few suggestions.

• Use Socratic Questioning – In in-person classes, you probably pause your lecture to ask a question.  You do this to check for understanding, to clarify difficult concepts, and to make connections to previous content.  You also do it to engage students.  You can use Socratic Questioning in a live video lecture as well.  Or, in a recorded video, you can insert a question, and encourage students to pause the video and write down an answer.
• Take Questions During a Live Video Conference – In a live video conference, allow students to type questions, and set aside time for Q & A.  If possible, provide instructional content as recorded videos and written material, and use “live” conferences primarily to provide an overview of the content and the assignments and to answer questions.  For recorded videos, use “minute papers,” “muddiest points” assignments, emails, and discussion boards for questions.
• Smaller Video Conferences – If you have a large class, consider dividing the class into smaller groups and meeting with each group for a smaller amount of time.
• Encourage Emails – Encourage students to email you questions.
• Encourage Live Video for Office Hours – Use a video conference platform for drop-in office hours.
• Assign “Minute Papers” and “Muddiest Points” – These short writing assignments (to be submitted as assignments, discussion posts, or emails) can help you understand what students are learning and what they are struggling with, and you can respond to this information in future sessions.
• Use Discussion Boards for General Communication – Create un-graded discussion boards where students can ask you questions, ask each other questions, have a place to communicate, and share study notes and resources.  In my online courses, I typically create the following discussion boards:  “Ask the Instructor” (for general questions about the course that I can answer) “Additional Resources” (a place where students and I can share articles, study strategies, and other content), and a discussion board for each group project (where students can collaborate on group assignments).
• Address Anxiety and Other Concerns – In addition to asking about course content, ask students how they are handling the transition to online, how they are managing the workload, what their level of anxiety is and how they are handling it, whether they can access all materials, whether they and their families are keeping healthy…

Students create collaborative learning spaces on their own on a regular basis.  They use Facebook Groups, Facebook Messenger, Facetime, WhatsApp, and many other tools.  During this time, it may be useful to help students identify out-of-class learning communities students could join, or provide links to communication platforms they could use.

Does your school need help transitioning to the online environment, contact me for consultation and instructional design services.  I have 10 years of experience teaching online on Canvas, Desire2Learn, and Blackboard.  Do you have a strategy for engaging with students online?  Add a comment below.