How to Keep Your Students Engaged Online 

INCREASE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT IN THE LIVE CLASSROOM ONLINE

We’re in a new era of teaching. Ready or not, online education is the norm in 2020. For some of you, you’re excited about the challenge. For others, you may be wondering how you’re ever going to adapt.

I want you to keep in mind that even the most “expert” online teacher has only been teaching online for about 10-15 years, maximum. That means it’s a relatively new way of doing things, and there is plenty of time to learn and grow into becoming a great online teacher. If you’ve never taught online and only ever taught in the classroom, it can feel like a steep learning curve. Just keep in mind that everyone feels this way in the beginning.

I first started teaching online in 2007. Our ESL Institute Director needed a volunteer to teach online TESOL classes, and I was one of the only teachers willing to try it. Since that time, I’ve taught more than hundreds of students in live (synchronous) courses, and more than a million students through my video courses.

I’ve failed many times to engage my students online. I’ve seen blank stares, students looking at their phones, and students completely drop off the calls. Other times, I’ve succeeded in engaging students. I’ve connected with students, helped lead them into lightbulb moments, and watched them take huge learning leaps. 

If you have taught online for any length of time, you’ll learn that lessons can go horribly wrong, and technology can fail. It’s a learning curve. However, if you push through, you’ll find online teaching just as successful, enjoyable, and rewarding as an in-person class.

Here are a few of the roadblocks online learners face:

• device distraction
• too many tabs open
• technology issues
• no quiet space for learning
• more anonymity means less participation
• lack of connection

Online students face a ton of distractions in addition to the ones they face in an in-person classroom.

Those obstacles are the reason that we have to be diligent about student engagement with our online learners. They are overcoming a lot by learning online, and we have to be intentional about pulling their attention back into the online classroom.

Additionally, we know that in the language classroom, student participation is everything. Our students need to be speaking with each other and practicing what they hear. They need generous feedback and lots of encouragement to participate. Just because we are moving our language classes online doesn’t mean that we need to give up those important principles that make a language classroom dynamic.

80/20 Rule

I have a basic principle I follow in both my in-person and online language classes. It’s called the 80/20 Rule.

In language classrooms, my goal is for students to be actively participating 80% of the time, with only 20% of the time set aside for lecture. What does that student participation look like? It can look like:

• writing in their daily journal
• answering a question in the chat
• leading a small group discussion
• silent reading
• working on grammar exercises

What English students don’t need is to passively sit while their language teacher talks on and on about a concept they could have read on their own. We are in the information age. Students can Google any language questions they have. You know what they can’t Google? A real live conversation with their classmates. They also can’t Google live feedback from a language teacher.

We learn by doing. This is especially true in the language classroom. Language grows when the learner gets lots of practice.

Why do I bring up the 80/20 Rule? Because while it’s a fairly easy rule to follow in a face-to-face classroom, it can be hard to translate that rule into the online classroom. However, it’s even more important that we follow that rule in the online classroom, because students tend to feel less connected in the online classroom than they do in a face-to-face environment.

Because teaching online can feel scary at first, we often start with what we feel comfortable with, which is talking the whole time. When we hear silence, we want to fill it. However, we have to resist that in the online classroom, because silence is often where learning takes place. Silence is where students can think about a concept or what they want to say next. We have to give students space to think and react to what we are saying.

Now that the technology has finally caught up with those best practices in the face-to-face classroom, we can disregard the old, static way o teaching, and embrace those best practices in the virtual classroom. The key is to understand what tools can encourage the most engagement, and be willing to take risks in that environment to promote student engagement.

Top 10 Ways to Increase Student Engagement in the Online Language Classroom

Now that I’ve laid the groundwork of my overall goal of student engagement, let’s talk about tools and strategies you can employ to increase student engagement. So, I actually was invited by the International Society for Educational Leadership to run a webinar for their members. We recorded it and I wanted to share it here so you could follow along with these 10 ideas.

#1 – Cameras should be on (if bandwidth allows)

Everyone’s camera should be on, if possible. At the very least, the teacher’s camera should be on. There’s nothing like a human face to encourage interaction. If your students are only looking at the load of text you put on a PowerPoint slide, they won’t connect language to the context of social interaction. When you are on camera, students will watch the way your mouth makes sounds, and they will look at your facial expressions as you speak to help understand what you’re saying. If your camera is off, they miss all of that valuable interaction. On the flipside, students benefit so much by having their own cameras on. When their camera is on, they know that there will be an expectation of participation when they are visible to others. If they get to hide in anonymity behind a keyboard with no camera on, they won’t be as likely to speak up.

Of course, bandwidth doesn’t always allow that. That’s totally understandable if that’s the case, but best practice is cameras on.

#2 – Use a good microphone

You might be asking why this is a student engagement tip. What difference does a microphone make with that? Isn’t that just some technical advice? I would say that it’s both. Have you ever listened to someone over a webinar or Zoom meeting, and the audio kept breaking up or making some crazy noise? It’s incredibly distracting! You don’t want to have bad audio, because your students will turn you down or tune you out.

A good microphone is a priceless tool for the online teacher. Don’t just rely on your ear buds to work for you. You want to test out the quality of your audio. You can do that by recording yourself on a Zoom call one day, and then listening back to the audio quality. If your audio quality is poor, just think what that would do to a student who is struggling to understand English, even on the best of days. I use a professional microphone called the Yeti Blue, and I’ve found that it has improved the way I sound on calls like these. Using a good microphone will make a huge difference in your students’ ability to hear and understand you.

#3 – Utilize the chat

Ask a lot of questions, and wait for responses. The chat is a great opportunity for writing practice. It’s also a great opportunity for those shy students who hate to speak on camera to get language practice in the chat. I once had a student in a face-to-face class who never spoke up. He just listened as his classmates participated. I always had to call on him if I ever wanted his participation. One day, I took all the students to the computer lab to have a virtual discussion in a chat room. I wanted to give them an opportunity to have discussions online and see what their language looked like in a spontaneous written conversation. The shy student suddenly came alive! He was commenting on everyone’s thoughts and contributing to the conversation. I had thought this student was shy and disinterested, but really, he was just more comfortable expressing himself in writing as opposed to in speech.

Have an “Ask me any question at any time” policy in the chat. Encourage them to use it, as long as they are adding to (and not distracting from) the lesson.

#4 – Frequently remind your students of the day’s learning outcomes.

Our students have to stay connected to their “why”. Why are they learning English? Why is this lesson important in their life? Where will they use it in the real world? One of the most powerful motivators for students to pay attention is a strong connection to the “why” of learning. Don’t just tell students how to write a strong topic sentence. Remind them that a strong topic sentence is the key to writing an effective e-mail to their future boss. Anything that increases their motivation will increase student engagement.

#5 – Make use of breakout rooms

One of the biggest ways we increase student engagement in the face-to-face classroom is by dividing the class up into smaller groups so that they can tackle tasks together. These smaller groups give every student the opportunity to participate and voice questions if they have any. It moves the learner from a passive role into a more active one. Breaking up in small groups or pairs is easy to facilitate in the face-to-face classroom, but takes more intentionality when you’re teaching online.

Thankfully, most virtual meeting platforms have breakout sessions, the virtual equivalent of separate rooms. You can set rooms up randomly, or assign students to a particular room, based on what you know about your students’ abilities, personalities, and tech-savviness. 

In these breakout rooms, students can talk together and work on projects, but the rest of the class can’t hear them. As the teacher, you can pop in and out of each room to answer questions and make sure that each group is staying on task. Keep in mind that breakout rooms won’t work well with small children or with true beginners.

#6 – Avoid text-heavy slides

If you use Powerpoint, Prezi, or another presentation tool when teaching, make sure that you limit the number of words on the slide. There’s a general rule of thumb called the 4×5 rule: You should limit your words to 4 bullet points, with a maximum of 5 words per bullet. That may sound like too few words per slide, but you have to keep in mind that when you include entire paragraphs of text on a slide, the student starts reading, and stops listening.

I’m not saying that you never introduce a lot of text into a class. There are certainly times for that. I’m just saying that if you are lecturing about a topic, and the slide is there to support what you’re teaching, make sure that slide has limited words.

Let’s talk about situations where it’s perfectly appropriate to introduce a lot of text in the class.

1. When you display text for the students to read along with. You can either have students read the side silently, have a student read the slide for the class, or read it yourself. The key to having a lot of text on the screen is that you can’t say something different than what’s displayed, because most students can’t read and listen to two different things.
2. When you do a class-wide editing activity. One activity I like to do with my writing classes is to display a paragraph of text that has errors in it. Then I turn on the annotation tools, so that the class can collaboratively edit the paragraph. The annotation tools are color-coded, so you can identify who made the various changes.

#7 – Surprise your students

If students always know what’s coming next, they may be tempted to check out. Neuroscience tells us that our brains are constantly looking to conserve energy. One of the ways we do that is by tuning out when we hear information that we’ve already heard before.

When we add in surprising elements to our classes like visual props, a piece of music, or a surprising story, we perk our students’ ears and re-engage their brains.

#8 – Use the whiteboard

Whiteboards are a lot of fun and an efficient way for everyone to get to participate. You can start each class with an icebreaker activity on the whiteboard. For example, you could type out on the Whiteboard, “What did you do this weekend?” Then all your students can type out or draw what they did. The whiteboard encourages creativity and social interaction.

Whiteboards are also great for putting up announcements or telling students when to return after a break.

#9 – Creatively convert your favorite in-class games into the virtual space

Just because you’re not in the same room doesn’t mean you can’t have fun together. Don’t just throw away your favorite classroom activities just because you’re nervous it won’t work in the virtual classroom. There is usually a technological solution for any problem you might face. Don’t leave behind the fun activities just because you’re nervous to try it in a new format.

For example, if you usually play the game “I Spy…” with beginners to play with descriptive adjectives, try it in the online classroom. Have everyone look at all the cameras in a grid. Then play “I Spy…” based off what is in the view of everyone’s cameras.

There is usually a way to convert your favorite classroom activities to the online classroom. It may just take a little creativity.

#10 – Have students share their screens

Teach your students how to share their screens so that they can display the work they do. This is the equivalent of having a student go to the blackboard to write what answers they had in an activity. When you have students share their screen, students are able to collaborate and give feedback, and you’re able to give that student feedback as well. Just make sure that you reiterate to students that they are only able to share schoolwork and that they need to have all other tabs closed.

I hope all of these tips help you think about how to engage your students online. It’s entirely possible to do. It just requires some creativity and planning.

Need to charge your students? 

If you’re looking for a simple and easy way to charge your students to access to your courses and handle tutoring sessions, here are a tools I recommend.

If you need to sell 1-on-1 sessions, I recommend Teachable

As one of the biggest tools to support online teachers, Teachable provides a simple way to sell access to your previously recorded lessons/courses AND you can also sell access to your tutoring. Teachable is easy to use and they have a free version of their tool, so it’s low cost to get started.

If you need to make a community for your students, I recommend LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds provides two features that set them apart and make your life as an online teacher much easier. First is their video editing feature. All you need to do is upload a video and LearnWorlds lets you edit the videos, add quiz questions over the top, or add text over the video while you speak. This is extremely helpful if you need don’t already know how to edit videos.

The second unique feature of LearnWorlds is their learning community for your students. They essentially provide a small social network among your students so they can interact with each other, chat with each other and more.

Some other tools

In addition to Teachable, and LearnWorlds, you may want to consider Podia or Thinkific. Although these tools are not a perfect fit for selling 1-on-1 teaching, Podia does allow you to charge for Zoom calls/webinars.  

Remember that virtual teaching takes some time to get used to, so have patience with yourself and prepare, prepare, prepare. Those virtual classes will start to feel more normal, just like in-person meetings.

What kind of questions do you have for me about online student engagement?

Until next time, Happy teaching!
Andrea