Education Portal for Students in India

8 Ways to Improve Your Online Course

1. Build a personal connection with your students.
2. Motivate your students.
3. Help students maintain focus.
4. Create a sense of community.
5. Make discussions meaningful.
6. Increase student engagement.
7. Address equity issues.
8. Identify and support struggling students.

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How to improve online learning?

5. Provide Illustrative Visual Aids to Explain the Topic Thoroughly – You can improve online learning by providing illustrative visual aids to explain the topic thoroughly. You may want to include pictures, charts, graphs, or tables in your online course as pedagogical tools to improve the learner experience.

1. This helps learners pay attention, recall information better and remember how to do things.
2. However, be sure to use formatting techniques such as captions and bolding so that the students know what information is most important and why.
3. You can also consider using virtual smart boards and high-quality videos to explain your point.

This helps ensure all students understand the topic, no matter where they are located.
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What is an effective approach to online education?

1. Effective Approach – Learning efficiency is typically determined by the money, time and resources that are crucial for obtaining desired results. This means the learning process becomes better if fewer expenses and less time is involved. The idea here is to formulate an effective approach where both productivity and efficiency can be increased.
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How do I teach online?

Strengthen relationships – Teachers know the importance of developing meaningful relationships with and among students. When teaching online this is as, or even more, important. Consider incorporating tools and techniques that help you and your students connect. Some ways educators are doing this include:

• Making a short, personal video for each student.
• Having fun with emojis and GIFs that show you and your students care.
• Establishing ways to show appreciation or that a student has done good work. For example, during live instruction this could include setting up a system for other students to unmute and clap at the end of a presentation. Ensure students know how to use a tool on your platform to show a reaction or do a silent clap.
• Using a tool such as Mentimeter (opens in new tab) to get real-time input and reactions from students.
• Starting live sessions with a show and tell.
• Setting a time each week for students to just connect and chat. This might be Tuesday tea or a weekly chat and chew.

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How can I make round 2 of online learning better?

8 Ways to Improve Your Online Course Anxiety is in the air. So, too, is anger, depression, bewilderment, and disappointment. With their lives in limbo, college students, with good reason, fear that their family’s finances, their academic plans, and, indeed, their future have been upended.

Insecurity is rampant. For those of us who will teach large online classes in the fall, the challenge is clear: We must design and deliver courses that are engaging, interactive, well supported, and responsive to the times. Here are some simple, straightforward ways to ensure that Round 2 of online learning is measurably better than it was in the Spring.1.

Build a personal connection with your students. Instead of simply introducing yourself, consider conducting a student survey. Then share the results with your students, while inserting your own responses to the questions. An anonymous survey can provide many insights into your students’ current circumstances, their assessment of how the Spring semester went, and their thoughts about how online education can be improved.

• It can also help you understand students’ motivation for taking your class, their expectations for the Fall semester, their special areas of interest, and the kind of support they’d find helpful.2.
• Motivate your students.
• Motivation is a key to effective learning, and perhaps the single most important contributor to motivation is the course’s perceived relevance.

Thus, it is important to discuss the course’s utility, value, and applicability from the outset. Help your students understand the ways that your course provides an essential foundation for more advanced courses, how it will help them acquire particular skills, or how it addresses issues that the students find particularly interesting.3.

Help students maintain focus. A major contributor to student failure in online classes is an inability to focus, a challenge that the current health crisis has exacerbated. The problem of focus exists on multiple dimensions. Lacking the structure of a traditional school day, many students find it difficult to concentrate, prioritize, organize their time, and stay on track.

Thus, it’s essential to provide them with the structure that they need. Here’s how: For each week, spell out the tasks that students must complete. Make sure your directions are easy to follow. Prompt students repeatedly to remind them of activities, assignments, assessments, and due dates.

Other students find it hard to maintain their attention during an online class session. After all, attention spans are limited and distractions and interruptions abound, interfering with their ability to concentrate or think clearly. Help your students. Make sure each class session is purposeful. Let students know each session’s goals and structure and your expectations for them.

Also, organize each class session around shorter sequences and activities (polls, breakout sessions, questions). Interrupt the class frequently to pose or solicit questions.4. Create a sense of community Help students get to know one another. Split a large class into smaller units.

Within the smaller breakout groups, have the students participate in icebreaker activities. The breakout sessions share also provide opportunities for students to share their opinions, knowledge, and experience. Be available before and after synchronous class sessions. Students are far more likely to reach out to you if you are easy to reach.

Stay online after a “live” session ends. Solicit questions and comments and other forms of feedback.5. Make discussions meaningful. Whether a discussion takes place orally, within a breakout sessions, or by text, either through chat or a discussion forum, make sure that the discussion genuinely contributes to students’ learning.

Here are some strategies that work: Brainstorming sessions, where students present a variety of ways of approaching a topic or a problem; comprehension exercises, where students help one another understand a complex topic; critiques, where students challenge a particular argument or interpretation; diagnoses, where students deconstruct a problem; and sharing activities, where students reveal their own experiences or perceptions.6.

Increase student engagement. Since motivation tends to flag over time, it is necessary to sustain student enthusiasm and interest. During individual sessions, check on student comprehension; conduct polls; and pose questions. Give students opportunities to actively participate during the class session, for example, by asking them to pose a question in the chat, or respond to a question.

1. Provide active learning opportunities.
2. Have students research the answer to a question; have them analyze a case study; ask them to analyze a text, a document, a video clip, or some other form of evidence.
3. Even in our socially-distanced environment, project-based learning is not impossible.
4. Students might, for example, contribute to a class blog, create a podcast, a video story, or a poster or infographic, produce a policy brief, research and respond to a controversy, undertake genealogical research, or conduct a study of something in their immediate neighborhood.7.

Address equity issues. The shift to remote learning has exacerbated issues relating to equity. Not all students have equal access to technology or to reliable, high speed Internet connections or to a distraction-free study space. Be mindful of the challenges students face, recognizing that students vary markedly in their comfort level with online learning and some are located in different time zones.

Many worry, not without reason, that their classmates are cheating. Be flexible about how students participate in the class, for example, by including both asynchronous and synchronous learning opportunities. Allow students to access course resources in multiple ways – allowing them to download PowerPoint presentations or view videos at a time of their convenience or take quizzes on their cellphones.

Provide chances for students to earn extra-credit points. Shift your assessment strategies to include more authentic and project-based assessments.8. Identify and support struggling students. During the current crisis, our students are struggling in many ways.

1. Some need academic support; others, technology assistance.
2. Many, perhaps most, need non-academic support.
3. Many mental health needs are going unaddressed.
4. Still others need help in balancing their responsibilities and priorities.
5. What can you do? You can monitor their engagement.
6. You can undertake regular check-ins and checkups.

You can reach out proactively or send alerts whenever there are signs that a student is falling behind. You can send out alerts. Empathy has rarely been as important. Encourage your students. Provide them with scaffolding: rubrics, check lists, sample responses to test questions, background information, glossaries.

1. Offer some flexibility on deadlines and opportunities to re-do assignments.
2. And provide prompt feedback.
3. We owe it to our students to ensure that Virtual Learning 2.0 is far superior to what it was this past Spring.
4. With a return to normality nowhere in sight, we need to recognize that for the foreseeable future, much of higher education will consist of virtual education.

We can lament this all we want, but we have a professional responsibility and a civic duty to ensure that students learn just as much this Fall as they would have in the pre-pandemic past. Let’s rise to the challenge. Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.
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How can students improve their online learning?

1) Communicate with Instructors: – When students build a relationship with their teacher or instructor, they have the opportunity to ask for help and provide meaningful feedback to the instructor. Asking for help and support is a common desire among online students.
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How can I make round 2 of online learning better?

8 Ways to Improve Your Online Course Anxiety is in the air. So, too, is anger, depression, bewilderment, and disappointment. With their lives in limbo, college students, with good reason, fear that their family’s finances, their academic plans, and, indeed, their future have been upended.

Insecurity is rampant. For those of us who will teach large online classes in the fall, the challenge is clear: We must design and deliver courses that are engaging, interactive, well supported, and responsive to the times. Here are some simple, straightforward ways to ensure that Round 2 of online learning is measurably better than it was in the Spring.1.

Build a personal connection with your students. Instead of simply introducing yourself, consider conducting a student survey. Then share the results with your students, while inserting your own responses to the questions. An anonymous survey can provide many insights into your students’ current circumstances, their assessment of how the Spring semester went, and their thoughts about how online education can be improved.

It can also help you understand students’ motivation for taking your class, their expectations for the Fall semester, their special areas of interest, and the kind of support they’d find helpful.2. Motivate your students. Motivation is a key to effective learning, and perhaps the single most important contributor to motivation is the course’s perceived relevance.

Thus, it is important to discuss the course’s utility, value, and applicability from the outset. Help your students understand the ways that your course provides an essential foundation for more advanced courses, how it will help them acquire particular skills, or how it addresses issues that the students find particularly interesting.3.

Help students maintain focus. A major contributor to student failure in online classes is an inability to focus, a challenge that the current health crisis has exacerbated. The problem of focus exists on multiple dimensions. Lacking the structure of a traditional school day, many students find it difficult to concentrate, prioritize, organize their time, and stay on track.

Thus, it’s essential to provide them with the structure that they need. Here’s how: For each week, spell out the tasks that students must complete. Make sure your directions are easy to follow. Prompt students repeatedly to remind them of activities, assignments, assessments, and due dates.

Other students find it hard to maintain their attention during an online class session. After all, attention spans are limited and distractions and interruptions abound, interfering with their ability to concentrate or think clearly. Help your students. Make sure each class session is purposeful. Let students know each session’s goals and structure and your expectations for them.

Also, organize each class session around shorter sequences and activities (polls, breakout sessions, questions). Interrupt the class frequently to pose or solicit questions.4. Create a sense of community Help students get to know one another. Split a large class into smaller units.

• Within the smaller breakout groups, have the students participate in icebreaker activities.
• The breakout sessions share also provide opportunities for students to share their opinions, knowledge, and experience.
• Be available before and after synchronous class sessions.
• Students are far more likely to reach out to you if you are easy to reach.

Stay online after a “live” session ends. Solicit questions and comments and other forms of feedback.5. Make discussions meaningful. Whether a discussion takes place orally, within a breakout sessions, or by text, either through chat or a discussion forum, make sure that the discussion genuinely contributes to students’ learning.

Here are some strategies that work: Brainstorming sessions, where students present a variety of ways of approaching a topic or a problem; comprehension exercises, where students help one another understand a complex topic; critiques, where students challenge a particular argument or interpretation; diagnoses, where students deconstruct a problem; and sharing activities, where students reveal their own experiences or perceptions.6.

Increase student engagement. Since motivation tends to flag over time, it is necessary to sustain student enthusiasm and interest. During individual sessions, check on student comprehension; conduct polls; and pose questions. Give students opportunities to actively participate during the class session, for example, by asking them to pose a question in the chat, or respond to a question.

Provide active learning opportunities. Have students research the answer to a question; have them analyze a case study; ask them to analyze a text, a document, a video clip, or some other form of evidence. Even in our socially-distanced environment, project-based learning is not impossible. Students might, for example, contribute to a class blog, create a podcast, a video story, or a poster or infographic, produce a policy brief, research and respond to a controversy, undertake genealogical research, or conduct a study of something in their immediate neighborhood.7.

Address equity issues. The shift to remote learning has exacerbated issues relating to equity. Not all students have equal access to technology or to reliable, high speed Internet connections or to a distraction-free study space. Be mindful of the challenges students face, recognizing that students vary markedly in their comfort level with online learning and some are located in different time zones.

Many worry, not without reason, that their classmates are cheating. Be flexible about how students participate in the class, for example, by including both asynchronous and synchronous learning opportunities. Allow students to access course resources in multiple ways – allowing them to download PowerPoint presentations or view videos at a time of their convenience or take quizzes on their cellphones.

Provide chances for students to earn extra-credit points. Shift your assessment strategies to include more authentic and project-based assessments.8. Identify and support struggling students. During the current crisis, our students are struggling in many ways.

Some need academic support; others, technology assistance. Many, perhaps most, need non-academic support. Many mental health needs are going unaddressed. Still others need help in balancing their responsibilities and priorities. What can you do? You can monitor their engagement. You can undertake regular check-ins and checkups.

Tough Teacher Truths: How to improve online learning | Mark Russo | TEDxBasel

You can reach out proactively or send alerts whenever there are signs that a student is falling behind. You can send out alerts. Empathy has rarely been as important. Encourage your students. Provide them with scaffolding: rubrics, check lists, sample responses to test questions, background information, glossaries.

Offer some flexibility on deadlines and opportunities to re-do assignments. And provide prompt feedback. We owe it to our students to ensure that Virtual Learning 2.0 is far superior to what it was this past Spring. With a return to normality nowhere in sight, we need to recognize that for the foreseeable future, much of higher education will consist of virtual education.

We can lament this all we want, but we have a professional responsibility and a civic duty to ensure that students learn just as much this Fall as they would have in the pre-pandemic past. Let’s rise to the challenge. Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.
View complete answer

How do I teach online?

Strengthen relationships – Teachers know the importance of developing meaningful relationships with and among students. When teaching online this is as, or even more, important. Consider incorporating tools and techniques that help you and your students connect. Some ways educators are doing this include:

• Making a short, personal video for each student.
• Having fun with emojis and GIFs that show you and your students care.
• Establishing ways to show appreciation or that a student has done good work. For example, during live instruction this could include setting up a system for other students to unmute and clap at the end of a presentation. Ensure students know how to use a tool on your platform to show a reaction or do a silent clap.
• Using a tool such as Mentimeter (opens in new tab) to get real-time input and reactions from students.
• Starting live sessions with a show and tell.
• Setting a time each week for students to just connect and chat. This might be Tuesday tea or a weekly chat and chew.

View complete answer

Why are online courses so difficult for students?

How Can We Improve Online Education? Online learning has become an important part of Michigan’s K–12 education system. Last year, 101,359 students—or 7 percent of all students in the state—took at least one virtual course. In all, Michigan students took more than 500,000 courses online.

But completion rates for these courses left something to be desired. Statewide, the pass rate for virtual courses was only 55 percent, while a full quarter of students did not pass any of the online courses in which they enrolled. So in an effort to boost passing rates, Michigan Virtual—one of the state’s largest providers of virtual courses—will begin testing a new online orientation course this fall with public high school students.

The two-hour course will show students how to navigate the online environment, complete assignments, ask for help, and participate in class discussions. EDC researchers, Erin Stafford, and are conducting a study to examine whether the orientation course improves students’ completion rates in their subject-matter courses.

They think this study could help inform online learning practices across the United States. “Online learning is widespread, it’s moving quickly, and there’s little research about it,” says Zweig. “We need to identify effective strategies to support students in these courses.” To track whether students who have taken the orientation course earn a passing grade in their online courses (measured as 60 percent or more of total course points), the research team will be partnering with Michigan Virtual and the Michigan Department of Education in an arrangement known as a “research-practitioner partnership” (sidebar).

Zweig believes this collaboration will benefit educators and students throughout Michigan. “Michigan Virtual and Michigan Department of Education each have large data systems, and partnering allows us to link data from those two systems,” she says. “By collaborating, we can address some of the challenges to conducting rigorous research on online learning.

While we bring research expertise, our partners are experts on what is happening in online courses across the state and how they are being implemented to help students succeed.” For Michelle Ribant, assistant director, Office of Systems, Evaluation and Technology at the Michigan Department of Education, the partnership is all about student success.

“Ensuring student success is key to everything we do at the Michigan Department of Education,” says Ribant. “So learning whether an introductory training can boost the success rate for online students—especially for first time online students—can help us figure out how to best prepare students for the online learning environment.” Why do so many Michigan students turn to online classes? Joe Freidhoff, vice president of Michigan Virtual, says that students may take an online course when a certain class is not offered at their school or when a scheduling conflict prevents the student from taking the face-to-face offering.

The most frequently chosen courses are those that fulfill graduation requirements. “Statewide the biggest factor is credit recovery,” he says. “These are students who tried the course before in a face-to-face setting and didn’t pass but still need the course to graduate.” But, Freidhoff adds, online courses can be difficult for many students because the online experience is much different from their face-to-face classroom experiences.

Teacher-student interactions are different. Students also have to become comfortable with the online interface that is being used to deliver their classes. “Orientation courses are generally thought to be a good idea, but we couldn’t identify any research that said this was a proven practice,” he says.
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