By: Dr Patricia McNeilly

Whether you have come to higher education recently with a wealth of recent clinical experience or you are (dare I say!) a well seasoned educationalist one of the things we all have to think about most when delivering our classes online is student engagement.  Put quite simply -if the students don’t engage they won’t learn!  This is all the more important in times of covid-19 which, as you know, has brought many challenges for students and staff in terms of undertaking and delivering programmes in new ways. 

If you are a good teacher, you work hard and are 100 percent committed (as we all are) then the students should all engage in your learning activities online- Right? Wrong!  (or at the very least not necessarily). Read on for some basic tips I’m sharing based on my previous experience of delivering an online MSc module and also based on the work done by the School’s Connected Learning group. Some of you will already be experienced in online teaching and learning but I hope you all find this blog useful in terms of reflecting on your experience to date and feel free to contact me with any thoughts. This is a huge subject area and one where, it seems, there is always room for development.  

I have 5 key points for you to consider  to help students connect with their online learning. In this first part, I’ll talk about the first 2 points that really refer to the preparatory phase before you start teaching. 

Be prepared! 

There are essentially 3 additional ‘sub’ P’s here: 

(!) Prepare yourself, (2) prepare your resources and (3) prepare the students (those of you who have been around for a few years might know that I have adapted that from practical classes from years gone by!?  

What training do you need? Where will you access it? How long will it take? Trust me you won’t be able to put this together at the last minute even if you have years of experience as a teacher. How will you make your resources accessible for all students? These are questions to be answered within your own institution; nevertheless you do need to consider them at an early stage. 

Think about your strengths as a teacher thus far – how can you build on or adapt these for an online learning environment.  If you are not sure about your strengths ask your students for feedback. For example, if you are passionate about your subject how will you get this across? If you are known for your support and empathy how will you create opportunities to demonstrate this? More about this later…  

Set out your schedule of activities/resources early so that you have time to address any issues.  Right or wrong, students make their minds up about the potential quality of your teaching at a very early stage – if they are not convinced that you are well organised and have a good quality ‘product’ this can drastically reduce engagement before you have barely started! Then you will really be up against it. Consider feedback from previous students if it’s available .  For example, were the resources easily located? Were the students clear about what they were asked to do? 

Anticipate what can possibly go wrong.  Have a backup plan if the technology lets you or a student down.  For example, if a student is unable to get online during a synchronous session plan on asking them to send you the tutorial material they have worked on and give prompt feedback. I have found that this really motivates the student and helps them to keep connected. 

Finally what do the students need by way of instruction in order to help them to navigate their way through your session(s).  Set out your ‘stall’ clearly from the outset – consider a live webinar (or recorded session) at the start to orientate the students and back this up with written instruction to include information about the format and layout of the module or learning activity and what you expect in terms of engagement, what is required and when and how you are available to help. 

OK we’ve dealt with the importance of good preparation of yourself, resources and students, now let’s look further at how you are going to plan to engage the students once they start learning. 

Be creative! 

You don’t need me to tell you that teaching in higher education needs to be more and more creative as technology becomes an increasing part of our lives. When I started 17 years ago we used overhead projectors and acetate overheads (!) with 100% face to face teaching.  Current online platforms, such as canvas, can facilitate activities such as polls, chat, quizzes, breakout rooms and discussion boards. The availability of additional tools such as word clouds, coggle and so on is vast- see for a good summary of free resources  –https://library.educause.edu/-/media/files/library/2020/4/freewebbasedlearntech2020.pdf 

What I would say is don’t use too many and don’t introduce new technologies near the end of the module when students are simultaneously learning whilst working towards their assessment. I’ve done the latter and it just created stress when the students didn’t need it.   

Any tool is only as good as the person who uses it. Essentially less can be more and that also goes for recorded online lectures which should be broken down into short sections.  For example, introduction, part 1, part 2, part 3 etc. and a summary (thanks to Matt Birch for that one as it worked really well). The max should be about 10 minutes -any more than that and the student will just turn you off!  

Lastly, encourage creativity in the students – they will have lots of ideas of their own. 

In part 2 of the blog I’ll look at how to keep students connected once they start learning! 

How to keep students connected in online learning: part 2 

We all know that student engagement is absolutely crucial to student learning and success in an academic programme. In professional programmes we have the added responsibility of fostering learning as a way to develop students’ knowledge, skills and competence in order to practice safely and effectively. We should keep in mind though that student engagement is also really important in terms of the overall experience of being a university student and all that comes with it. Things like a firm sense of belonging to a particular Institution and School, personal and social development are also contingent on engagement with an academic programme. I’m sure we’ve all seen that when students don’t attend or engage – they just don’t feel part of anything and this in turn further dampens their engagement further.  I can honestly say that I loved my time as a student many years ago- like many of you I still have a sense of pride over where I studied and importantly made lasting friendships that I have to this day. 

In part 1 of this blog you’ll remember that I looked at the importance of being prepared and being creative as mechanisms to  support  students to connect with online learning -essentially the preparatory phase before teaching starts.  In this second part, I’ll share 3 more key tips around the teaching phase to keep students connected: 

Be approachable and available! 

Students greatly value the relationship with their lecturers and there is a risk that the student lecturer relationship could be missing in online learning, particularly when students have other problems to deal with. (For some great nursing research in this area- see Bramer, 2020). In part 1 we talked about the importance of student support and empathy.  Remember that students having difficulties often will stay behind after class in a face to face situation.  How will you ensure that you continue to be supportive in an online context?  I would recommend reassuring students in a synchronous (i.e. live) or  asynchronous(i.e. recorded session) early on that you will be supportive to them.  Thereafter, check in with them often and offer additional support.  Ask them to rate where ‘they are’ in terms of their work using online quizzes for example. Being ‘available’ for an online ‘chat’ or drop in sessions at a certain time(s) during the week can be really helpful in maintaining a sense of connection in the online learning environment.  Your passion and enthusiasm for your teaching also comes into play here.  

Be vigilant! 

Use the electronic tracing facility from the outset to see who is engaging (and who is not!).  Rather than jumping to conclusions, find out why specific students have not been engaging if that has been the case and offer help. As we said in part 1, be clear from the outset about what you expect in terms of student engagement and set out the requirements of the module. 

In an online situation it is much easier for a student to contribute very little (or indeed not at all). It’s human nature for some students to want to talk aloud in a live session more than others.  For that reason, I’m not a fan of calling out names and ‘coerce’ students into contributing.  Those of you are experienced will know how to handle this.  Sometimes a simple ‘let’s hear from someone else’ can be enough.  On the other hand, if there is no engagement from a student consider emailing them and comment that you noticed that they haven’t been contributing and offer your support. 

If students as a group are not engaging well then by all means address the issues-but also reflect on your teaching as to why this might be the case (and ask them!).  If you have addressed the previous point then this should not be a problem. 

Be encouraging! 

Regular feedback, praise and acknowledge of ongoing engagement and work done (‘you’ve been busy!’) can be very powerful and motivating for students.  Consider emailing individual students who are producing excellent work- remember that each student’s situation is different and they have different strengths – find a way to value each student for the contribution they can make.  Encourage students to study and learn together and don’t be afraid to give students the freedom to engage in student led learning- for example, by way of student led group exercises.  Remember that your expectations as a teacher are a very powerful predictor – if you expect your students to do well then they normally do.  The reverse is also true (look up self fulfilling prophecy!) 

Finally enjoy!  Good online teaching and learning is very rewarding and has many advantages for both students and teachers.  Share your knowledge and skills, network and learn. The sky’s the limit! 

Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Matt Birch e-learning developer for his guidance in developing the MSc module referred to earlier. 

Answer to question in part 1: Prepare yourself, prepare the equipment, prepare the patient! 

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About the author:

Dr Patricia McNeilly is a Senior Lecturer (Education) at QUB. She has been teaching for 17 years but still learning!