How can you ensure that students are engaged In Your Online Classes

Online courses are incredibly versatile and can be a powerful tool for a variety of businesses. Bloggers can offer courses about cooking, organization craft, interior design. A accounting company could provide classes on budgeting and taxes. An online music store might sell guitar-related classes online along with their sheets of music and other instruments.

No matter what kind of class you provide the importance of student participation is paramount. Interested, invested learners complete your courses, sign up to take more, write favorable reviews, and then recommend your company to friends.

So let's take a an examination of some strategies to make your classes more enjoyable.

1. Break your courses into digestible pieces

Attention spans for us aren't that lengthy. Studies report varying lengths of time, but most agree that the adult attention span is around 20 minutes.

It's possible that you have high-quality, interesting content to create hours worth of curriculum -That's fantastic! However, your students may not be able take part for that length of time at an duration.

A great method to deal with this is to divide the courses down into smaller chunks using sub-categories and categories. If, for instance, you're selling a course on beginning solids for infants, you might divide it into groups like:

• The introduction to solids
• When to start solid food
• The signs of readiness
• Equipment and gear that is required
• First feeding schedule
• Best first foods
• How do you cut and prepare
• Examples of recipes
• Introducing allergens
• Common food allergens
• Signs to be aware of
• How to serve allergens

Every grouping could contain texts, images video, or other materials. Students may complete the assignments at their own pace -depending on whether they prefer to tackle one at a time or just sit and work through them all in one go.

Sensei LMS calls these categories Courses, Modules and Lessons. You can divide each Course into any number of Modules Then divide each Module into several Lessons.

This makes the navigation process easy for students and lets them quickly see what's coming up during the class.

2. Create effective images

Graphics can be an incredibly effective way of engaging your students. Approximately 65% of the general population are visual learners, so not only do images add interest to your courses, they can also help convey concepts more effectively.

There are a variety of methods to include images in your classes. If you're presenting numerical data and you want to include charts or a graph that reflects that information. If you're looking to compare the differences between two components, add an image of them in a side-by-side comparison. If you're talking about a particular type of houseplant, add pictures.

When creating graphics or choosing images, remember a few basic tips:

• Select high-quality images. While you don't necessarily need to pay a professional photographer, be sure that the images you purchase or create are professional. The subject of the photo should always be clear -- no blurry images! -- and the lighting needs to make the picture easy to consume.
• Think of empty white spaces. White space is the empty space surrounding the subject of the image. So if you have text lines or a pie chart, you'll want to create enough empty space around it for it to air. This helps people better digest the contents of your graphics and understand its meaning.
• Add photos of people as needed. Human beings are naturally drawn to faces, and our attention naturally shifts to people. By adding photos with an attractive face will help people connect with the subject and you.
• Don't get too complicated. Avoid adding tons of busy pictures that clash with one another and with the educational content in your courses. Keep in mind that your graphics are there to grab interest, create something more enjoyable, and help in the process of learning. Sometimes, simplicity is the best strategy.

3. Attract a range types of learners

Each person learns differently. In fact, there are many different learning styles that you can choose from, and if are looking to reach as many pupils as you possibly can, then you'll attract them all every time you are able to. These are the top four commonly used, and how to satisfy the demands of each type of learner:

• Read/write The students who learn this format are most effective at learning through language. Write down instructions in writing and provide details for them in the course's pages or as downloadable PDFs.
• Visual: Graphics, images as well as videos work for this kind of learner. Actually, in one study, viewers remember 95 percent of the message after watching a video as opposed to only 10% when reading the information. Videos can be an incredibly powerful way of educating online.
• Auditory: These types of students prefer to learn knowledge by speaking and listening. So you might provide videos of yourself explaining ideas that your students could listen to. Also, you can provide access to a podcast within your class or have a monthly Zoom call that opens up discussions with one another, or include songs in your lessons.
• Kinesthetic Students who are hands-on learners, and benefit from physically figuring things out themselves. While this might seem tricky for online learning, get creative! Provide sewing patterns students can learn, or assign them an agenda of photographs they need to take for the week, or task students to create their own logos.

Imagine that you offer on-line cooking courses. If you wanted to speak to all four learning styles in one course it could include several pages on the fundamentals of making bread rise. You could include an infographic that explains the science involved, feature an instructional video that shows you explaining and discussing the principles aloud, and assign students the responsibility of creating their own bread loaf.

4. Employ a captivating Narrator

When you're filming videos for your courses, an effective narrator can create a significant difference. If you're fond of audiobooks, you already know the concept. An uninteresting, boring voiceover could send listeners to sleep, while someone who's engaging and interesting can have the opposite effect.

It's important that your narration reflects the tone of your class. Does your subject sound fun and enjoyable? Sensitive and serious? Reliable and useful? Your videos should reflect that.

Take the time to get your narration's pace perfect as well. It's easy to speak too fast in the voiceovers you use, and this can cause it to be difficult for your students to keep up. Listen back to your recordings, and if you're speaking too fast begin again.

Finally, don't try to sound like your favourite voiceover artists. You're not going to sound like Morgan Freeman no matter how hard you try and that's not what students are looking for. Be yourself!

If you feel like that's not your forte, that's okay. Professional voiceover talent available which don't cost you more than a few dollars.

5. Use polls and quizzes.

Quizzes and polls can be an effective method to assess what your students are absorbing and learning about and get them involved at an even higher level. They can also help break up your content with something fun and different.

You could also start each section with a survey. It is possible to ask questions to help instruct students or inspire them to be amusing about themselves. What are they hoping to gain from your class? What is their most difficult accounting issue? Which song is their most listened to? What's the number of cakes they've made?

And then, you can mix and match questions throughout your class. In the case of Sensei LMS the quizzes are linked to lessons. Therefore, you can make questions in response to the lessons which a student has just finished. Combining different types of questions like multiple choice true/false and fill-in the blank, short answer, etc. This can help keep things fascinating.

You can set question types like multiple choice and true/false to be auto-graded, then manually mark open-ended question yourself. This allows you to discover areas that could be improved for your courses, and reach out to any students who might need a little additional assistance.

6. Create an community

One of the biggest difference between the physical and online educational environments is the communities involved. Online students aren't able to sit alongside other students taking the class in the same way and discussing the subject with them as well as asking questions loud.

You can create a similar setting by establishing an online community via a social network like Facebook or with a WordPress plugin like BbPress. It is possible to divide subjects up by module or lesson and then base them on of student characteristics (like age of the students, their location, or the instrument they're learning). They give them the chance to debate topics with one another and brainstorm ideas, or ask clarification questions, and even establish friendships to encourage them to keep learning.

7. Incorporate gamification

Gamification applies principles from game playing -- like the scoring of points and contests -- to other mediums including online learning. This is a fantastic location to experiment with your ideas! Here are some suggestions:

• Include quizzes and challenges in your lessons
• Points awarded based on the performance of students -- completing tasks, scoring well on quizzes and so on. There is a reward for the student who scores the highest amount of points.
• Reward students who frequently engage in your forum by awarding them badges
• Add an progress bar for your course in order to encourage students to complete an entire course
• Students should share their grades on social media

Gamification can make learning enjoyable and promotes healthy competition. This makes your lessons more interesting to students.

8. Understand what your audience is looking for

The most efficient way to make your courses engaging for your learners is to offer the information they're seeking. If you can answer their questions and assist them in achieving their goals, they're likely to complete your course, leave an outstanding review, and recommend it to their relatives and friends.

After that, you can adjust the course content and format according to the students' expectations.

All it is about your students

When it comes down to it, your students online will be at the center of everything you create. When you keep their needs in mind when crafting your course content and arranging your courses will be able to keep them engaged, interested and purchasing more.

Are you looking for more information? Take a look at this article written by Sensei LMS regarding designing effective online courses.