How to Make Online Courses more engaging and effective for Students

It's not easy to translate the status quo into engaging online learning activities. These five suggestions will assist you design more enjoyable online learning courses.

Online learning gives people the chance to gain access to the best education available, regardless of location.

If students are pursuing new certificates, learning skills, pursuing an exciting new pastime, or making a major pivot in their career, eLearning gives students access to the information they want through ways that traditional classrooms aren't able to.

The incorporation of common practice of a traditional class isn't always conducive to stimulating online learning. Actually, sticking with conventional practices can lead to an unsatisfactory learning environment for students online.

That means copying and pasting the same practices used in the classroom can actually be bad for business. The eLearning business is constantly evolving It's not all about unprecedented access to learning, but also changing the way we learn.

This article will help you avoid common mistakes people make in creating interactive and engaging online classes.

But first...

  What's NOT Engaging?

In order to understand what it means to be engaged one must first be aware of what's and is not engaging.

"Talking about individuals, offering people information to look over, and then offering them tests."

This is Professor Barth's view for a boring online course. According to his TEDx presentation, he had trouble at first to adapt his teaching style to an online format.

In fact, it's too common for online corporate training to include a bunch of slides students have to read, followed by some drag-and-drop exercises, and then a final test, which could require them to repeat at least a dozen times before they can pass.

Through trial and error, Barth learned that online students aren't interested in being taught by. They would rather be taught with.

For Professor Barth it's about drawing on the power of stories, human stories to make memories. Personal meaning and not necessarily clicking that inspires an engagement.

Then Let's Go the W What is Engaging

     How do you make an engaging online learning experience for your learners    

Online learning experiences need to be meaningful in order to make a difference. It means that lecturing in front of whiteboards needs to be put down along as the chalkboard. This isn't going to result in an engaging online learning experience.
 Here are five ways to provide meaningful learning experiences through your online courses that will keep your students committed to the online class.

•    Use Storytelling to Enhance your Instruction
•    Start a Learning Community
•    Do it live
•    Have a Diverse Content Mix to Accommodate Different Learning styles
•    Flip the script

Bring More Storytelling Into your Instruction

Professor Barth notes during his Tedx speech that one of the oldest archeological proofs is that humans used written or spoken stories in order to instruct students.

Our earliest instincts around education are actually based on storytelling ... people instructing others using their own the human story ... It's how we learnt and how we communicated.
  We have learned that scenarios and story based learning can accelerate the time we can become proficient on a given task because story simulates the way we learn through experiences. Learning through stories is more engaging than click-then-quiz eLearning.     AARON BARTH (THOUGHT-LEADER AND PRESIDENT OF DIALECTIC)

Here's why this technique of instruction does the trick:

Our brains are wired to feel empathy and story-based stories stimulate our empathy. Empathy creates personal meaning, and personal significance is what drives us to retain what we've learnt. It also drives engagement which helps to make learning more efficient for learners.

  Storytelling - Empathy - Personal Significance  

Incorporating stories, and having students act out or discuss scenarioshelps to impart complex concepts like problem solving as well as collaboration and creative. Engaging and efficient method of teaching will help learners retain the information they have learned- and can keep them coming back for more.

Start an Educational Community

Humans are social creatures. (Some of us more than others.)

Kate Baker created a learning community named The Veterinary Cytology Coffeehouse, designed for veterinarians who wish to learn more about veterinary Hematology and cytology. In her first year the community grew from 35,000 people without advertisement. It now has over 65,000 members.

Community creates a sense of obligation for online learners. It's no longer a matter of individuals confined by their laptops. They're part of something bigger.

It has been my experience that the online experience of engaging individuals without presence of a group to be the toughest to address. In more traditional classroom settings the norm is that students meet out of the classroom for study groups to review material or practice for a test. You could try nudging the students to do this through your online course--perhaps by providing a brief instruction on how to set up an agenda for groups and how to create your individual Zoom gatherings.     PAULINE SCANLON, COURSE CREATOR

Community is at the core of learning through cohorts. Although the course structure may be more laborious and require more effort on your part It also creates more involvement as well as increases the knowledge your students take in and helps them develop those difficult skills listed under 1.

Do it Live

If you go live during certain lessons you add a dimension of interaction.

Suddenly, students can engage in conversation with each other and with the instructor at any time. Students receive instant feedback and their participation will have an immediate effect on the course.

With live lessons, questions and answers become an effective tool for both the virtual student and the teacher. If one student asks a question, it's likely other students have questions as well.

Kent Bullard of the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence utilizes the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence  Kent Bullard of the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence's Communities tool to conduct questions and answers for students in real time.

"We have a casting setup that allows us to port the casting through Vimeo, and incorporate the Vimeo URL directly in the Community Post," says Bullard. "We make use of the comment feature to manage engagement for those particular trainings."

Bullard can give his students a new dimension with this simple process. In doing so Bullard increases the effectiveness of his online course for his students.

For some topics it's essential for certain topics. This is especially true if the subject you're teaching involves the students to practice in front of each others and receiving feedback in real time, like Jam Gamble's course on public speaking.

Since my course focuses on building your confidence to amplify your voice, performing live allows me and my students the possibility to try out performing front of each other and receiving feedback in real-time.

This certainly has greatly increased student engagement.

My community has told me they feel more accountable since each class is live and that they value the assistance that they receive from each other as they go through the program.     JAM GAMBLE, FOUNDER OF SLAY THE MIC

"One has to possess a lot of passion and energy in order to carry a 90-minute session," Jam shared with us. "For me personally, I have learned so much more about how I instruct and coach my students since teaching live twice a week. This has also provided me with the chance to review and make any necessary tweaks as I go along."

You can also include Live Lessons into your online course by using Zoom.

Use a Variety of Content Mix to Accommodate Different Learning Methodologies

Differentiated instruction acknowledges that each pupil absorbs information in different ways.

A student, for instance, may find it difficult to learn by reading long chunks of text. This student could learn faster by having the same information shown in a video. For others, the ability to go back and reread parts of the text in their own time may be more valuable as opposed to an audio-visual display.

These are some steps you can employ to keep students engaged through differentiated instruction

• Enhance the dynamism of your presentations. Prezi makes your presentations come to life by using motion, zoom, and spatial relations to present information.
• Make your Lessons Interactive. For many students, learning is not effective when they're listening to a lecture and simply not taking notes.
• Keep an Eye Out at What is Working for Other People. Use the ideas Esai Arasi and others have shared for making your lectures more memorable in 's course creator community.

"There's a lot that you can do in a presentation that will engage your audience. This is not only about style. It's about the entire image.     SAI ARASI, COURSE CREATOR

The script is flipped

There is a common belief that the most efficient method to master a subject is through teaching it. Therefore, why don't you give your students the opportunity to learn?

1. Synchronous Learning. This is where you interact live, in real time. it's useful in live classes. Make a room for breakouts in Zoom, and have your learners meet after classes to discuss their learning experiences, either together with the instructor or other students. This practice can be structured however formal or informal you deem efficient.
2. Asynchronous Learning. Once they've completed the course, students should be asked to respond questions you have asked or ask each other question. By creating questions they can ask their peers--taking as the teacher who is giving quizzes to students will reinforce lessons they've learned.

  The Last Word  

Engagement of students directly affects the success of online learning. If you design an engaging and interactive online learning course, you are creating an experience that is more valuable for learners. That value directly translates to greater satisfaction.

Through integrating storytelling into your curriculum, creating communityand providing multiple kinds of media to teach to your students, you can become a more effective teacher and help your students become better learners.

Join the conversation! Post your tips for engaging online courses, and get advice from a community of like-minded course designers.

   This article was first published in November 20, 2020 and then modified in July 2022.