How To Maximize Student Engagement In Online Learning
You've got your course up, and you're starting to see people sign to sign up. Wahoo! Now - how do you improve engagement with your students?
Are you an entrepreneur driven by purpose who wants to make an positive impact, while creating and growing an online-based course company? After you've created the course you want to offer, now is the time to sign up students. How do you increase the student's engagement?
Students who are engaged are more likely to make an purchase (or the purchase of an item) and more likely to finish the course and recommend the course to their acquaintances. However, with an average completion rate as low as 3%, creating an engaging course may be challenging. Luckily, we'll discuss the necessary framework to help you improve students' engagement, the rate of completion, and most importantly students' satisfaction.
Skip ahead here:
- The Three Pillars of Completion for Online Courses
- Five steps for maximising student engagement
- Strategies for fostering the engagement of students
The Three Pillars of Completion for Online Courses
Clarify is where you determine your goal in creating an educational course.
Craft is the format in which you develop your course.
Captivate refers to the creation of in proven elements that facilitate learning completion. When you adhere to these three elements of course completion, you will be able to make an online learning one that keeps your students wanting more.
In order to master these three pillars you must have an awareness of your students' needs and the reason they're here to learn.
Five steps for maximising student engagement
Below are the five things to keep in mind when creating engaging experiences that your children will enjoy.
Step 1: Market Research
Be sure to do your homework when conducting market research. This is a very important aspect! You must determine if your course will sell in advance of its time. It is not just important to know if the course will sell, but whether the course you have in the back of your mind is able to meet the requirements of your target audience, and will result in high completion rates.
Download the no-cost Audience Research Workbook with a step-by-step guide to identifying the target market.
Step Two Step Two: Branding and Messaging
Step Three: Pick your Course Format
Fourth Step: Make Engaging Content
Once you have chosen the course structure, it's time to start creating captivating information. Remember that the content you create should be well-organized, informative as well as engaging. The students should be able to quickly follow the content and be able to comprehend the information.
5th Step: Apply Proven Engagement Strategies
There are numerous effective engagement methods that you can use to boost student participation when teaching online. These strategies can include the use of video, providing rewards, offering bonuses as well as more.
If you follow these guidelines by following these steps, you can design an online course that's interesting, informative and simple to learn. Utilizing these methods can help increase student engagement and improve efficiency in completing the course.
Student engagement strategies that are effective
1. Enhancing Course Engagement Through Email
Learning online can be difficult as it lacks interactions and interaction in person restricting the impact of your ideas. An online course that merely provides information without involvement or interaction is comparable to reading a book. Students in online courses crave engagement, direction and motivation. Making sure you personalize your learning experience and setting students up for success is essential in creating online courses that are engaging. Prepare your students for the online learning experience through email attempts to make sure that the intention is established from the start. Here are some ways to create and automate emails for every student.
Create Welcome Emails for Your Personal
Welcome emails provide the initial opportunity to wow. Utilize welcome emails as your first chance to engage your students. In the event of using welcome emails, you are able to pick between two kinds of welcome email:
- Website-Wide Welcome emails that do not have to be tied to any specific class (so it's for those who have just signed up and bought their first course and others who have signed up for a free trial or are just checking you out.)
- Special Welcome Emails for Courses are sent only to new full members of certain classes (free or paid classes however not to trial members).
Here are some useful tips to create more engaging welcome emails
- Draft a compelling, personal hello. Give them some information about yourself and then provide a favorite recent testimonial or two that might assist in their decision-making process (or give them a hint if they're considering a purchase).
- Encourage your students to join your social media pages for example, Twitter as well as Facebook. This is also a way students can get to meet you in a deeper way.
- Offer a sweet sign-up bonus. Sending them free access to a small bonus course or a guide for free, or even a free download can help them make sure they've made the right choice when they check you out.
Celebrate Completion with Email
With a Thinkfic accounts, you can develop a personal email address that will go out to your students when they finish each course. It will signify that this is the start, not conclusion of your partnership. When students complete a course, they are at a crucial time in your relationship with them. The satisfaction of the students is at its peak as they've just finished the course, and are getting ready to quit logging into to check for updates on course material.
Here are some helpful tips to create more engaging courses completion emails:
- We want to thank them and wish them a happy birthday! It's nothing more satisfying than a well-timed congrats note for a job done well.
- Get feedback. It is possible to build a feedback form for student input right into your class itself, but asking via email for student experience as well as testimonials is a great way to learn how you can improve your program in addition to gaining valuable student comments that you can share.
- Sell them the next class. It is possible to include an offer code that gives them a discounted rate for their next class to thank them for taking the time to complete your program. When you're aware of which program they have just finished You can suggest an appropriate course to take that is similar to the one they've taken, or you can give a coupon that can be applied to every course you have in your catalog.
- You can offer a friend-to-friend-deal. I'm a big fan of giving a gift for you and a gift to pass out! Instead of offering one coupon towards a next course, why not give two?
2. Enhancing your course by making it more engaging
Learning for today's students (from every generation!) is all about combining different multimedia and sensory experiences. Interactive learning scenarios that encourage the participation of students, their choices as well as discussion, are more enjoyable.
3. Using gamification
The benefit of our ever-growing digital world and we are able to learn from anywhere. As we shift farther and further away from in-person connection, many learners find it difficult to stay motivated.
There is no motivation for students to do their job -- and nobody to hold them accountableit is understandable why there can be frequent drop-offs in online education.
Gamification can include tangible benefits such as prizes and tangible benefits like getting your name on the top of the leaderboard.
"Through gaming, we could increase the frequency of when students have completed their lessons as well as their courses." Jeff Campbell, CEO of Motrain
4. Your teaching style should be adapted according to their needs
Everyone absorbs the information in different ways and understand it differently too. Students who are learning new concepts immediately, while others have to sit and ponder for a long time before arriving at similar conclusions.
In adjusting to their unique methods of learning learners will be more involved with their learning materials.
5. Using both synchronous and asynchronous learning
Synchronous learningtakes place live, in real-time, with people gathering within the same room... whether that space is physical space like a class room, or a virtual space like Zoom. Zoom meeting.
As it brings people together at a moment's notice and within a common space (whether virtual or physical) around a common subject or goal, synchronous learning encourages interaction with both the instructor as well as fellow course participants.
Asynchronous learning takes place without ties to time. This is because learning happens at the learner's own choice of time, in any location of their choosing (although the virtual space where the learning happens will likely be specified by the learning creator).
Learning that is synchronous is ideal for activities such as pre-class preparation, reading as well as interactive hands-on activities that students can complete by themselves.
6. Use more storytelling to create an understanding and a sense of purpose.
We're hardwired to empathize stories and they stimulate the human empathetic system. Empathy is the source of personal meaning. Personal meaning drives our ability to internalize what we're learning. It also drives engagement which makes learning more effective for the students.
Storytelling, Empathy, and the Human Sense - Personal Significance
Associating stories with students and having them play out scenarios or debate them, helps you better teach difficult skills such as problem-solving cooperation, creativity, and collaboration. An engaging and effective method of teaching will help the students remember what they learned and can keep them wanting to learn more.
Automate Accountability for Successful Online Courses
The engagement of students as well as the completion rate have been proven to increase by incorporating accountability features into the course. There are multiple ways to automate the process of accountability in your class and save you the hassle of the need to conduct these check-ins manually.
It is easy to make an automated course for students to follow by employing Drip Content. Drip content allows the publication of course material over a periods of time and at times that you decide. It can bring a sense and excitement for your students as they see the new material being introduced, while still allowing students to go in their own time.
Another option to ensure accountability is to use certificates of completion for your course. You can make a certificate which your students are able to access once they've completed all the required classes in your class. This is an excellent method to recognize your students and give them an item of tangible recognition that they've done their best!
These two features provide great opportunities to incorporate accountability into your course as well as increase the student's engagement.
Need more ideas for getting started creating your own online course? Take a look at the free guide on creating and selling online courses!
The blog was first published in May 2015, it was updated in August 2022 in order to be better and more efficient!