How to Keep Students Engaged in Your Online Classes

The online courses can be extremely versatile and can be a powerful tool for a variety of companies. The blogger can sell classes about cooking, organization, crafting, or interior design. A accounting company could provide classes on budgeting and taxes. An online music store might sell guitar-related classes online as well as sheet music and supplies.

But no matter the type of program you are offering it is essential that students are engaged. Interested, invested learners complete your classes, enroll for additional ones, leave positive reviews and refer your company to their peers.

Let's look at some actionable ways to make your lessons more engaging.

1. Break your courses into digestible pieces

Our attention spans aren't too large. Research has reported varying amounts of time, but the majority believe that an adult's attention span falls somewhere about 20 minutes.

You may have enough high-quality engaging content that you can create an entire curriculumwhich is great! But your students may not be able to fully take part for that length of time at one time.

One great way to handle this issue is to break your courses into digestible parts using subcategories and categories. If, for instance, you're selling a class on beginning solids for infants You could break it down into sub-categories like:

• The introduction to solids
• When to start solid food
• Signals of readiness
• Necessary equipment and gear
• First feeding schedule
• The best first food you can eat
• How do you cut and prep
• Example recipes
• Introducing allergens
• Common food allergens
• Watch out for warning signs
• Tips for serving allergens

The groups could include sections of text, pictures or videos as well as printable resources. Students can finish them in their own time -- whether they want to tackle one at a time , or simply take a seat and read through them all in one go.

Sensei LMS uses these categories to mean modules, courses, and Lessons. It is possible to divide each Course into Modules of any size, then break each Module up into several lessons.

The navigation process is extremely simple for students and lets them quickly see what's coming up during the class.

2. Make attractive graphics

Graphics can be a powerful way to engage with 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 lots of ways to include images in your courses. If you're listing data in numerical form and you want to include charts or a graph that represents that information. If you're looking to compare the differences between two components, add a photo of them side-by-side. If you're talking about a particular kind of houseplant, include images.

When creating graphics or choosing pictures, be aware of some basic guidelines:

• Make sure you choose high-quality photos. Even though you don't have to pay a professional photographer, make certain that the pictures you buy or create look professional. The subject should always be clear -- no blurry images! The lighting must make the photo easily digestible.
• Think of empty white spaces. White space refers to the blank space surrounding the subject of the graph. Therefore, if you're using an inscription or pie chart, you'll need to leave enough space around it for it to breathe. This will help people digest the content of your graphic and understand its meaning.
• Add photos of people as needed. Human beings are equipped to react to facial expressions, and we naturally turn our attention towards people. By adding photos with faces that are friendly can aid in connecting people to them and the topic of your choice.
• Avoid getting too complex. Avoid adding tons of busy images that are competing with one another and with the content that is educational in your classes. Remember, your images should be able to draw the attention of your viewers, to make it more engaging, and aid in the learning process. Sometimes, simplicity is the best strategy.

3. Appeal to a variety types of learners

Each person learns differently. Actually, there's a variety of different learning styles, and if you are looking to reach as many learners as you can, try to attract them all every time you are able to. These are the top four commonly used, and how you can meet the needs of every type of student:

• Read/write: These students learn most effectively through words. Include written instructions and information for them, either on the course pages themselves or as PDFs that are downloadable.
• Visual images, graphic, and videos are perfect for this kind of learner. Actually, in an experiment, people retained 95 percent of the message while watching a film in comparison to only 10% while reading the text. Videos are a efficient method to educate online.
• Auditory The types of students prefer to learn information through listening and speaking. This is why you may provide videos of yourself explaining ideas that your students could take in. Also, you can provide an opportunity to listen to podcasts as part of your class and have a weekly Zoom call that opens up an individual discussion, or include songs in your lessons.
• Kinesthetic: These students are hands-on learners who benefit from physical exploring things on their own. While this might seem tricky for online learning, let your imagination run wild! Give students sewing patterns to practice themselves, assign the list of pictures they have to capture for the next week, or ask learners with creating their own logos.

Let's say you sell on-line cooking courses. If you want to cater to all four learning styles in one module it could include several paragraphs on the underlying principles for making bread rise, include an infographic detailing the scientific process involved, and include videos of you showing and talking about the concepts aloud as well as assigning students to the task of making their own loaf of bread.

4. Make sure you have a convincing narration

If you're creating videos for your courses A skilled narrator could be a huge difference. If you're an avid reader of audiobooks, you probably know this idea. The monotonous, uninteresting voiceover can send listeners right to sleep. On the other hand, a voiceover with a personality that's interesting and engaging can have the opposite effect.

Your narration must be clear and conveys the mood of the course. Does your subject sound fun and enjoyable? Serious and sensitive? Reliable and useful? The content you upload should reflect this.

Be sure to set the pace of your narration correct and also. It's easy to speak too fast in your voiceoversand make it hard for your students to keep up. Check your recordings, and if you're speaking too fast begin again.

Do not try to sound like your favorite voiceover artist. It's not possible to sound anything like Morgan Freeman no matter how you attempt, and that's not the type of voiceover students are searching for. Just be yourself!

If you think this isn't your strong suit, that's okay. There are great professional voiceover talent available that don't cost an arm and a leg.

5. Include quizzes and polls

Quizzes and polls are an excellent way to see what your students are absorbing the material, gain more knowledge about them as well as engage them on a an even higher degree. They can also help break the content into things that are fun and interesting.

You could also start each module with a poll. It is possible to ask questions that help you better instruct students or invite them to talk about something fun about themselves. What do they hope to gain from your class? What's their greatest accounting pain problem? What is their top song? How many cakes have they prepared?

You can also mix tests throughout your lesson. With Sensei LMS, quizzes are linked to lessons. This means that you can design questions that are based on lessons the student recently completed. Combining different types of questions such as multiple choice, true/false Fill in the empty space, short answer etc. It can make things more interesting.

There is the option of setting question types like multiple choice and true/false that will be graded automatically as well as manually grade open-ended and non-sequential questions by your self. This allows you to identify areas for improvement for your courses, and contact any students who might need a little extra help.

6. Form a community

One of the biggest distinctions between physical and online learning environments is the community that is involved. Students who take online courses do not have the privilege of sitting alongside other students taking the same class and discussing the subject with them and asking them questions out to the crowd.

It is possible to create an identical atmosphere by creating the help of an online community via a social network such as Facebook or with a WordPress plugin such as BbPress. The topics can be divided into modules or lessons, or base them off specific characteristics of students (like age of the students, their location, or the instrument they're learning). They give them the opportunity to discuss topics with one another to brainstorm ideas, pose clarifying questions, or even create friendships that inspire students to continue learning.

7. Incorporate gamification

Gamification applies principles from games -- such as the scoring of points and contests -- to other mediums including online learning. This is a great place to get creative! Here are some suggestions:

• Incorporate quizzes, challenges and other activities into your lessons
• Awards points for activities like completing work or scoring well on exams or tests, etc. There is a reward to the student with the most
• Reward students who frequently engage in your discussions with badges
• Add an progress bar for your course for students to be motivated to complete an entire course
• Students should post their results on social media

Incorporating gamification makes learning more fun and encourages healthy competition. It makes your lessons more interesting for students.

8. Learn what your customers are seeking.

The most efficient approach to making your courses engaging for your students is to provide the content they're searching for. If you can answer their questions and assist them in achieving their goals, they're likely to complete your class, give it an outstanding review, and then recommend it to acquaintances and relatives.

After that, you can adjust the program's contents and structure according to their expectations.

All it is about your students

In the end, when it comes to it, your students online are at the heart of what you produce. If you take their requirements in mind while crafting your course content and arranging your courses will be able to keep them engaged, interested and purchasing more.

Need more ideas? Take a look at this article written by Sensei LMS on making online courses that are effective..