✔️ Course offers access to a variety of engaging resources that facilitate communication and collaboration, deliver content, and support learning and engagement.
Review These Explanations
Learners’ perceptions of their own learning may not be an accurate measure of how well they’re actually learning. For example, a recent study (Deslauriers, et al, 2019) found that while a lecture delivered by a charismatic personality can result in students reporting that they feel they learned more through a traditional lecture, they actually learned more by taking part in active-learning strategies. Active learning requires effort and can feel frustrating. That experience can be perceived as a negative learning experience and the effort misinterpreted as a sign of poor learning.
Learners benefit more from activities than from the simple passive presentation of content. External readings and activities, assignments, discussions, interactive web sites, online assessments (formative and summative) should all be connected clearly to mastering course concepts, and aligned with module, course, and program objectives. An online course that presents course content in an engaging and appropriate manner, that facilitates interaction, application, and collaboration around course concepts, and that provides authentic online assessments and opportunities for engaging feedback makes the course more engaging, interactive, and effective. Centering pedagogical decisions on the learner provides the learner with options for how they make their thinking and their learning visible in ways appropriate and effective in the online environment, and open to feedback from both the instructors and their peers in the course, which provides opportunities to deepen learning, and for more authentic ways to assess learning/mastery.
Learners engage in online learning activities more readily when relevance to the course content is clear to them. Resources should be contextualized, and opportunities for feedback should be included throughout the course (Chakraborty & Nafukho, 2014).
Learners need to know why they are required to read, review, discuss, or create materials in the course. When they know reasoning behind what they need to complete, they will be more engaged.
Refresh Your Course with These Ideas
General Suggestions
- Support and Promote Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Access.
- Improve your Online Teaching Presence.
- Explore a variety of types of learning activities.
- Active Learning – What is it? – .pdf
- Online Instructional Activities Index
- Explore 50 Alternatives to Lecture – pdf
- Asynchronous Resources
- Synchronous Resources
- Supporting Online Learner Success
- When posting learning materials, let learners know why you want them to access these resources, and what they should be looking for.
- Read everything you share with your learners and consider how engaging it is. If something seems lacking, develop a companion guide that will encourage learners to think more critically about that learning asset.
- Provide feedback channels where learners can rate the engagement level of the materials you provide, and how they feel they align with objectives.
- Refresh your resources at least once a semester. Review what materials you are providing to see if they are still relevant.
- Meet with a subject area librarian to explore more engaging resources for your course.
- Explore the MERLOT repository for learning material and interactive lessons to include in your course.
- Explore related Open Educational Resources at OER Commons to include in your course.
- Check with your textbook publisher to see if a course companion site is available.
- Check with other faculty who teach in your discipline to explore online resources that they have found to be successful in engaging online learners.
Examples
- Team ‘teach back’ assignments. Create teams and assign (one team at a time) the task of teaching an important module concept (using a rubric) – in their format of choice. Perhaps this could be done one time per week or one time per module. The course Instructor would offer feedback to ensure information correctness. Teams would review feedback and edit as needed. The course Instructor would then share the final product with the entire class.
- Team resource contributions. Create study teams. Give each team a blog. Team members would evaluate and submit 1-3 internet resources (websites, articles, etc) that add value (as defined in a rubric) to discussion topics and/or module topics. The Course Instructor would then comment/rate team resource contributions.
- Provide opportunities for social annotation or collaborative bookmarking (e.g., use diigo, or Hypothes.is – to enable your learners to annotate, contribute and comment on additional resources), comment areas, and discussion forums (in text or media) associated with resources and other content.
Explore More Refreshing Ideas from the Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository (TOPR) at the University of Central Florida (UCF)
These Pedagogical Practice from TOPR explore methods and approaches to integrating engaging resources and activities into your online course content to benefit learner success.
References:
Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L.S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., and Kestin, G. (2019) Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116, 39, Pp. 19251–19257.
Chakraborty, M., & Nafukho, F. f. (2014). Strengthening student engagement: what do students want in online courses?. European Journal of Training & Development, 38(9), 782-802.