You may have noticed a drop-off in student participation as your course has moved online. Staying actively engaged is a common struggle for students in online courses and retention in online courses is usually reported as significantly lower than for face-to-face courses. (Dietz-Uhler et al. 2007) This can be due to a number of factors including a lack of social connection to the class, other competing priorities and responsibilities, frustrations with technical difficulties in the course, and the fact that online courses require greater self-regulation from students who may not be skilled in that.
All of this can make teaching online challenging and frustrating for instructors who may not know how to get their students to stay engaged in their course. After all, they just have to watch the lectures, read the textbook, and submit the work, so why can’t they do that? Understanding the prevalence of this challenge within online teaching and having some tools at our disposal can help us to support our students in successfully completing our courses.
There are dozens of research studies about and approaches to addressing this topic. I will not go into all of them here. What I will do is to introduce you to a few quick tools you can use to monitor your students and help get them back on track if they start to wander away.
First, you will need to know who is disengaging in your course. Blackboard has a wonderful, easy-to-use tool called “Retention Center” that is designed to give you a snapshot of your students’ participation in the course so that you can focus your attention on those students who need it the most, saving you time and getting the most results where you need it.
You can learn more about Retention Center here: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Performance/Retention_Center
Within Retention Center, you can click on a student’s name to quickly send them an email to check on them and offer support in the course.
Now that you have a handle on where your students are in the course, let’s talk about some strategies to increase student engagement and persistence.
1) Designing a course that is easy to navigate and consistent in its set-up can really help overcome students’ frustration with technical difficulties, a factor that leads some students to give up in an online course. For the sake of simplicity, I recommend a straightforward folder system within the “content” tab of your course. For each unit or week, you can create a folder and then populate that folder with the necessary items all in one place (eg. lecture, reading assignments, quiz, discussion board, assignment). Featuring a “to-do list” as the first item at the top of the page gives students a clear sense of what is expected of them that week, helping them to manage their time and anxiety. Include that week’s work, copied from the syllabus, and any deadlines within the week.
2) Post an announcement at the beginning of each week or the end of the previous week to let students know what is coming up and so that they feel your presence in the classroom, since your presence makes a big difference in their engagement. I have also found it useful and enjoyable to post a short video of myself introducing the week. I was very intimidated by the idea of using Kaltura to record video of myself (and had in fact avoided it for nearly 15 years of teaching online!), but I figured it out in about 30 seconds and have really enjoyed the chance to connect with my students and ease their concerns.
3) Be present and actively engaged in your course. Join in discussion boards, post announcements or videos, host office hours or class sessions through Collaborate Ultra, respond to questions in a Q&A forum or sent to you by email. If you normally spend 10 hours a week on a face-to-face class (including preparing, grading, teaching class, responding to students’ emails, etc.), plan to spend that amount of time present in the online version of your class, whether you are grading assignments or discussion boards or engaging directly with students. You don’t have to do everything at once, and you should not have to be teaching 24 hours a day. Create a regular schedule for when you will log into the course, communicate your availability to students, and be present as much as is reasonable and manageable for you.
4) Put yourself in your students’ shoes. When students are taking a class online they can feel isolated and confused. It takes a lot more courage to email your professor when you don’t understand something than it does to use body language in a classroom to convey your confusion. It’s easier to just give up. You can support your students online by anticipating their isolation and planning for it in your course design and interactions with them. Try to envision how your students will experience the class, and if you can get somebody else to look at your materials and give you feedback, do so. Ask yourself, Are my instructions clear about how long discussion board posts should be? Do I include a detailed grading rubric that students can see before they complete an assignment so they know how to succeed? Do I provide an example of a successful final project so that students can see my expectations and know what to aim for?
Detailed guides to Collaborate Ultra, Kaltura Media and other features of Blackboard are available in the Blackboard Resources Course within your Blackboard page. You should be enrolled as a student and able to access tutorials and handouts.
For help with course design, please email the Instructional Designer assigned to your department. You can also contact me for help anytime at amy.smith@lamar.edu.
