Title: Five Ways to Make Your Online Classrooms More Interactive
Headings: Five Ways to Make Your Online Classrooms More Interactive
HIGHER ED TEACHING STRATEGIES FROM MAGNA PUBLICATIONS
Five Ways to Make Your Online Classrooms More Interactive
1. Integrate real-time interaction
2. Get creative with discussion boards
3. Maximize engagement with non-task interaction
4. Use multiple communication tools
5. Have a plan around the tool
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Content: Here are five practical tips for increasing the human connection in your online classrooms. 1. Integrate real-time interaction
When online courses are completely asynchronous, there is often limited interaction between you and your students and class members with each other. Consider, for example, that real-time conversations don’t occur during a video lecture, when you post announcements, or when students post on a discussion board. That lag in response time kills the momentum of a back-and-forth discussion and can sometimes lead to misunderstandings. Integrating opportunities for real-time interaction into your online course can help change that and develop a sense of community in a course. Consider how impromptu conversations outside the traditional classroom forge relationships, clarify ideas, and spark new insights. You can facilitate these interactions by setting up opportunities for class members to meet online synchronously both formally and informally. Using webconferencing applications, you can create a variety of synchronous interaction opportunities, such as office hours, small group discussions, whole class discussions, and study groups. 2.