Online Course Essentials | Orientation
Course provides opportunities for active learning and student-to-student interaction.
Include opportunities for students to interact with each other through active participation that fosters community to deepen and expand learning. Structured discussions, group work, and collaborative activities all contribute to a meaningful learning experience.
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Engagement
Elements
Discussions
Your thoughtfulness when designing and facilitating active online discussions plays a major role in online student engagement and motivation. Enrich students learning by prompting them to apply course concepts in new ways through the sharing of personal experiences and unique perspectives.
Collaborative Documents
Enhance group work by providing a structured, shared online document where students share solutions to case studies, slides for group presentations, and online discussions that focus on visualization of course concepts. Students can easily download the shared resource for later reference. Instructors have access a detailed Version History that identifies student edits to assist with facilitating and grading group work.
Research
A study of 1,056 learners that the single most important barrier to students learning online was lack of social interaction (Muilenburg and Berg, 2005).
A systematic review of existing literature points to a consistent positive impact of social presence, learning satisfaction, and persistence (i.e.: successful course completion) in online learning (Zhang, et al., 2024).
Create question prompts that require students to make deeper connections, problem solve, and share ideas. Discussion forums that include relevant topics and require deeper thinking increase student motivation to engage with the content and thereby increase transfer and retention of knowledge (Fehrman and Watson, 2020).
Related Reading
Related Reading
Practical Inquiry Model
The Practical Inquiry Model outlines four stages of cognitive presence that guide deeper, more reflective learning in online learning environments. This resource offers activity suggestions, examples, and tools to help you integrate each stage into your teaching practice immediately.
Five Steps for Boosting Student Engagement with Collaborative Documents
Assign collaborative documents in your online course to enhance student skills in problem-solving, teamwork, and engagement with course concepts. Choose a tool suited to your learning goals and provide students with clear instructions, interaction guidelines, and grading criteria.