Making Classes Fun and Interactive
During this time, considering the global pandemic COVID 19; we all are sure that everything takes place online. This meant that instead of face to face learning, we had to learn online instead. Your office work, personal meetings, every event; big or small, different competitions, school classes, and just about everything is online. So we cannot even expect a similar kind of engagement to take place anywhere like how it used to when everything took place in-person. Firstly, it will be very difficult to stay still in front of your laptop or mobile phones for hours and hours, and secondly, it is hard to properly concentrate when everything is shifted online. There can, however, be a proper way of engaging all the students in your classes so that they can both learn effectively and enjoy the classes they are having at the same time. For proper student engagement, teachers need to be engaging enough, make their classes more lively, and give them an insight into what was being taught.
Making classes more lively
Concerns have been raised that students during their online classes do not pay attention to it. They keep their microphones muted and videos off which makes it harder for teachers to make sure whether they are paying attention in the classroom. Therefore, teachers need to address these concerns and adopt a pedagogy method that can be effectively delivered online to install student-centered learning methodologies where students feel engaged and motivated.
So to make the classes more engaging, teachers need to become more interactive to generate interests among the students about what they are learning. Because if teachers are more interactive, students too will have a feeling of satisfaction and come out to learn more rather than simply to become present in the classroom.
Engaging your students in peer teaching should be one of many motives. Peer teaching simply means one student teaching the other student a particular subject. Peer teaching will be important because it addresses the belief “to teach is to learn twice”. Just like any live classes, if students are taught peer teaching, they not only get to learn twice, but they can even understand their peers in a better way. This is a bonus point in making your classes more engaging.
Interactive classrooms
There are many ways in which you can make your classroom more interactive. Assigning pair work to your students is a great way. Doing so, you can ensure that the students are also interacting with each other apart from just interacting in the classes and it also means that these group projects allow them to know their potential.
Receiving student’s feedback at the end of each class is another great way. Because then, you get to know how the students felt about your class or sessions in general. If they are honest enough, then you can get advice from them on how to make classes more interactive. Because only after their experience inside the classroom can make them know how it can be made better.
Making classes interactive is helpful for both the teacher and the students. It requires both side communication and coordination and only then it will be possible. To further learn about making your online classroom more interactive, it is best to take the course “Creating Effective Student Engagement Online” so that you can get even broader insight as to how this can be done and why it is so important to do so.