Improve your online course using 3 ways to interact with students

We've all been students at some point and occasionally, we all experience rather boring classes, both in a classroom as in an online course.

This happens most of the time because lots of teaching methodologies are outdated and increasingly fail to captivate the student and hold their attention.

Teachers treat their students merely as passive observers, offering no opportunity for interaction or participation.

When a student only observes, they are more easily distracted and have less chance of retaining what was taught.

Interacting and participating makes the class more interesting and therefore more effective.

In this post we will discuss three main means of interaction to be considered in planning of a class, whether in person or online.

Learn how to interact with students to make your online course more effective

According to Dr. Michael G. Moore, Professor Emeritus of Education at Pennsylvania State University, there are three essential types of interaction to encourage learning and student engagement. They are:

• Between student-to-student

• Between student and instructor

• Between student and content

According to Moore, who is also an expert in distance education, many elearning programs make the mistake of focusing on only one type of interaction and ignoring the rest.

To avoid making the same mistake, learn about the different types of interaction and ensure the effectiveness of your online course.

– 6 strategies to engage students in online learning

Between student-to-student

This is about interaction between colleagues, students who attend the same class. This type of interaction can happen with or without the participation of an instructor.

Especially when it comes to online courses, it's common for teachers to forget that social interaction plays an important role in how people learn.

Individuals feel more motivated to learn when they are in a group, which increases their engagement and makes learning easier.Therefore, encourage your students to interact with each other.

Create a learning environment where they can participate, give their opinion, debate with others and receive feedback.

In an online course, you use technology to do this.

Create discussion forums, schedule chat sessions, or use groups on social media.

In addition to making these spaces available, it is important to suggest activities that encourage participation. Practical examples:

• In a language course, students can form pairs to practice conversation.

• In a digital marketing training session, they can analyze a campaign together and discuss which strategies work best.

• In a programming course, they can share solutions to the same problem and compare different approaches.

Another possibility is to encourage collaborative learning through group projects.

By working together, students have the opportunity to explain what they have learned, learn about other perspectives, and identify points they still need to understand better.

For these activities to work, it is important to establish clear objectives and guide the discussions, preventing the interaction spaces from becoming merely channels for conversation.

Resources are not lacking; the important thing is to encourage these relationships that allow the student to progress more quickly and understand the content better..

– Tips for using technology in education 

Between student and instructor

This type of interaction is not just about the teacher speaking and the student listening.

Interaction occurs when the teacher encourages the student to participate, opens up space for questions and discussions, offers feedback, or simply guides the student.

In this type of interaction, the teacher ceases to be just an instructor and goes from being a one-way source of information to a guide, a facilitator, a support.

For this to happen, the instructor must remain present throughout the entire course, including while the students are interacting with each other.

By remaining available, intervening and clarifying doubts whenever they arise, the teacher becomes much more than just someone who passes on information. 

Creating a real relationship with the students is a strong motivating factor. Just think back to school to the classes where you liked the teacher, did you do better or worse?

In an online course, there are a few ways to do this:

• Provide various means of contact, such as email, social media accounts, or phone number.

• Monitor the performance and participation of each student, offering specific assistance tailored to their needs.

• Offer feedback that helps the student understand their successes and identify what they need to improve.

Instead of simply stating that an answer is incorrect, for example, it is more productive to explain the reason for the error and indicate how the student can arrive at the solution.

This type of guidance transforms difficulties into learning opportunities.

It is also possible to establish a follow-up routine, with specific times for clarifying doubts, periodic comments on activities, and messages for students who have difficulties or fail to participate.

Setting deadlines for responses and establishing official communication channels helps organize this process and makes it clear that the student will have support throughout the online course.

- Online classes: how to improve communication with students

Between student and content

This is one of the most efficient means of learning and it happens when students obtain information directly from the teaching materials.

After the professor's explanation and the discussion with classmates, there should still be an interaction with the content, presented in written and theoretical form, a moment in which the student concentrates and absorbs everything that was said.

Learners should be able to forge their own path through the online course, relying on supporting material that they can study, pause, reread, and repeat this process until they master the subject.

The teacher's job is to facilitate and encourage this process, offering the content in different formats, such as handouts, videos, graphics, audio, etc.

To stimulate and test learning, provide challenging activities, encourage the pursuit of more knowledge, and administer tests, ensuring that they are easily accessible.

In addition to diversifying the formats, try to make your own content interactive. Some ways to do this are:

• Video: Include review questions between the explanations.

• Workbook: Add exercises at the end of each chapter.

• Infographics: Use this feature to summarize information, facilitate data assimilation, and break visual monotony.

• Case studies and simulations: They help to bring theory closer to real-life situations, making it easier to understand how knowledge can be used in practice.

• Tests: At the end of each stage, propose a short activity for the student to check what they have learned before moving on.

Questionnaires with automatic feedback, for example, allow students to identify their difficulties and review the necessary points without depending on individual correction from the teacher.

It is also important to offer accessibility features, such as video captions, audio transcripts, and materials compatible with different devices.

In this way, the content can be consulted in different situations and better meets the needs of students with different preferences and learning conditions.

– How to create an accessible and inclusive course

Create an online course that motivates your student

Knowing about these three types of interaction, the challenge lies in applying them to your online course.

Here are some examples of activities that can be used in each of these modalities:

• Student-student: Suggest a forum discussion about a course-related problem and ask each participant to comment on a classmate's contribution.

• Student-instructor: After a task, provide individual feedback, highlighting a success, an area for improvement, and guidance for the next step.

• Student-content: Include a quiz at the end of each module, with explanations for the answers, so that the student can review the concepts before proceeding.

In practice, these three forms of interaction complement each other. A student can study a concept through a video, test their knowledge in an activity, receive guidance from the teacher, and discuss their conclusions with classmates.

By combining these experiences, the course offers different opportunities to understand, practice, and consolidate what has been learned.

It is not necessary to use all available tools or to turn every class into a group activity.

The most important thing is to choose resources according to the course goals, students' profile and the type of knowledge that needs to be developed.

With planning and monitoring, even small changes can make the learning experience more participatory and effective.

With good materials at hand, all you need is a safe and practical online platform for hosting it.

When hosting your course on Coursify.me, you have all the necessary resources to create assessments and the ability to interact with students through chat.

Furthermore, Coursify.me has an Online Testing Module that simplifies the process of creating, implementing, administering, and grading tests.

- Assessments for online courses: how to do them

With this feature, instructors can easily create a variety of question types, set the passing percentage, and monitor students' performance.

Learners can take the tests remotely, receiving immediate feedback and results, which improves the overall assessment experience and supports continuous learning.

Instructors can create as many tests as they want, and these will appear in the curriculum of each course module, providing a competitive advantage for the online school.

Present in more than 60 countries, Coursify.me is a complete, dynamic and customizable LMS. 

– What is a Learning Management System 

To learn more,visit our website and discover all the features that our platform offers to create and sell quality online courses.