You’re creating online teaching materials. How can you make them more engaging?

During the Covid-19 pandemic, I only taught online classes and to students I had never met before. So, I can say from experience that getting to know your audience so that you design lessons suited to their learning styles, objectives, and interests definitely helps you provide students with an environment where they feel motivated to learn and flourish.

It is good to discover what are your students interests before starting to teach them. By collecting their thoughts and questions before class, it is possible to taylor the experience to their needs. You can do it by using a "prompt" such as a picture or a sentence and asking them to write as much questions as possible in 3-4 minutes. Afterwards, they choose the 3 most important questions and send them using Google Forms. They can also decide the 3 most relevant questions when put in small groups. This system was developed by the Right Question Institute and its name is QFT (Question Formulary Technique). I strongy encourage you to discover it in more detail by visiting the RQI website.

Before going to create your online materials, you need to know first who your audience is. What is the class for? What are the learning methods of the students? What is the level of difficulty? Taking factors like these into account will help with planning online lessons.

When creating an online teaching material, you have to first know who your audience are. Only then can you create a material that suits them. You have to know what language they speak and how good their command is of the language that you are using as the medium of instruction. Only with the right language can you communicate properly with them. You also need to know what you can and cannot include in the teaching material. This is because some issues might be sensitive to people who are from different culture and background from you.

Using different materials, to make the teaching session more interesting. To plan activities, which students need to act. (drawing/ standing up/ bringing sth.) Using more pictures and don't forget to write what are we doing.

Crafting a compelling online class necessitates the use of images that resonate with the everyday experiences of the students. For instance, as a teacher in Nigeria covering the topic of weather in science, it is crucial to commence with images of familiar local weather conditions before introducing international examples. This approach accelerates the learning process, ensuring a quicker and more meaningful understanding for the students.

Multimedia strategies are a great way to make teaching fun. Of course you will be using platforms such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, Canva, and so forth for your presentation, but the whole class doesn't necessarily have to be just that. Incorporate videos where appropriate, have discussion questions where the students can go into breakout rooms and discuss with other students, and have polls. Activities like these make online learning that much more fun.

When creating online teaching materials, you should make use of various multimedia elements. This is possible these days where there are so many types of multimedia things available. You could use things like Microsoft Powerpoint to present your lessons. This would be able to attract the interest of your learners as there are not only words, but also visuals in your slideshow. You could also use animations to depict a certain event. Just using words to depict isn't enough.

No teaching material will be well-accepted nowadays without Multimedia. Use short videos, tutorials, online exercises to engage your students even more. Students should also be encouraged to share their own multimedia items, depending on their age, skills, and subject.

An effective way to taylor your class to your students′ needs is just asking about them. I use a system that I call "Obtaining the best questions from all your students". As we want them to be able to learn to do something, I start showing a picture about A (the starting point) and a picture about B (our goal). So they are given 4 minutes to write as many questions as possible about those 2 pictures. After that, I tell them to choose the 3 most important questions for each. Afterwards, I put them in small groups and make each group discuss which are its 3 more important questions. The teacher collects these "main" questions to prepare his lecture. "How can they refuse working on their own questions"?

Content chunking stands out as a powerful technique: - Enhanced Cognitive Absorption: Chunking content involves presenting information in manageable, bite-sized segments. This aligns with how the brain processes information, enhancing cognitive absorption. - Facilitates Active Learning: Design activities, quizzes, or reflections after each segment to reinforce understanding. This interactivity sustains student engagement and allows for immediate application of the newly acquired knowledge. - Visual Appeal and Clarity: Optimize the visual appeal of your materials by incorporating multimedia elements within each chunk. Images, infographics, and short videos enhance clarity and break the monotony.

Chunking is a great method to break up large volumes of information into bite-size sections. It is also important to link these chunks in a logical way, from fundamental concepts to complex advanced applications. This helps to pace the lessons better, and reduce the cognitive load on the students.

Interactivity is important in online teaching and learning. You can add interactivity to your online teaching materials by using quizzes, games, or polls. This can enhance students' understanding and memory, and help improve student engagement. Additionally, you can organise group discussion activities to increase interactivity and learner engagement.

Making online teaching materials more engaging is essential to keeping students motivated, focused, and actively involved in their learning. Here are several strategies to enhance the engagement of online teaching materials: Incorporate interactive elements such as quizzes, polls, simulations, and games to encourage active participation and reinforce learning objectives. Tools like Kahoot, Quizizz, or interactive whiteboards can be utilized for this purpose. Incorporate collaborative activities such as group discussions, peer reviews, and collaborative projects to promote interaction and social learning among students. Integrate storytelling techniques that captivates students' interest and makes the content more memorable.

A nice way to have interactivity in online classes is to create Kahoot quizzes, and have the students gather in teams. Not only is this fun, but it will stimulate their learning as well, and is thus a way for them to take in the information once more. This can also serve as a nice incentive-- perhaps the team who has the most points will earn a bonus 5% on the next test score.

One of the challenges of online learning is getting students to do the prework. In many cases, the interaction is limited to watching a video or reading a document. It is essential that students arrive at the exercises prepared. To achieve this, social annotation systems are effective. They give rise to an interaction between colleagues, with the contribution of questions and comments. The Perusall social annotation system incorporates the evaluation of the relevance of each student's interactions, and attributes a grade of 0 if the interaction is insufficient, 1 if it is correct and in some cases 2 if the interaction is outstanding. My most astonishing experience was using a 7 mn long video that showed 55 mn average time of interaction!

Creating engaging online teaching materials requires a blend of aesthetics, interactivity, and surprise elements. To captivate students in a digital environment, educators should design resources that are not only visually appealing but also enriched with unexpected interactive features, such as pop-ups and video links embedded in PDFs and worksheets. These elements create a sense of discovery and excitement, motivating students to delve deeper and maintain their engagement. By transforming educational materials into visually stunning and interactive experiences, we can significantly enhance the online learning journey, making it more captivating and enriching for students.

To make online learning materials more engaging, maintain clarity and conciseness. Use simple language, divide the content into small sections and use visual elements, such as graphs and infographics, to facilitate understanding. Integrate interactive activities, such as quizzes or discussions, encouraging active student participation. Use relevant examples and practical cases to illustrate concepts. Adapt the writing style to the target audience, making the content accessible and interesting. Be consistent in your design to create a cohesive visual experience. The balanced use of these strategies promotes engagement, facilitating the assimilation of knowledge.

When creating your online teaching materials, you have to remembr to keep it clear, concise and straight to the point. Don't go beating round the bush just to explain one point. You must use language that is simple enough for your learners to understand. This is because they are still learning, and are not an expert in whatever subject that you are teaching. Make sure that your materials are short, but long enough for your learners to understand. If the materials are too long, your learnes would tend to lose interest in your lessons.

- Focused Learning Objectives: Define what students should gain from each module or lesson. Concise learning outcomes provide direction, ensuring that students grasp the purpose of the material and stay engaged. - Trimmed Explanations, Amplified Impact: Trim lengthy explanations without sacrificing depth. Break down complex concepts into concise segments, fostering a clear understanding. - Interactive Assessments for Reinforcement: Incorporate interactive assessments strategically. Quizzes, discussions, or brief reflections after concise segments reinforce learning. These assessments not only gauge comprehension but also maintain engagement by encouraging active participation.

Online teaching is a great alternative to in-person teaching, perhaps if students live far away, cannot make it to a designated class time, or have to miss a class. Classes can be synchronous (live) or asynchronous. For the latter, this provides convenience for the student, in terms of having unlimited access to the class notes, recording, and content.

Online teaching is also great for surgical procedures. I had to start as an alternative to face to face labs during the Covid lockdown. Students were put into small groups shared their work by twisting their screen downwards, so everyone was able to see each other doing the suturing exercise. This allowed the teacher to comment personally and to other students seeing everyone work. In a face to face setting, the teacher walks through the classroom and has just a look at parts of the procedure for several students. So online teaching outoerformed in class teaching in this scenario.