How To Teach Hesitant Students During Online Classes?

Ever since our education system has gone online, most of the students have resorted to online learning. Learning is a life-long process, especially for students who are career-oriented. With the advent of online learning, children can learn about any subject online, anywhere, and anytime. Before we proceed ahead with the different learning strategies that can be adopted by educators and teachers, let’s try to understand why the students are hesitant during online classes.

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How to Improve Student Engagement?

If you want to engage the student, make sure that the instructions you send out to them must be relevant, purposeful, and authentic. Furthermore, the teaching methodology needs to be exciting, upbeat, and believable. That is, the students need to feel happy while learning and they should be able to trust your teaching methods. Another reason that results in a lack of engagement is disorganization.

Effective Strategies for Teaching Hesitant Students in Online Classes

So, let’s get started with some effective strategies that you as an educator can use and implement to make your online classes engaging and interactive.

1. Establish Meaningful and Strong Relationships

In order to increase the engagement of hesitant students in online classes, teachers must be ready to work and build meaningful relationships with their students. The students should get a feeling that their teachers care about them. Similarly, even the parents and the guardians should feel that the teachers can look after their kid’s well-being. Once the student develops an understanding that the teacher understands them very well and care for them as individuals, they are more likely to be engaged in classroom activities. Teachers can work it out and build meaningful relationships with their students through a number of activities such as giving detailed and personalized feedback on assignments and projects, attending extracurricular events and activities, and making phone calls to discuss the student’s progress.

2. Relevant Assignments

Too often, it is observed that teachers work and create daily lesson plans with roughly around 5-10 bullet points that is supposed to be completed. Considering the average amount of classes that the students take in a week, this method can be overwhelming. On the contrary, if the teachers follow a more organized and structured schedule, more students will engage in online classes. Therefore, it is advisable that the teachers should limit the assignments to 2 or 3 meaningful ones. In addition to this, introducing children to project-based learning is an effective way to make online learning fun and engaging.

3. Make Proper Use of Students Interests and Creativity

By considering and making proper use of your student’s choices and interests it can help in increasing student engagement to a great level. Majority of the humans are more likely to engage and read about a topic or complete a project that is of interest to them. In addition, incorporating student interests shows that they are valued and cared for. By allowing the students to choose their own topics along with their favorite presentation method will help in aligning their learning style with their interests.

4. Bring on the Fun and Excitement to Your Classroom

Whether offline or online, to keep the students engaged, it is imperative that every teacher should try their best to include the element of fun and excitement in their respective classes. Furthermore, students will want to learn actively if the teacher shows interest and confidence in their skills and capabilities. Performance and presentation are the 2 important elements of teaching. It is important for educators and teachers to ensure that they must be having fun so that their students will show higher engagement rates and genuine interest. Earlier, in conventional offline classes, the teachers and the students used to follow a set pattern that included break periods, creative ad transitional activities. However, being present in the online environment is equally important. Teachers can record their morning routine so that the students can still feel lively and connected to the classroom.

5. Help in Reducing the Tech Overload

There might be a possibility that some of your students may have never taken an online class. This also means that they are not only learning the content of your course but also the technology. Well, even for you it can be difficult to solve this problem, but you can help to reduce the stress by choosing your technology wisely and properly. Make sure that you keep everything integrated into one place so that the students will not go to different places to complete the course requirements. Teachers can benefit from integrated tools and technology like Blackboard so that the students can stay in the LMS and not have to switch between multiple tools.

6. Develop Strong Your Online Presence

Making your strong presence online is one of the most important factors in student success in any online course. Make sure that your students can get to know you and see you as a person. You can also record short videos for them and spend some time engaging in discussion boards. When your students will develop a sense that they can trust you, they will reach out to you more. They’ll also show more interest and engagement in your course.

7. Encourage Engagement

Years of research have shown the success rate of engagement levels in online classes, but getting students there is an essential part of teaching. Students should feel connected to their peers, their teacher, and the content. You can work with your students to build a community through humor, calling students by name, and asking them to work together.

8. Be Flexible and Offer Options

Well, the last 2 years have been pretty disturbing for everyone including the students. You can make this happen by providing the students with more options for participating in class or completing assignments. You can carry out discussions on interesting topics, where the students can easily share their own experiences.

9. Carefully Listen

You may find some students struggling because of circumstances that are beyond their control. They may not have a quiet space to work and study. They may face internet problems or access to the right type of technology. Therefore, in situations like these, it is extremely important to listen to the students.

10. Be Dynamic

As a teacher you might encounter questions like is a student falling behind or struggling in your course? The sooner you reach out the better. In fact, many students tend to be shy and will not come forward and ask for your help. Therefore, you need to be dynamic towards your approach.

Related Article: 7 Important Tips For Teachers Taking Online Classes

Final Words

Exposure to online learning is the best way to keep your child safe and healthy. To make your online classes engaging make sure that you carefully listen to the students. As a responsible educator, make sure that you are always approachable and flexible to their needs and queries. To make your online classes fun and immersive, you can take help from PiggyRide. Our tutors offer interactive online classes where each student is given undivided attention. The curriculum is designed under the guidance of experts thereby offering complete, conceptual, and comprehensive learning to every student.