Through my experiences, I’ve come to learn that the best way to understand our students and their challenges, is by putting ourselves into their shoes. The ONL181 course has been a brilliant platform in enabling us to do this. We’ve been given the opportunity to educate ourselves so that we can better educate our students.

Juggling a job (which certainly does not end when I leave work for the day), a household, a husband and a little baby girl, together with numerous other chores and responsibilities, certainly does take its toll. By recently partaking in ONL181, needless to say, it does make one’s workload a tad bit heavier. I would imagine that with most people it is more or less the same type of scenario. Where, trying to make all of these work and accomplish that many things in one day, can be quite the challenge.

Now let’s look at the scenario where people have to add studying onto this already relentless list. It can be daunting to have to come home from a long day at work, and attend an online collaborate session, which can get pretty uninspiring at times. This then creates the need for us, as tutors/lecturers/facilitators, to discover new ways (and reinforce old methods) to ensure that our students remain as enthusiastic and encouraged as possible throughout their studies. We don’t want them to see us as robots that just drone on and on about our subject matter.

The number one concern is that with online learning, our face-to-face contact with students is slim to none. Hence, it is imperative that we find ways to ensure that regardless of this, they remain engaged and motivated to continue and achieve their end goal. It becomes so much easier in the distance space, for students to withdraw, disengage, and sometimes even completely disappear. This again, reiterates the point I had made in my previous blogpost, that students need to be made fully aware that their participation and contributions are crucial in contributing toward the group reaching it’s end goal. The same would apply if they were working individually. As they say, no one ever got to where they wanted to be without hard work and determination.

Through researching this topic extensively, it’s evident that ensuring students are engaged is not a one-step solution. There are many factors that need to be taken into consideration. For instance, at the forefront, we need to ensure that we as the anchor point for our students, create a basic plan of action in terms of where the module/course is headed. Having that direction makes more or q difference than we realise as students constantly refer back to that to keep track of where they currently stand. They are in dire need of that structure. We also, again, need to design our collaborate sessions in such a way that we are not talking endlessly and boring our audience to death. Making use of videos, images, music, etc. can be extremely effective as it ensures students are alert. Case studies are also useful as they often involve role playing which is great in getting students to participate and engage in group work. Discussion boards as I’ve come to learn through ONL181, has also proven to work well. Giving students a chance to research and contribute their thoughts and ideas not only keeps them engaged but also gives them the opportunity to pave the way for their own learning. The last two methods mentioned also serve as a way to keep students engaged with each other. We naturally want the interaction among students in a class to be as strong as possible. This helps them to constantly be up-to-date and informed, they learn how to be a part of a team, something bigger than themselves, and they’re sort of “forced” to always be communicating with others, which naturally ensures they are involved.

After being exposed to both ends of the spectrum, as a lecturer and a student, it’s become clear that there are many factors that go into ensuring that consistent engagement is held throughout a course. It’s a process that we must get right from the get-go so that the learning process becomes an easier path to tread.