Don’t Be a Bore, Engage Students More!
by Erica Yurman
August 2009
Erica Yurman lives in San Diego, California. She recently taught Special Education at Wailupe Valley Elementary School in Honolulu, Hawaii. She is currently earning a Master’s degree in Science with an emphasis in Online Teaching and Learning from California State University, East Bay. As an online teacher in training, she is very passionate about discovering new ways to engage her future online students. Erica is also pursuing a writing career in children’s literature, young-adult fiction, and adult-fiction.
As teachers, we spend endless hours planning lessons that we hope will benefit, enrich, and impact our students. When students understand our lessons, and have learned from us, we have done our job. I believe that one of the greatest goals that we as teachers should have is to strive for students to be engaged to learn. There is no better feeling in the world than knowing that your students look to you as a guide to help them learn and grow. The problem is, not all teachers create engaging enough lessons to keep students interested in their lectures, lessons, or curriculum. This is why it is imperative that teachers engage students in the classroom. Using multimedia in your online class is an excellent way to engage online students. Multimedia can also support the online community by offering a wealth of exciting ways to teach, resulting in a community of people feeling very engaged to learn. Throughout this article I will offer some examples of specific multimedia tools and software you should use in your online class, and discuss how multimedia can support the online community while simultaneously engaging the online student.
Teaching is like acting, with the teacher as the actor and the students as the audience. If the teacher’s show is bland, repetitive, and unexciting, many students may lose focus, and become bored. The online teaching community is no different; students need their online teachers to engage them, and spark their interest to learn. The community of online teachers has an even bigger challenge of engaging students because there is no audience located directly in front of them. There is no eye contact, no face to face interaction, and no hustle and bustle of the classroom. The more the community of online students is engaged while learning, the more they will reach out and want to connect with their peers. When lessons are filled with interactive multimedia, the class is filled with the energy and feeling of a face to face classroom. Multimedia can support the online community by bringing online education to life. The community of online teachers and students can benefit with having the skills and knowledge of what multimedia tools to use, and why they should use them. When a community shares a common set of tools and knowledge, such as multimedia, people are able to use these and grow as a group. For example, if an important lecture is given, and offered to the online community through the form of multimedia video, many teachers and students may benefit by having this shared knowledge. This, in turn, leaves everyone feeling engaged, and eager to learn and grow as a group.
Last year, when I joined the Online Teaching and Learning community through California State University, East Bay I was very nervous. I had never taken an online course before, and I was very accustomed to my face to face, asynchronous undergraduate learning I had at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Online learning seemed very scary to me because it was so different than my previous face to face classes. The experience of being in an online community as an OTL student has shed the light on me regarding how important it is to feel engaged as an online student. It can be very intimidating for students to enter the world of online learning. Without the feeling of being engaged, many students may end up feeling disconnected from the class lessons, as well as not feel part of the class. Having multimedia as part of your online class can engage students and can also benefit many students in individualized learning, and as a community.
Now that you know why it important it is to engage students in the online community, it important you know how you accomplish this for your own online environment. There are many ways an online teacher can accomplish a welcoming and engaging classroom. For example, I believe the cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words is very true. The announcement page of an online class should have a picture or graphic that welcomes the students and makes them feel comfortable. This image or picture can be related to the class, or can be something the online teacher is passionate about.
Power Points are another way to offer lectures to students in an online community. According to the Center for Instructional Technology (2009), “PowerPoint presentations may include important graphs, photos, radiographs, and other multimedia. It makes sense that instructors will want to make use of them in the online courses they develop. For instructors taking their first steps into the world of online instruction, placing existing PowerPoint presentations into their WebCT online courses is a great way to get started” (Center for Instructional Technology, 2009).
Another useful multimedia tool is Adobe Flash. Flash is an excellent way to display many multimedia presentations including creating your own videos, and images. A videotaped lecture through Flash is an excellent idea for the online community because a teacher can reach out to many different students in the online community. Additionally, a video can be viewed as many times as needed, with huge amounts of viewers, which can connect and support the online community as a whole.
Last but not least, including movie clips in an online community is also a creative way to get students engaged. Movie clips can be shown to introduce the theme of the week. For example, if you are an English Literature teacher instructing the online class on a Shakespeare play, a short movie clip from a Shakespeare movie might engage students. Or, if you were a food and nutrition teacher about to instruct a lesson on eating healthy, you would show a movie, or a tutorial where eating healthy or unhealthy is part of the movie clip.
In conclusion, all teachers should be diligent at thinking of new creative and interesting ways to engage their students in the online community. Online teachers should engage students by using multimedia in an online classroom. By using multimedia in an online classroom you as the instructor will be virtually engaging your students by keeping them interested in your curriculum while simultaneously keeping them happy to be a part of such an innovate and creative online classroom. Throughout my experience as a member of the online learning community, and as an aspiring online teacher, I highly recommend the use of multimedia in online classrooms. Through the use of multimedia in the online community, an amazing ripple effect of learning can occur, with the entire community left feeling mutually engaged.
References
University of California, San Francisco, Center for instructional technology (2009). Using PowerPoints in online courses. Retrieved July 24, 2009 from http://cit.ucsf.edu/powerpoint/