Engaging Students Online

- Chat. Students can ask questions or participate in discussion activities. Remind students to only contribute in the chat if they have something meaningful and valuable to share, which can help improve the quality of the chat threads.

- Raising hands. Remind students to use the Raise Hand feature in Zoom or Collaborate Ultra when they want to ask a question or when you open up a conversation to students. You or your TA can monitor the raised hands and let students speak up alternatively, to avoid having students inadvertently talk at the same time.  

- Microphone & Webcam. Allocate time during a lecture for direct interactions with students and have them use their microphone. This is a way for you to pause and actively engage the participants. You can ask 2-3 students to use their microphone, which can also help create a sense of community in your course.

- Question polls. You can use question polls to assess where students are in their learning. In Zoom and Collaborate Ultra, you can ask multiple-choice and/or multiple-answer questions, gather student responses in real-time, and share/discuss the results. Questions polls can also be used to get feedback from students at the end of a class (e.g. minute paper, muddiest point), to see what was the most interesting part of the session, what they found most challenging, or what still needs to be answered. Question polls can be made anonymous. 

Note: if class participation is an important component of your course, you can use iClicker Cloud to record student responses and export them to the Canvas grades.  

- Breakout rooms. You can put students in groups manually or randomly and have them work in groups during a lecture. Students can share their screen, webcam, use their microphone and chat with each other. Ensure to provide clear instructions when using breakout rooms, to make sure they all contribute to their group. You can also assign a time for breakout rooms with a countdown, to better keep track of time during a lecture.

Note: you can also use pre-assigned breakout rooms should you want to keep the same breakout rooms from one class to another. The self-select option is also available in the most recent Zoom version, which allows students to choose and enter a breakout by themselves. Make sure to ask students to update to the most recent version of Zoom. 

- Annotation tools. You can create collaborative tasks where students can annotate on a shared screen as a viewer. When you share your screen, you can ask students to annotate a PowerPoint slide and submit their responses using the text option. You can then monitor the annotations and drag them on the screen using the select option. The annotations can then be saved as an image. You can also use the Whiteboard, where you and the students can annotate on. 

Other strategies that you want to consider:

- Inviting guest speakers. Guest speakers can use the virtual space to engage with students. You could also record guest speaker presentations if there are unable to attend a virtual class and make the recording available in Canvas. 

On Canvas, Discussions can help you create an online community of learners, by engaging students throughout the duration of the course. Students can contribute to discussions before and after the virtual classes, and can comment on each others' posts. It is important to set participation guidelines and create meaningful discussions for you and the students, by making the discussions part of a project and making them relevant for students.  You could also consider making the discussions more personal, by creating a safe environment where students can share their experience, and connect what they are learning with their own experience.

You can also engage with students meaningfully outside of virtual classes using Announcements in Canvas and emails. It is important to keep frequent communication with students, to keep them engaged with you and the course, and make sure they are not falling behind. Keep them on track! Announcements every week using categories (or tags) of topics will help students anticipate what to expect from you (e.g. Welcome to Week 1, Assignments, Team Project, etc.). Create summary discussion posts or short video clips. You can summarize the key themes and ideas that have emerged in the discussions or during a synchronous session (on the chat room). This allows you to keep students on track and acknowledge their contributions.

You can provide immediate feedback using quizzes in Canvas that student can view after they submit a quiz. You can provide feedback to specific answers (e.g. for Multiple-Choice, Multiple-Answer questions), as well as general feedback. Try to approach an assessment as a learning opportunity for students, where they can not only view their results, but also be redirected to areas that they need to study or practice further.