Engagement & Motivation

In this blog posting, I will discuss the methods and tools that I would utilize to ensure that I maximize student engagement within an online course. Prior to this course, I would consider my technical ability to be the only real contributing strength with respect to creating and maintaining courses within a CMS. I now feel much more prepared to carry out such a task. Understanding the pedagogical process from multiple perspectives has changed my thinking on how to approach developing an online course.

Prior to this quarter, my typical approach to designing an online course would include developing and incorporating as much multimedia as possible. Being a graphic design major, I love to create my own images and build aesthetically appealing templates along with motion effects, which I had assumed would assist in maintaining the viewers’ interest. I now know that these can be more of a distraction then anything else. It is always nice to have multimedia elements available to your students to illustrate or support other content on within the course, but I plan to implement these elements more strategically than I have in the past.

My first step to developing an online course would be to conduct a needs assessment. What do I want to achieve in this course and what do I want the students to retain? Next I would research various sources for reliable information. I would then begin to structure this information in an outline that best supports the needs assessment. I would strive to gather the most current information and diversify the manner in which it is presented to the end user. I would create each week as an independent lesson without sacrificing the continuity of the course as a whole. I would try to keep the content as original as possible and use mixed media when possible. When students become familiar with a process, this process becomes routine and the full attention of the student is no longer required. To prevent this, I would mix the lessons up just enough that the student does not get comfortable with the process.

In order to ensure complete engagement, there needs to be a demand for attention. Requiring immediate feedback is essential for facilitating this. I would require participation in synchronous meetings every other week as a debriefing for the previous two weeks and to introduce the tasks for the upcoming week. I like the fact that in this course, each lesson plan only became accessible at the start of that week. This way it is made certain that everyone is on the same page and the discussion forums are all pertinent. I would also require student feedback and create threads on a discussion board based on issues or topics that arise within the feedback. I would also offer multiple options for each week’s assignments in order to accommodate all learning styles, but keep the content identical. Lastly, I would ask that each student think and work independently and somehow incorporate their efforts into a collaborative assignment through the use of wikis. This would promote a perpetual learning process that would necessitate the attentiveness of all participants.

The key factors to my approach for developing an online course which maintains a student’s engagement and motivation include: Diversifying lessons and content, requiring participation and feedback, utilizing mixed media, providing options, and making a wide variety of resources available. By diversifying the lessons, I would ensure that students don’t get bored with repetitive tasks. By requiring feedback, I could monitor each student’s level of understanding and engagement and make adjustments where need be. Using mixed media would help maintain interest in the course content. Providing the students with multiple options in their weekly assignments would allow each student to choose what best stimulates their interest. Finally, by making a wide variety of relevant resources readily available, it would keep the students on task and reaffirm the stability of the course.