Online course creators worldwide struggle with making their courses different than everyone else – what sets yours apart? With millions of types of content all across the internet, standing out and being unique can reap some serious benefits. If you want to make your course fun, engaging and interactive, we have you covered! Here are some ways to increase engagement and make it interactive for learners.
Active Learning > Passive Learning
Engage with your course participants directly through various methods. Things like real-life problem-solving, case studies, what-if scenarios, and more allow students to actively engage in the subject material while adding a hint of their perspectives and opinions. Chatting with all participants is an excellent example of incorporating active learning in an online course.
Mix and match different types of content
With attention spans shortening over the years (source), including many different types of content is beneficial throughout the course. Adding videos, pictures, audio clips, infographics, and more can help the learner retain this information and pay attention to the course material.
Consider live learning
While following a course outline can be easy and doable; nothing compares to real-life interactions and discussions. Allowing live learning or live lessons throughout the course can significantly increase participant engagement and enable the opportunity to discuss as a group rather than one-on-one. Whether you teach one of the lessons live or allow smaller discussions in breakout rooms, students can chat with their classmates in a new light.
Allow time for Q&A
Having your question answered live and in real-time is more beneficial than over an email or online message. Having your students ask you questions live can grant you the opportunity to answer the question more in-depth and provide some relevant examples to help the answer be more understandable for your students. Courses that are pre-recorded should have the opportunity to allow a Q&A period.
Add in some fun games
Everyone loves games! Games are a great way to guarantee engagement from students. Adding small competitions, goals to achieve, points for participation, and more can heavily increase class interaction and participation while creating a fun learning environment for all.
Cohorts are your friend
A cohort is a group with a shared characteristic (source). Cohorts allow learners to work alongside one another, bouncing ideas off each other and checking in on progress. Cohort-based learning is when participants go through the same course outline as a group and complete the course simultaneously. With cohort-based learning, you promote community and teamwork and provide valuable content.
There are so many different ways to make learning more exciting and interactive. We have given you 6 ways to make your course more engaging here, but the list continues!
