For students to achieve effective learning, their presence in class regularly is crucial. For eLearning, a higher frequency of students’ involvement in the class means more convenient for the lecturer to measure their engagement. Below we’re going to guide you on how to measure student engagement, as well as top tips for improving student engagement in eLearning.
6 Methods to Measure Student Engagement in an Online Program
1. High-Tech Aids
What e-course builders need is something to monitor their student progress to get them involved, to timely adjust the module, or to veer an off-topic student back on the right track. In other words, they need helpful tools that could suggest the frequency of students’ involvement in the e-lessons.
Employing such technologic aids not only encourages the students to engage more in the course, but it also helps tutors save a considerable amount of time by efficiently organizing and overseeing their time and resources. The time freed up could be spent interacting with the students, as well as measuring their processes.
Here are some noteworthy technical aids you could consider:
Operating System Environment (OSE)
Course management software like the virtual Operating System Environment (OSE) may be a great help. Specifically, the software submits information regarding the number of posts, emails, assignments, quizzes, tests, etc. In short, the virtual OSE will tap into learners’ participation, skills, intellectual efforts, and even emotional constituents of studying. The rest is up to the instructors to gather the information, statistics, digits, etc. to serve their goal.
Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)
When it comes to measuring student engagement in an online program, the instructors could try setting up a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). This would allow them to gather and sort out data that could be useful for assessing student engagement in e-learning. These data include learners’ grade quizzes, tests, assignments, notifications, etc. While the work is being carried out by the VLE, the course-builders can make use of their spare time and review the collected data. Then they can assess students’ development, and involvement, and provide feedback to students.
Learning Management Systems (LMS)
The instructors could employ software such as Learning Management Systems (LMS). The software gathers data about learners’ performances and interactions during their studying. What can be inferred from these data can help in assessing how they are studying, how much have they engaged in the study program, and how best to adjust or improve the course.
2. Social Media
Thanks to the utilization of educational technology, not only do social media channels such as Facebook or Twitter can help e-learners to interact with each other. But they also help e-course developers measure student engagement in an online program.
Specifically, these social media tools can raise learner engagement through enhanced interpersonal connections and communication between learners. As learners associate online, they can create learning groups that will be their studying grounds outside of the e-classes. In these virtual groups, they can discuss and make comments, and corrections regarding the e-module. Even tutors can take part in as well.
And it would be convenient for both sides, now that the students can both have room for reflexivity and critical thinking and manifest their engagement. Whereas the lecturers can interact with students, help them get involved further in the course, and measure how far the students have engaged in the course via their comments and questions.
3. Timely Support
The “student engagement” has different meanings for different subjects which are, in this case, e-tutors and e-students. This article is about how to help instructors measure student engagement in the e-course. So, it’s the students’ perception we’ll base on to produce suitable course and achieve our target.
For students, “engagement” not only means timely participation in the lesson, but it’s also about feeling the support of the instructor to better understand the course material. This makes sense and just as well. Since providing support for students can help them succeed, at the same time tutors can get reviews faster, more directly, and measure the student’s involvement in the process.
Helping learners feel supported is a work that requires genuine care and thoughtfulness. Tutors need to be present in social groups, blogs, or discussion forums to provide assistance for any students in need. It could be timely replying to students’ questions, posting guidance posts related to the lesson, or sending out probing questions to students.
Other than that, the lecturers can guide their students to success by providing timely criticisms as well as examples of work, suggestions, tips, resources, etc.
At the end of the day, the well-cared-for students won’t hesitate to share their success with you or seek aid from you to better improve their studies. Either way, in turn, tutors can gain feedbacks quicker from happy students to sooner complete their goal of measuring the student engagement.
4. Grouping Students
Age
Students of different age groups have different attention spans and, by extension, engaging limitations. By grouping e-learners to specific groups according to their ages, the results can be collected easier and the participation of learners in the e-courses can be better measured.
Level
Each student has his or her educational level. So, it’s necessary to divide those with the same level of knowledge into according groups. This helps avoid making the students of higher or lower educational levels feel isolated. Also, it’ll be easier this way to teach them, as well as to manage their signs of progress.
5. Apply and Feedback
For many e-learners who are adults, courses that can be applied to their real-world situations are worth engaging in. The instructors should consider this notion and survey their working types and responsibilities (among other compulsory questions such as their personal information, the expectations for this course, etc.).
Make the most of what you’ve gathered to build a course that involves learners using skills that can be practical and applicable to their real-world workplaces (i.e., research skills, group work, creative thinking skills, etc.). Then ask the students to give comments on the course. This stage is important. How much of the knowledge is applicable, how successful the students are in real life, all these feedbacks will help you measure your students’ engagement in what you have taught them.
6. Exercises and Tests
What better way to measure student engagement in eLearning than via their study results? Whether students have engaged themselves fully during classes is represented by their marks.
If the students are already divided into their rightful groups of age and level, it’s time they’re giving lessons, homework, and tests to evaluate what they have absorbed.
3 Tips for Improving Student Engagement
Of course, if you want to measure something, naturally you must have that “something” first. However, the isolated feeling of eLearning may detach the students from the lessons, making this job tougher. Below are possible methods to stir up e-learners’ sense of participation.
1. Motivation/Interest
If students show signs of interest in the e-course such as asking, interacting, or commuting more with the instructors regarding the lesson, it means they’re engaged in the course. The rest is simple: The managers can collect information to measure how much and how many students are engaged.
But how to make students involved in an eLearning course? To stir up students’ interest, you have to give them chances to hands-on explore. Remember, “Personal is the most profound form of engagement”. For instance, you can replace boring text-based lectures with animated videos or infographics. Or you can hold regular online meetings with the help of conferencing tools like Zoom or Adobe Connect.
Read further:
> Why You Need Animated Infographics In eLearning
Another hint is to employ voice-overs – not only can it make the course livelier, but it also conducts more information you’re trying to convey to your students.
2. Student’s Matter
As a teacher, you need to provide your students with the feeling that they’re attended to. That would encourage their engagement in the course. Enhanced interest means more motivation, resulting in more engagement.
E-lecturers should prove that they care for their e-students by clearing up all of their queries minutely and building your module with materials that suit their preferences. For absent students missing the e-meeting, record the lesson and afterward send out the link. This works as well for other students who want to re-watch that simultaneous session.
3. Peer-to-Peer Interaction
In virtual classes, students can easily feel lonely because there are no other visible classmates to interact with then and there. That’s why if the lecturers want to help the students get involved in the course, they should consider the nature of course content, as well as providing visual aids and developing projects that require learners to interact regularly with one another.
By “interact” we mean allowing the students to join practical operations such as group assignments, peer reviews, and discussions. This way, even the shiest e-students could connect with the rest of their virtual class, like they’re part of it. And so, will strive to engage more with the lesson.
Conclusion
In short, the alienated feeling is an invisible wall that hinders the task of measuring student engagement in eLearning. That’s why it’s so important that instructors should spark pupils’ interest in the lesson. Coupled with some measuring methods in our article about how to measure student engagement, and lecturers will achieve their goals much easier.
Sean Bui, the founder and creative director of F.Learning Studio, is a respected leader in the e-learning and multimedia production industry. With over 10 years of experience, he has dedicated his career to helping organizations create engaging and impactful learning experiences.
Under his leadership, F.Learning Studio has grown into a trusted partner for organizations in the education, healthcare, and corporate training sectors, producing over 2,000 minutes of educational animation.
