How can you ensure that students are engaged in Your Online Classes

Online courses are incredibly versatile and can be a powerful instrument for many companies. The blogger can sell classes regarding cooking, organization, crafting, or interior design. A accounting company could provide classes on budgeting and taxation. Online music stores might offer virtual guitar lessons in addition to their materials and sheet music.

However, regardless of the kind of class you provide it is essential that students are engaged. Engaged, enthusiastic learners take your classes, enroll for more courses, leave positive reviews and refer your company to friends.

We'll look at some actionable ways you can make your courses more interesting.

1. Break your courses into digestible pieces

Our attention spans aren't too long. There are a variety of studies that report different lengths of time, but the majority are in agreement that our attention span falls somewhere around 20 minutes.

There may be enough top-quality engaging content that you can create many hours of content- that's great! But your students may not be able to take part for that length of time at a duration.

A great method to deal with this is by breaking your courses into digestible pieces using categories and sub-categories. As an example, if you're selling a course on starting solids for babies You could break it down into categories like:

• Introduction to Solids
• How do you know when to begin eating solid food?
• Signals of the readiness
• Necessary equipment and gear
• First feeding schedule
• Best first foods
• How do I cut and cut
• Recipes for example
• Introducing allergens
• Common food allergens
• Watch out for warning signs
• Tips for serving allergens

Every grouping could contain texts, images or videos as well as printable resources. Students can finish them according to their own schedulesregardless of whether they wish to work on one piece at a given time, or just sit and work through all of them at one time.

Sensei LMS refers to these categories as Courses, Modules and Lessons. The Courses can be divided into any number of Modules and break each Module up into several lessons.

It makes navigation easy for students and lets them quickly be aware of what's going to happen throughout the course.

2. Create effective graphic designs

Graphics can be an incredibly efficient way to connect with your students. Approximately 65% of the general population are visual learners, so not only do images add interest to your courses, they can also help convey concepts more effectively.

There are many ways to incorporate images into your classes. If you're listing data in numerical form, add a chart or graph to represent that data. If you're looking to compare the differences between two components, add a photo of them in a side-by-side comparison. If you're talking about a particular type of houseplant, add images.

When creating graphics or choosing pictures, be aware of a few basic tips:

• Choose high-quality pictures. Even though you don't have to employ an experienced photographer, you should make sure that the images you purchase or shoot are professional. The subject should be crystal clearNo blurry photos! And the lighting must make the photo easily digestible.
• Think of white space. White space is the empty space around the content of the graph. So if you have an inscription or pie charts, it is important to include enough unused space around it for the graphic to breath. It helps the viewer better absorb the content of your graphic and get the meaning behind it.
• Use photos of individuals in the event that it is appropriate. Humans are naturally drawn to people's faces and naturally, our focus shifts towards faces. The addition of photos that feature a friendly face can aid in connecting people to them and the topic of your choice.
• Don't get too complicated. Beware of adding a lot of pictures that clash against one another as well as the educational content in your courses. Be aware that the images you use should be able to draw the attention of your viewers, to make it more enjoyable, and help in learning. Sometimes, simple is the best strategy.

3. Appeal to a variety of styles of learning

Everyone learns differently. In fact, there are a variety of learning styles which is why if you want to engage as many pupils as you possibly can, then you'll attract them all every time you are able to. These are the top four popular, as well as ways that to meet the requirements for each kind of learner:

• Read/write: These students benefit from learning with words. Include written instructions and information for them, either on the course pages themselves or as PDFs that are downloadable.
• Visual: Graphics, images as well as videos work for this kind of learner. In fact, in the study of one, students retained 95% of a message while watching a film in comparison to only 10% while reading the text. Videos are a powerful way of educating on the internet.
• Auditory: These types of learners prefer to glean knowledge by speaking and listening. Therefore, you could include videos of you explaining the concepts students will be able to listen to. Also, you can provide access to a podcast in your classes, have a weekly Zoom call that opens up an individual discussion, or integrate songs into your classes.
• Kinesthetic: These students have hands-on learning, and benefit from physically exploring things on their own. Although this may be difficult for online learning, get creative! Offer sewing patterns for students to learn, or assign them the list of pictures they have to capture for the entire week, or challenge students with designing an identity for themselves.

Imagine that you offer online cooking classes. If you want to cater to four types of learning in one module it could include several pages on the fundamentals of making bread rise, include an infographic detailing the science behind it, include videos of you showing and talking about the concepts aloud, and assign students the task of making their own bread loaf.

4. Employ a captivating narrator

If you're creating video for your classes, an effective narrator can be a huge distinction. If you're an avid reader of audiobooks, you probably already know the concept. An uninteresting, boring voiceover could send listeners to sleep. On the other hand, a voiceover who's engaging and interesting has the opposite effect.

Your narration must be clear and is in keeping with the overall tone of your course. Is your topic fun and interesting? Serious and sensitive? Helpful and relatable? Your videos must reflect that.

Take the time to get your narration's pace perfect and also. It's not difficult to speed through your voiceovers, which can make it hard for your students to keep up. Check your recordings and, if you're speaking too fast, start over.

Finally, don't try to sound like the voiceover talent of your choice. You're not going to sound anything like Morgan Freeman no matter how you attempt, and that's not what people are studying for. Just be yourself!

If you feel like that's not your forte it's fine. There are great professional voiceover talents available to hire which don't cost you an arm and a leg.

5. Use polls and quizzes.

Polls and quizzes can be an effective option to gauge how much your students are absorbing and learning about, and engage them at the highest quality. They also break up your content with something fun and different.

The best way to start every section with a survey. You can ask questions that will help you educate students or even just inspire them to be amusing about themselves. What can they expect to gain from your class? What's their biggest accounting pain problem? What's their favorite song? How many cakes have they prepared?

And then, you can mix and match quizzes throughout your course. Through Sensei LMS the quizzes are associated with lessons. So you can create questions that are based on lessons which a student has just finished. Making questions from different kinds -- multiple choice, true/false Fill in the empty space, short answer etc. It can make things more exciting.

You can set question types like multiple choice or false/true for auto-grading as well as manually mark open-ended question you. This allows you to find areas of improvement to your course, and reach out to any students who might need a little extra help.

6. Create a community

One of the most significant differences between online and physical learning spaces is the amount of community engaged. Students who take online courses aren't able to sit next to other people taking the same course, discussing topics with them as well as asking questions loud.

Create a similar setting by establishing the help of an online community through a social media site such as Facebook or with an WordPress plugin such as BbPress. The topics can be divided up by module or lesson, or base them off of student characteristics (like age of the students, their location, or the instrument they're learning). They give them an opportunity to talk about subjects with each other, brainstorm ideas, ask for clarification, or establish friendships to encourage them to keep learning.

7. Incorporate gamification

Gamification combines the fundamentals of games -- such as points scoring and competitionin other media including online learning. It is an excellent location to experiment with your ideas! Here are a few ideas:

• Include quizzes and challenges in your lessons
• Points awarded based on the performance of students such as completing assignments, scoring well on quizzes, etc. -- with a prize for the student who scores the highest amount of points.
• Reward students who frequently engage in your forum with badges
• Include an progress bar in your classes to motivate students to finish an entire course
• Let students publish their marks via social media

The incorporation of gamification into learning makes it more fun and encourages healthy competition. This makes your courses more engaging to students.

8. Learn what your customers are searching for.

The best way to make your courses engaging for your learners is to offer the information they're seeking. If you are able to answer their concerns and aid them in reaching the goals they set, they'll be likely to complete the course, write a good review, and even recommend it to friends and family members.

Then, adjust your course content and format as necessary to meet the students' expectations.

Your students are the most important thing.

In the end, when it comes to the matter, your learners online are at the heart of what you produce. And if you keep their needs in mind when designing your course material and formatting your classes, you'll be able to keep them interested, engaged and committed to buying more.

Need more ideas? Read this article by Sensei LMS regarding making online courses that are effective..