Engaging Students Online

You can use a range of technologies to help students to engage with your module. For example, consider having a Discussion for students to introduce themselves or ask questions relating to the module's material. In addition to nurturing a sense of community, this can also reduce the time you spend dealing with common queries.

Other learning technologies such Collaborate (Trinity's virtual classroom tool available within Blackboard), allow both you and your students to use features such as video, voice polls, chat and slide annotations to communicate. Consider the different options that can support class-wide interactions; for example, polls and text chat allow students who might otherwise be more reticent to speak to engage meaningfully during a large-scale webinar.

Whichever option you use, it is important to make it clear to students how they are expected to engage with these tools. This page covers some of the concepts that underpin these approaches such as Netiquette and encouraging dialogue.

Below are some aspects of your Blackboard module design that can help to support engaging online activities.

Set and share clear learning outcomes prominently in your module.
Set clear boundaries to manage expectations with email response times and office hours.
Consider whether your Blackboard layout make ‘sense’ to students in terms of quickly accessing activities — for example, try navigating through to the activity using Blackboard's Student Preview option.
Communicate your expectations for student participation in tasks and activities.
Carefully curate the instructions and resources that relate to your activities: don’t overload students with too many resources at once.
In fully-online modules, students may ask more frequently for technical support — set expectations about what you can and cannot answer.

Socialisation within the learning community is an important aspect of student learning. In face-to-face (or in-person) teaching, connections within the learning community between students and staff, and amongst students, happens organically when they physically meet in lecture halls, labs and other teaching spaces. However, without the surroundings of the University, learning can be a solitary experience. Creating a ‘social presence’ online requires distinct scaffolding but can play a key role in student engagement and motivation when in an online environment.

Consider the following options to help develop a sense of an online community:

Facilitate peer communication: use communication tools (such as discussion boards) to give students an opportunity to ask questions which may be answered by classmates and/or staff. In addition to nurturing a sense of community, this can also reduce the time you spend dealing with common queries (example screenshot). Make it clear to students how they are expected to engage with discussions and how often staff will reply to posts (if at all).

Communicate regularly and clarify expectations: this is important particularly at the outset of a module. Tell students how to contact you and how you plan to communicate with them.
Use the Announcements tool to communicate updates on an approximately weekly schedule. However, communicating too often, and via multiple channels, can lead to student disengagement and overload. Advise students to check their notification settings in Blackboard so they can set their preferences for alerts.
Consider hosting a regular “office hour” (e.g. via the virtual classroom).

In face-to-face environments, students and staff are usually clear in how they interact with each. They can use non-verbal feedback cues to agree on a positive atmosphere for teaching and learning. In virtual teaching spaces, agreeing a code of conduct (or 'rules of engagement’) helps to ensure a similarly positive environment. Clarifying what you and your students understand as appropriate 'netiquette' for use is best done at the beginning of a module, just as you would make your expectations for students clear in-person in the first lecture. Making these explicit can enhance teaching and learning and encouraging more meaningful engagement for all. They also allow you to manage student expectations e.g. by setting boundaries on 'reasonable' response times to student queries.

Below are some sample templates for agreeing netiquette for engagement in online teaching.

Netiquette Guideline	Benefit to Lecturer	Benefit to Student
1. Use full names, not nicknames or pseudonyms, in all interactions.	Allows you to ‘humanise’ interactions by using students’ names. Transparency with respect to who is contributing to tasks and attending lectures/tutorials.	Increases sense of community and connection with College. Students get recognition for their own contributions.
2. Put up profile pictures instead of blank screens where you can't, or won't, share video in live tutorials (e.g. in Collaborate, Teams etc).	Less intimidating than teaching to blank screens: makes the process feel more ‘real’.	Decreases sense of ‘learning in isolation’: students see peers as people and are more likely to feel part of a community of learners.
3. Be polite in all communications: try to avoid wry, dry, jokey or sarcastic comments in writing.	Without body language or tone cues, communications can be misunderstood or misinterpreted more easily than in person.	Students can be easily hurt, discouraged, or demotivated by ‘sharp’ communications.
4. Avoid using ‘ALL CAPS’ in communications.	Goes against inclusive teaching principles: ‘ALL CAPS’ is harder for students with additional needs to read. Often understood as ‘shouting’ in text-based communications.	Harder for peers to read. Can be ‘emotional’ in use and detract from content engagement.
5. Run emails/posts/text- documents through a spelling and grammar check before sending/posting.	Reduces guesswork for you as to what students actually mean in their writing.	Minimises reader confusion. Reduces the need for additional posts/clarifications.
6. Be polite when requesting information or contributions from others.	Turn-taking needs to be more structured online than in person. More planning is needed to ensure that students aren’t talking over each other in live sessions and that contributions are meaningful in online discussions.	Reduces risk of disengagement with online posts (e.g. no ‘flaming’ of answers they disagree with which can shut down dialogue).
7. Keep contributions brief and meaningful both in written and spoken environments.	Stops ‘monologuing’ students from overtalking their peers. Enables richer class discussions.	Allows more time for others to contribute. Enables richer class discussions.
8. Be patient as everyone adapts to the new environment.	It’s ok to not be an expert in online education. Things are not going to be perfect and teaching is likely to be more ‘work’ than it is in face-to-face environments.	Students see you as more human, rather than as an ‘instructor’. They will be more patient with you if you are patient with them.
9. Contextualise questions and responses.	This allows you to track where a question is coming from, e.g. from a particular area of a discussion forum, live webinar, or lecture.	Students cannot refer back to previous materials as easily as in a face-to-face context.

To help to encourage dialogue both between you and your students - and among students:

Prepare ‘rich’ prompts and open questions in advance for discussion boards/whiteboards/tutorials.
Encourage ‘thinking out loud’ on discussion boards etc.
Moderate with a light touch: don't respond to every post on a board - this gives students a chance to respond to each other.

To help to create a welcoming online space you can also:

Use early ‘live’ time during webinars to welcome students to a module.
Build trust with and between learners: model and require rich introductions and icebreakers.
Think about using less formal, more casual language than you would in face-to-face lectures.

In the next section, we conclude with an overview of the main digital learning technologies used in Trinity along with links to guides and support.

Enhancing presence through module design

Socialisation

Netiquette

Encouraging dialogue

Humanising Interactions