Infographic: 10 Best Practices For Engaging Virtual Teaching

Blackboard | Sep 08, 2020

Engaging and motivating online students requires creativity, flexibility and new practices. Check out the below infographic for 10 ways to engage your students online. Have a best practice of your own to share? Tweet us @Blackboard.

Educator virtual teaching tips:

Establish virtual office hours for students who could benefit from more of your time. Set up flexible time every week for students to drop into your virtual office to ask questions in real time.

Upload a "welcome" slide to your virtual classroom so new students know they're in the right place.

Use the whiteboard feature in your virtual classroom to illustrate your ideas in real-time. Use your device or computer screen capture tool to save the whiteboard when you’re done.

Provide transcripts, PowerPoint slides, and other materials referenced in your lecture recordings so that students can still review materials if they can’t stream your video.

Students may be running late from another session, have connection problems, or learning how to use virtual learning materials for the first time. Give students time to settle in & set a timer to let them know when the session starts.

Keep students engaged during synchronous sessions by using tools like chat, polls, and breakout rooms.

Help students feel more prepared by increasing opportunities for low stakes “micro-assignments.” Design inclusive micro-assignments that connect to students’ culture, interests, and background knowledge.

Keep your students' attention by giving them opportunities to participate. Ask reflective questions to help them retain what you presented.

Embed specific, open-ended questions into your lectures, in lieu of yes/no or general questions. Online polling tools can also be useful for generating interaction and boosting engagement.

Use the free Blackboard Ally File Transformer to convert scanned PDFs into searchable electronic documents that will work better with screen readers, assistive technologies, and study tools.

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