How to Make an E-learning Course Interesting
With the growth and development in science and technology, online teaching platforms are growing rapidly. With the better flexibility, convenience, comfort, cost-effectiveness, and more working opportunities available, educators are switching to online courses for practicing their profession.
To make an online course successful, other than active promotion and marketing, making the content interesting for students is very important. If the e-course will not be interesting, students might face understanding issues, less level of satisfaction, and may drop out too. For having a long-term association with students and providing them with an effective learning experience, make sure that course material is interesting.
Factors making e-courses less interesting
The teacher-centered approach
A teacher-centered approach to teaching means teachers explaining the subjects or lessons and students simply sitting as mere listeners. Only listening to the teachers quietly with no opportunity to speak up, and share one’s thoughts, students feel bored. Sitting in front of the computer or phone screen while only listening to the instructor affects students’ interest levels.
Limiting interactions with the active speakers
In a classroom full of students, all are different from one another. Some students are quite active speakers and confident enough to interact with teachers. However, some students struggle to initiate interactions with the teachers. If online educators also limit their interactions with the active speakers, the other students feel left out or less valued. This can make them less interested to learn.
Less relatability to the explanations
No matter how effectively you invest in your course, if the teaching patterns and study material is not engaging, students lose interest in learning. When students are not able to understand the lessons well, they lose interest in learning and may plan to drop out of the course. Lack of doubt resolution, one on one interactions, and limited teaching resources can be a few resources behind this.
Tips to make an e-course interesting for students
1. Develop a sense of community, engage learners
Learning separately and connecting only virtually sometimes gives learners a sense of isolation. To provide students with a better learning experience and ensure better online course selling, it is important to build a community. Teachers and students should have a sense of personal connection and belonging. You can divide the class into smaller groups and have icebreaker activities.
Allow students to know each other in the form of class discussions. The more students will share opinions, and ideas and learn together, the more enriching the learning experience. Call out students by their names and keep interacting with all, You can allow students to have discussions in the chat box section too in a particular period. This will provide students with a sense of community and friendliness.
2. Use videos to teach
Another way to improve your online courses is by adding interesting elements to them. To do so using audio-visual tools in the classroom is very important. Teachers should make videos for students. Add music, images, and infographics to it. With the help of visualization, students tend to understand the concepts better and quicker.
Also to make your online asynchronous course successful, recording effective video lectures holds utmost importance. With the help of video presentations, teachers can explain the academic topics well in live sessions. On the online course selling website, you can upload these videos for providing students with a better self-paced learning experience, effective promotion, and marketing strategies too.
3. Conduct quizzes in the class
Learners like to study in a study environment that is challenging and has healthy competition. Everything simple and in-hand makes learning boring, and monotonous. To ensure the growth of your online course, conducting quizzes in the class will help. The zeal and energy to give the right answer beat the competitors, and receive quality feedback from the teachers make learning much more exciting and fun for students. Therefore all online course creators should design quizzes on the course subjects. A quiz can be in any form such as tick the correct option, answer in one word, true or false, select the odd one out, etc.
Conclusion
To make an online course successful, the teaching patterns and course material needs to be interesting. By following the above-mentioned tips, teachers can make e-learning courses interesting. This provides students with a satisfactory learning experience. Using audio-visual tools, building an online community, and conducting activities are a few teaching tips in this regard.
