 It's a bit rainy out, but I thought I'd start the vlog off sitting outside because honestly Do you really want to see me sit in my office all the time? Plus the kids are upstairs and they're jumping off the furniture, which makes it sound like in my office Which is directly below like there's some sort of earthquake going on. I Miss teaching in front of the class. I miss those face-to-face times where you can walk around and engage with the students and And have that one-on-one conversation I really enjoyed getting to know my students and really enjoyed all those face-to-face encounters But we don't have access to that anymore right now We have to pivot as well with our engagement and if you're just pointing your camera at yourself and Lecturing for three hours or six hours a day. You're gonna lose your students There are three points of engagement that we really need to consider as we pivot our courses to online teaching So that's what I really want to kind of work through today Now these are in no particular order, but the first one I'm going to be discussing right now is student to student Whether you realize it or not your students have back channels going on in your class Every class that I've taught I know for a fact has either had a snapchat group or a whatsapp group or both So they are having these discussions. They're talking about the work. They're talking about the instructor They're talking about the content and it's all happening on these social media channels Now the only problem I really have with this is that sometimes some people get excluded So generally these things start with friends and then they kind of expand out as people get to know each other However, some people in the groups might not end up with access to these social media back channels So that's why I think it's important especially in our online environment as we've pivoted to online We need to create these spaces for them as well. Yes, they can have their private back channel I'm not saying put an end to that because you know what you can't anyways It's gonna happen But what we can do is create a safe place and safe space for our students to have discussions and come together with each other Now let's talk about the big three Snapchat, I know a lot of you instructors out there like I don't know how snapchat works I don't understand it. I don't get it and personally I'm still kind of trying to wrap my head around it. What's app groups? I know it's owned by Facebook and I totally I 100% understand the discussion behind Facebook and privacy issues I'm just saying that they are using it anyways, so it might be something worth considering The third one that the of the big three is discord Chances are you've got a lot of gamers in your class and the gamers love to use discord Which is an online messaging app where they can share videos audio. They can share files So more often than not a lot of these classes open up Discord channels now we also know that our LMS is most of them will have some sort of Discussion form and I am a hundred percent behind discussion forms if they're done well Now discussion forms are tricky because it is hard to get your students to engage within them And it goes it's a lot harder than just putting on some sort of prompt and telling your students that Within 150 words they have to answer this and then they have to have two posts responses to posts By the end of the week that have to be greater than 150 words That doesn't really foster the type of engagement that you you're wanting to have what I would recommend is yes You can't have the prompts and if you're going to use prompts keep in mind keep them open-ended questions They've got to be answers that are going to you know allow for some sort of discussion no yes or no no close ended No, give me this and that be done with it Another thing is have fun with them get them posting and answering like when you when you're designing your prompts and Thinking about your prompts think about a fun way that you can get your students to respond to it So something I'm trying out now and it's kind of the students have been actually quite enjoying is I get them to respond Sometimes in gifts and so or Jeff's or however you want to pronounce it gifts or Jeff's I think it's gifts because it's a graphical interface, but some people pronounce it Jeff's. I'm not here to judge or Gudge I you can use memes you can use gifts You can use Jeff's you can use movies and then you yourself get in there get in your discussion forums when you set up those Discussion boards and when you set up the social media that you might use or the back channels You might use get involved in there just to get the discussion going and keep it moving and get them trying to Interact back and forth with each other because none of this is going to happen on its own and none of this is just Going to happen based solely on them point number two Student to instructor engagement and this is so very important especially in the online world It's so easy to run our online courses as a dump and run because we can use our LMS and just dump all our Worksheets dump all our handouts dump all the readings on to there and then disappear and ghost You're not as visible as you used to be in a face-to-face situation You know you're there You know you're in the back end and try to make things work and then add this stuff and to get things going and you know We've maybe got a few discussion boards going but you're not as visible as you used to be and students need that They need to understand that there is somebody there you need to have what's called a Social and a teaching presence what some people are doing and I think this is absolutely brilliant is They are starting course trailers. You know just like a movie trailer that you watch for the first It's like 30 seconds telling you what the movie is about It's a dinosaur Go ahead and build a course trailer. What's the course about? What can they expect from you? What can you they expect from the course itself? Just allow them to put a face to the course throw out a quick update video Just it doesn't have to be much again It could just be you pulling out your camera your phone and just going to your native camera app And going ahead and putting it on the phone Answer the questions that the students, you know keep coming up, but just have a presence. Don't go some do not become the invisible man You need to be there and have an active presence for your student offer weekly office hours Most of you have access to some sort of video conferencing software Use them for video office hours once a week say, okay I'm going to be here Wednesday from six o'clock till 7 30 to answer any questions you have about the course Help me help you Just engage with your students have some sort of presence with them It's easy enough to do in a face-to-face class You have to be a lot more deliberate when you're doing it in an online environment Student to instructor Engagement is important Another one is your student to content engagement And this is something I think it's missed a lot because when you think about it Your students do engage with the content and oftentimes though that engagement is through you the instructor, right? It's you up on that whiteboard writing things out. It's you handing out It's you lecturing. So you you kind of mix in the two the student and instructor Interaction and engagement and then the content and student interaction and engagement They're kind of the two in the same thing in a face-to-face environment, but They're not definitely in an online environment Your students engage with the content differently because they don't have access to you teaching all the time Don't do a dump and run. Do not just load up your lms full of worksheets full of videos Full of resources and say, okay. There you go. Have at it They need to be engaged with the content and they're going to get overwhelmed if you do that So you have to be a lot more deliberate with your design Most of you have learning teaching centers that can help you out with this But some tools that are great to get your students engaging Are things tools like h5p.org It's an amazing amazing tool that gives you tons of different interactive elements that you can build And very easily don't be intimidated. It's not coding or anything But you can build these amazing interactive video Course branching situations hot spots quizzes. There's so much you can build within it other ones that i'm sure some of you have used in your face-to-face Kahoot kahoot is amazing. So again, you can get your students engaging with the content that way Quizlet that is another one that can get your students engaging What I would highly highly recommend is you start looking into these and start investigating different ways You can get your students to engage with the content Video they say is king and it's true But if you are going to use video make sure that that video stays less than about 10 minutes And honestly most of our concepts can be cut into 10 minute chunks If they go longer than 10 minutes sometimes they do but if they go longer than 10 minutes Maybe look at a way to divide that somehow and there usually always is a way The students engage with the content differently in an online environment So we need to design the content differently in an online environment What are some of the ways that you've designed your courses for engagement and by engagement again? I mean the student to student The student to instructor And the student to content. I would love to hear your ideas Please put them down in the comments down below It helps out everybody to hear that if you've done things and that work Please let us know as students if you're watching this and I know some of you are What are some of the things that you wish your instructors could do or that you had done in classes to keep you engaged in this online environment? I would love to hear your context and how we can all do this better