This post is provided by guest blogger, Sue Dumford, graduate student at the University of St Francis in Joliet, MS in Training and Development program.

In the switch to remote teaching, it can be difficult to maintain the same engagement and interactivity that you once enjoyed in the classroom. Simply presenting your same old lectures online will not suffice to entice students to participate. In this article, Marian Stoltz-Loike (2020) provides advice on how to turn the “sage on the stage” to a “guide on the side” and hopefully maintain that level of engagement you once took for granted in face-to-face classrooms. Marian’s advice tells us to stop lecturing, assign more student presentations, require collaborative projects, solicit student feedback, create online games, and provide opportunities for students to self-assess.

In this article Marian (2020) does provide some good advice, albeit nothing Earth shattering in its revelation. Her first piece of advice is to post our syllabus, which we obviously should be doing whether the class is online or face-to-face. She also recommends soliciting student feedback as a form of formative assessment to determine student understanding before moving on to the next topic. Again, formative assessment is something we should be doing on a regular basis anyway, but online we may have to be more deliberate since it is more difficult to see the confusion on their faces. Assigning collaborative projects, creating online games, stop lecturing and requiring more student presentations are all valuable ways the author also recommends to create an interactive online environment. Marian does not delve too deeply into the particulars, but the article does provide some food for thought and may provide a spark inspiration in how to increase your class’ online interaction.

Stoltz-Loike, M. (05 May, 2020).  9 next steps to make online education more engaging. Retrieved from https://campustechnology.com/Articles/2020/05/05/9-Next-Steps-to-Make-Online-Education-More-Engaging.aspx?Page=1