Statista data from the United States say that the presence of the COVID-19 virus has dramatically influenced the course of education in the United States in 2021. As of April 2021, about 23.15 million U.S. households with children under 18 were receiving online or virtual instruction from a teacher for their children. But it is not so important how many people have switched to online learning, as what difficulties teachers and students faced while learning remotely. 

In the days of distance learning, many teachers are faced with the fact that it is difficult to actively attract students to participate in the lesson. Online learning took away from us a vital skill: understanding the person's body language in front of us. It is more than true during online classes for teachers and students.

In addition, online discussions are often hampered by differences in student access to technology and privacy considerations. Hence, many teachers rely on students to submit work over isolated channels such as email that you can pass between peers.

It takes a lot of work to solve the problem of involving children in the online learning process. We shared some of the most valuable tips to help you get your students online more productively in this article.

1. Initiate discussions online

After you've read the course material, don't just give students homework or quizzes. Try starting a discussion club with them. Encourage your students to talk about the issues they have learned, encourage them to communicate with each other in groups or individually talk about the problem.

This approach is suitable for learning the material and helps your students be more involved in the process.

2. Use chat communication

During the lecture, encourage your students to use the available means of reacting to your material. For example, you can send emoticons, raised fingers, etc., to respond to material students see and hear.

This practice helps test students' understanding and encourages them to engage more with the content.

3. Review and criticism the work of peers

An excellent way to get more feedback and communication from students is to ask them to "walk" through fellow students' galleries and give feedback.

This interaction allows students to review their classmates' projects while learning from each other. Forbes writes that the initial challenge is to motivate students to come to class or complete assignments.

4. Create an online brainstorming session.

This popular way for students to interact is producing great offline results. But can it be done online?

We encourage teachers to divide their students into groups on the internet and create shared Google Docs - or Google Slide Series - for hints/questions. Each group left their thoughts in question by the designated deadline and then commented on the other groups' responses the next day. Thus, you can brainstorm on a given topic online.

Conclusion

Learning online is a complex experiment that many of us have been going through over the past couple of years. It is our new reality, and we need to adapt to this. A good teacher can find a way out and involve your students in studying the material even while online. The tips above will help you interact better with your students. And if you want to develop your learning environment, you can order user experience design services for your school or courses and get a customized online learning solution.

Author’s bio: Anastasiia Lastovetska is a technology writer at MLSDev, a software development company that builds web & mobile app solutions from scratch. She researches the area of technology to create great content about app development, UX/UI design, tech & business consulting.