Assessing Student Engagement During Online Classes

While teaching classes online, it may be difficult to gauge the levels of engagement. Keary Shandler, Program Coordinator for Undergraduate Business at Murdoch University Dubai, shares her tips to assess the level of engagement in online learning sessions.

Apart from the usual Learning Management System means of identifying student engagement online, there are tips for checking attendance in online classes, i.e. ensuring that they are actually present during the session and not just logged in.

Address the students by name at random and ask them to respond to questions and contribute in some way, much as you might do in the classroom in person. Asking a student to speak during online lessons also breaks potential monotony.

Sending an individual chat message will check for their presence during lessons (e.g. “John, are you on track with the project?”).

Ask them to raise their hands from time to time to make sure they’re still in the session, or whenever they come back from a breakout group to the main group.

Polls and quizzes throughout classes can show you who’s still present and will help maintain variety and interest. Their votes would show up with a Y or N against their names and you will be able to see who has voted or not. If there is no response after 30 seconds, call out their names to see if they might have wandered off.

Watch out for those students who are still logged in after the session has been concluded as well. This will help you determine if a student has simply logged in, but was not physically present.

Watch Keary’s video on how to gauge student engagement.