Activating and Engaging Students in Online Asynchronous Classes

Abstract

During the recent pandemic many instructors had to rapidly transform their in-person classes and adapt with the online teaching environment. This transition from in-person to online teaching modality raised challenges for both instructors and students. The lack of interactions either between instructors and students or between students themselves was reported to impact the quality of student learning experience and knowledge acquisition in online courses. This paper studies a discussion-based learning tool specifically designed for online asynchronous classes to promote student engagement and facilitate interactions. The developed online discussion platform served as an engagement tool with the purpose of initiating a multimodal communication hub for a diverse group of students located in different geographical locations and time zones. The preliminary measurements of the learning outcomes indicated the effectiveness of using such educational tools to close the learning gap between online and in-person classes. In addition a survey conducted to study the mediators that both contribute to and inhibit students participation in the online discussion. The strategies and tools discussed in this study could be inspiring for instructors as to how they may repurpose the available resources and learning tools to maximize their instructional practice.