How to Engage Students Before and After the Course Launch
Originally published at Engage Students
At some point in their lives, many people think about sharing knowledge and skills online. The first challenge they face, which prevents half of them from going forward, is the lack of learners. So, the most common question is related to student engagement. Where should I find students?
In the present article, I am going to discuss how to engage students in online learning. We will together identify different ways to engage students online before and after the educational material is launched on your platform.
By the way, if you have not still created your e-learning platform, I may offer you to register on a membership e-learning portal and create your website with no code. Uteach is such a platform that offers the users a waste of opportunities and advanced features.
How to Engage Students
Evoking the learners’ interest and keeping them motivated throughout an e-learning course is a real challenge for even the most experienced course creators. It is not just as easy as you share knowledge, and I immediately acquired it. Teaching is a great responsibility and before choosing this or that specialist or educational material, learners analyze the market in detail and choose who to trust. So, the key point is to evoke interest in your upcoming content and increase the credibility among the potential learners, motivating them in participating. The main trick is to be ready to come up with activities to engage students and stand out in the competition at any stage of the teaching process. After all, you do not make somebody learn, but you offer an environment that promotes learning. In the below-attached infographic, you may find a short introduction to the student engagement process.
Now it is time to discuss the before and after phases of the student engagement in detail.
Student Engagement Before
#1 Build Anticipations
Identify some ways to hook the potential learners into your course idea. It may be implemented through a pre-work activity. For instance, you may record a short introductory video where you will present the content, topic ideas, or state useful statistics related to the industry. Make sure to keep it short and as catchy as possible.
Creating anticipation, you evoke the potential learners’ excitement and motivate them before they ever even access the content.
#2 Share the Expectations and Final Goals
Let the learners know about your final goals for them to realize what they may expect from that upcoming piece of content and what they will get during the process. With such an approach, you already motivate the interested people to deal with standards set forth. Be very detailed and clear about how the educational material will be classified in order to outline the exact outcomes. This will make the points simple for the learners and decrease the level of anxiety. Potential students become more clear about what they are going to learn and what they need to do to accomplish the set assignments and reach success.
Of course, you may choose how to do this:
- offer a written curriculum including expectations and assignments
- list all the expectations at the beginning slides on the presentation of your course
- outline expectations in the course overview online
#3 Identify Your Audience
Who do you work for? Of course, for your target market. So, you need to learn who your potential learners are and what requirements, preferences, and expectations they have. Identifying your target audience will help you prepare the educational material which is required and people will be interested in learning from it. This approach helps better understand the market demands and provide content, whether it is about video courses or online training sessions, that meets the market demand and satisfies the potential learners.
So, assess the learners’ needs in order to design a course that will help them achieve success. You may create surveys, prepare polls and ask some questions to check out the level of background knowledge and previous experience of your target audience. This will help you classify the material according to levels as well as find out factors or elements that will motivate the learners.
By the way, once I have shared some tips about building an audience. Check it out. Maybe, you will find some inspiration: tips to build an audience.
#4 Let the Value of Your Upcoming Course Easy to Understand
Present the details about the course you are working on. Make sure the potential learners’ group completely gets your primary message and understands the value of your content. Such a tactic will increase the buy-in rate of your course as people consider the points and make decisions. Clearly present how the content will help them learn or improve specific skills or find solutions for specific situations and problems.
To make the relevance even more clear, you may connect the values with real-life situations and cases when it is the best solution. In such cases, when the potential learners realize the real value of your knowledge and its demand they will undoubtedly wait for your course content.
Student Engagement After
Before passing on activities you should make after your course is launched, let me share a link to one of my previous articles where I have talked about creating engaging training videos. Hopefully, you will like it and it will be useful in the process of course creation. We may consider that this is the stage of evoking student engagement during the course preparation and design. Now let’s go on and consider what you should do to arouse interest when your educational content is already published on your platform.
#5 Celebrate Learners Completion of Your Course
Each of us stays motivated when we are aware of our accomplishments and acquirements. As a good teacher (or as I like to say — creator), you should care not only to find ways to provide feedback during the course to the learners but you should also offer feedback related to the course completion. It is highly recommended to give certificates of completion as well. Certificates have a great role in education to emphasize the job is well done and there is proof for it. In the end, challenge the participants to go on their study and research or go deeper into the industry to learn to solve even more complex problems.
#6 Provide Takeaways
Attach some material the learners may take back. This may be related to helpful statistics, infographics, textual files, or something related to your educational courses that may be useful for the learners. Whenever they check out these takeaways, they will remember the material and refresh their knowledge. The more they remember, the more they will be motivated to implement skills learned throughout the course.
#7 Run Promotional Campaigns
Once your course is available, start promoting it. Use social media channels or display banners to increase awareness in the market. Promote your valuable courses through usual posts as well as present advertising content. Establish a communication plan that transmits specific messages, using a couple of different channels. Evoke the market interest through a series of emails, promotional graphics, etc. Be creative and prepare a series of messages across multiple mediums.
#8 Make Updates
When the educational content is already published and learners may take part in your courses and training sessions, you have an opportunity to get their opinion and feedback. This will help to identify any misunderstandings and unclear points. Accordingly, you should refresh the content so that it meets the preferences in the market and learners easily get the message. Besides, the world is constantly changing, and we need to go along with the flow. Always stay tuned and know all the changes in your specific niche. It will help you share accurate and up-to-date knowledge experience in a clear way.
To Sum Up
It is a real challenge to keep the learners motivated, especially when you come up with e-learning courses. Overcome this motivation and engagement challenge, building anticipation before the course, keep the learners consistently engaged throughout the course, and make them think more once the course ends. The learners should always be at the most important point in your mind when you work on the course as their success leads to intrinsic motivation, which takes to the ultimate goal of learning.
So, do not miss your opportunity to become a successful creator whose educational content is engaging and motivational for potential learners. Keep going a good job.
