Providing Engagement Opportunities for Students

February 21, 2022

Providing Engagement Opportunities for Students

Strategies
- Anonymous Check-in Survey – Now is a great time to check in with your class by offering an anonymous and informal survey to gain insight into their perception of the course. The specific goals of having this survey will vary depending on what you want to know. However, we recommend considering these questions as you create your survey (more below on actually creating the survey in Canvas):
  - Level of comfort with the material itself.
    - What are they struggling with? Where could they use a different type of explanation or perhaps a different way of delivering the content?
  - Ease of access to the material, including ease of navigation of the Canvas site for locating content such as assignments, grades, and materials.
    - Are students struggling with easily locating assignments and the material necessary for successfully completing them? Are students aware of resources in the course?
  - Satisfaction with engagement.
    - Are students satisfied with the level of engagement they are getting from their peers? Are they satisfied with the level of engagement they are getting from you?
  - Satisfaction with feedback on assignments.
    - Do students feel as though the feedback they receive is helping them? Are they actually looking at the feedback?
  - Recommendations they think could help them.
    - Be sure to provide your students with opportunities for open-ended questions or free-response options so they can suggest something that maybe you had not thought to ask.
- Zoom chat waterfall – This strategy is particularly helpful if you want your students to engage with a question or a prompt. Intentionally chunk the time that students have for thinking about, writing about, and replying to a prompt. This can increase participation and engagement without overwhelming your learners!
  - Split the class into two groups by alphabetical order (e.g. last names A-M is group 1 and last names N-Z is group 2).
  - Have group 1 enter their response into the chat, without hitting enter. Give them 1-3 minutes to enter their message.
  - On the count of three, have group 1 hit enter. This creates the waterfall effect of all the messages pouring in at once.
  - Give group 2 a few minutes (3-4 minutes) to read and then repeat the process.
Technology & Tools
- Canvas Survey – Alright, now how do you actually make this survey?
  - If you know how to make a quiz in Canvas then you know how to make a survey! Simply click the drop-down box by “Quiz Type” and select “Ungraded Survey”. Immediately beneath that, locate the “Options” section and be sure to select “Keep Submissions Anonymous”. From there you will add in questions as you normally would.
  - If you are less than comfortable with making a quiz in Canvas, we recommend enrolling in the Faculty Resource Center

Upcoming Live Training & Tech Tip

- - Tuesday Tech Tip: Zoom Polls
    - Be sure to catch the Tuesday Tech Tip by following us on social media (links below)! You will learn about how making a Zoom poll (by logging into your Clemson Zoom account) before your Zoom meeting can be an effective means of creating engagement. Once you create your poll, launch it in the meeting and your participants can enter answers.
  - Quick Hits
    - The Learning Technology Team, here at Clemson Online, is launching a Quick Hits Series focusing on creating and using group projects in Canvas!
    - The first Quick Hits in this series of four sessions will demonstrate how to edit your Canvas course grade book and assignments specifically for group projects.
    - Register here for this Quick Hit session that will run on Thursday, February 24th from 3:30 – 4 PM