10 strategies to engage students in online discussions
We are teachers from Melbourne, Australia, and like many of you, have had to adjust to longer stints of teaching remotely due to the pandemic. One of the challenges we have faced is trying to engage students in class discussions. In the remote environment, the pauses are longer, the students microphones or cameras are conveniently not working and at times, teachers may feel like they are talking to themselves! With these few strategies, we aim to set up your classes for success so that students are willing to participate and speak online.
1. Establish norms to create a safe space:
We do this in our physical classrooms, so it is important to recognise with students that the remote environment also has norms about how we interact with one another. You could spend time deciding on these shared norms as a class, or use one that we have made for you here.
2. Ask for cameras to be turned on.
Depending on your school context, this may not be a possibility, but if it is, it will make a huge difference. If students are using Teams, they can blur their backgrounds so that their surroundings are not noticeable so that their personal environment is not being shown on screen. Engaging students with brain breaks (see #3) is a way to encourage students to switch on their cameras so they can participate.
3. Start with a warm up or brain break.
Build in a five minute warm up activity gets students familiar with speaking online. These warm up questions don’t need to be about the work, specifically. Be creative, and use it as a way to get to know your students a little better. The Institute for Positive Education have put together a Zoom edition of brain breaks that you can access here. One that works well is ‘One, Two, Three, Three - Argh!’ which you could use for three minutes each lesson for a week, and challenge the students to get better each time.
Alternatively, you could use a visual, such as a ‘spot the difference’ pair of images and ask students to share what the differences they observe. The key is, you want to make this low stakes speaking and listening to build their confidence when speaking in this environment.
Questions as discussion starters also work well. You can use generic ones, such as ‘What superpower would you like to have and why’ or construct your own based on the Thinkers Keys. This grid will help you start designing your own.
4. Ask students to type a summarised answer before they speak.
You won’t be able to hear from every single student, so encourage students to formulate a summarised written response to your question first and share this in the class chat box. Be careful not to call only on students who type their responses though, as students will quickly learn that if they don’t share their writing, they won’t be called upon!
5. Encourage students to engage in each other’s posts.
We can still teach conversation etiquette remotely. Encourage students to like each other’s post using the thumbs up or heart emojis if they agree with something that has been said. Also encourage students to build on each others ideas when they are speaking - teach them sentences openers such as “Adding on from what Susan said/posted…” or “Whilst I agree with Jessie, I also think that…”. Students like having their ideas recognised, so feel free to also like posts as positive reinforcement too.
6. Give students discussion questions ahead of time.
Students do not like to be put on the spot, and neither do we! It’s human nature. Try to build in discussion questions into activities that students are completing. You could do this by adding it to a worksheet that they are expected to complete, or sharing the question at the end of the previous lesson. Encourage students to jot down their ideas before the lesson so that they don’t feel under pressure on the day.
7. Use visuals.
Visuals are great as they spark curiosity and give students something physical to refer to. One strategy we use is Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) which guides students to deconstruct a visual using three questions:
What is going on in this picture?
What do you see that makes you say that?
What else can you find?
You could also guide students through this process using See/Think/Wonder by asking students:
What do you see?
What do you think is going on?
What does it make you wonder?
8. Provide statements for line discussions:
In class, we often run debates asking students to ‘strongly agree’, ‘strongly disagree’ or sit somewhere in the middle and we can still do this remotely. Provide a statement and ask students to place themselves on the continuum. Call on them at random, ask them to state their position and justify why.
9. Share sentence stems to prompt discussion.
Share a visual or slide with sentence stems to spark conversation whenever you are trying to run a discussion. We have made one for you that you can download here.
10. Be silent
This can be the hardest of them all, as it is so easy to step in and fill empty silences; however, this shows students that we are willing to do the hard work for them. Once you have students talking, try to slowly remove yourself from the discussion. You may at times need to facilitate by asking ‘Can anyone add anything’, by try to ease out of this and encourage students to build on their peers ideas and thoughts. This takes time, but you can do it!
If you would like this information in an info graphic, our community member Nirvana Watkins made this excellent resource. Thank you!