With the growth and development in science and technology, leaving behind conventional classrooms and blackboard studies, online teaching is spreading at a much faster rate. With the better flexibility, convenience, comfort, cost-effectiveness, and growth guaranteed, the online courses platform is the new preference of educators and learners all across the world. Every online course creator tries their best to get more enrollments and keep students engaged till the end of the course duration.
But due to some challenges and circumstances, some students don’t complete your course till last. When students leave the course in between, it can affect your image in the market and also sales are reduced. You need to figure out why students have left your course, work for improvement, bring back these learners, and re-engage them respectively. Let us discuss a complete set of tips that can be followed in this regard.
Steps to re-engage students in an online course
1. Seek feedback
The first step to figuring out why students have dropped out of your course is by asking for feedback from them. Send personalized emails and ask what made them leave the course in between. Let them feel secure and comfortable in sharing the feedback. This way students will talk about the course, the problems they faced, and why they discontinued. This will help you to improve your online course services, become better and get the drop out back to your course. When students will be re-engaged, the traffic on the online course selling website will be increased again and course sales will be boosted too.
2. Improve your course content
One of the main elements that make an online course successful by having a good amount of enrollments is the course content. Better the quality of online course study material, better the learning outcomes and the learning experience of students. To re-engage learners and to make sure that the current learners don’t drop out in between, you should focus on improving the course content.
Check your competitors, and see what kind of content they are making for their students. Now plan well, and create the best content. Make sure to have more audiovisual tools. With the help of visualization, students tend to understand the concepts better and more quickly. Have audiovisual tools like educational videos, modules, demonstrations, picture cards, PowerPoint presentations, infographics, and animations.
3. Have engaging activities
If you feel that some of your course students are being irregular for the classes or not meeting the work deadlines, organizing activities that will grab their attention back is very important. Listening to the teachers every day or only having video lectures in hand, make learning boring and monotonous. Because of this, students drop interest in learning. To overcome these issues, try to conduct active learning and creative activities. Remember to have course activities that keep students focused and active in learning from the start so that the chances of dropouts don’t occur. Online quizzes, online discussions, debates, recitations, and question-answer rounds are some examples of engaging activities.
4. Have personal interactions
To re-engage students or to make sure that current learners continue the course till the end, this step is important to follow. When teachers don’t interact with students regularly, communication barriers occur. This makes students feel isolated and less interested in their online courses. Because of this, they feel like discontinuing or dropping out in between. To prevent this from happening to you, try to have personal interactions with all students.
Some students are quite vocal whereas some stay quiet and reserved. In online live classes, you have to try to interact with all students. Call out students one by one, ask whether they are understanding well or not, and make them feel comfortable with you. Via SMS, calls, and emails interact with students who have dropped out, listen to their problems, be accountable and give them faith that their problems will be solved.
Conclusion
Every online course creator wants the students who have enrolled in the course to reach the final stage and complete the course successfully. But sometimes, students drop out too. Disappointments, poor learning experience, lack of interest and motivation can be a few reasons behind this problem. However, by following the above-mentioned tips, online course creators can bring back these learners and re-engage them in your online course.