

One of the best ways to do this is to use a mind map creator like Mindomo. Mine is for interesting facts, stories, and statistics you can share with your class. So, take the time to dig deep into the topic you’re teaching. You can’t expect students to engage in your teachings if the material is boring or presented in a boring way. Student engagement starts with a quality lesson plan. Create Interesting Lesson Plans (Concise) The question is how do you boost student engagement in a virtual classroom setting? The seven strategies outlined below will help. Let’s talk about a few of them! 7 Student Engagement StrategiesĪccording to the University of Washington, “engaging students in the learning process increases their attention and focus, motivates them to practice higher-level critical thinking skills, and promotes meaningful learning experiences”. This is because virtual classrooms offer a greater possibility of distraction and often leave students feeling isolated.įortunately, there are a few things you can do to keep your students engaged in your online lessons. But virtual learning environments make it even more difficult. It’s never been easy to engage students - even in traditional classroom settings. Highly engaged students will be attentive, curious, and motivated to understand new concepts that will further their education. Student engagement refers to the level of interest a student shows in the learning process. Keep on reading to discover seven student engagement strategies you can use to improve your teaching abilities. If you’re an online teacher, you know what we’re talking about.įortunately, there are things you can do to ensure your class engages with and learns something from your lessons. For example, it’s extremely difficult for many students to engage with virtual classroom settings. With these differences come new challenges. These days, they simply roll out of bed and log on to a computer.

My hope is that any instructor who uses Mindomo with their students has a similar mind-opening experience and can learn something about how and what their students are thinking.Back in the day, students had to wake up early and catch a bus to earn an education. Using Mindomo is just one of the many Internet-based tools that can help me bring organizational skills into the twenty-first century for my students. This was definitely an experience that has opened up my eyes and helped me to realize how out of touch I can sometimes be in the classroom. I gained so much insight about how my students think through doing this project that there is nothing that I would trade for this knowledge. So, would I use Mindomo with my students again in the future? So, Mindomo really helped me to realize that there is a disconnection between the notes that the students are taking in class and what they are actually thinking. When the Mind Maps came in, what I realized is that not a single one of my students mentioned GEMS on their Mind Map. So, instead, I recommend the use of GEMS (Grouping Symbols, Exponents, Multiplication/Addition, and Subtraction). In class I highly stress that they should not use the mnemonic PEMDAS because it appears that there are actually six steps, when in fact there are only four steps. Not surprisingly, many of them chose ‘Order of Operations’. This past semester I asked my students to create a Mindomo Mind Map on any mathematics topic of their choice. In comes Mindomo.Īfter reflecting on my efforts to help my students, I realized that organization might not be able to be taught without changing the way that the student thinks.Īnd before using Mindomo, I really had no idea how my students think.

So, in the next class, when the instructor does not require any organization, it is highly likely that the student goes back to previous habits and my effort to help the student with organization was all for nothing. Other students may not do anything at all. If the student does it, it is likely that the student did not actually need to be taught organization skills, or that the student is just following through because it is a course requirement.

However, from past experience I have realized that checking off that a student is bringing a binder or other certain items to class does no justice to the student in terms of trying to teach these skills. One of these very important skills is organization. They need to learn life and study skills. Many students who take these classes need to learn more than just math. Teaching developmental mathematics can be a very difficult task sometimes. Using Mindomo in the Mathematics Classroom
