Encourage students to participate and engage

It's important to remember that there's no magic formula for online course participation. You can definitely expect that not everyone will participate actively, for many reasons: lack of time, and lack of motivation being the most common.

However, there are a few things you can do to encourage student participation and engagement.

Engagement Techniques

Some techniques we've seen to help support active participation and help people get value out of their courses:

• Send regular (weekly or so) emails to everyone in the course with success stories, case studies, or inspirational or motivational words.
• Create accountability partners or triads and encourage them to meet on their own and check in with each other.
• Hold coaching calls/webinars for participants - these live events help people feel part of a community and can re-energize people who feel stuck.
• Games or contests - e.g. give away a copy of a book, or a free coaching session, to the person who completes the most activities or posts the most in the discussion.

Using the Progress Section of Student Dashboard Course

You can view the progress of individual students by going to the Progress tab in your student dashboard. 

This gives you a good idea of how far along your students are, and also where they might be struggling to continue. A well-timed email, coaching call, or webinar could be just the thing to re-energize your students and get them back on track.