Quick tips for generating teacher presence and student engagement

• Create weekly video clips (2-3 mins) using Panopto to summarise the week’s work and guide students to the required tasks for the week ahead. This would help encourage student engagement and participation.
• Make more concerted effort to connect with students through effective and engaging open-ended questions within Discussion Forums. Video and/or audio can be used to introduce students to a Discussion Forum activity.
• Make sure your Akoraka | Learn course page is easy to navigate and instructive for students. This means setting up a consistent structure for the course that easily guides students to what they are expected to do.  The course page should be welcoming (use colour, pictures, video), engaging (students do things on the site) and a place where students feel involved in the course (they have a voice and can easily communicate with the lecturer).
• Having descriptive labels for content and clear instructions for learning activities are key to making an effective online learning environment.
• Forums, short videos and quizzes are additional features that can be built into a course to make it more engaging for students.
• The role you take as the teacher in the online environment makes a big difference to the students learning experience. Make time to regularly post updates and information, encourage participation in learning activities, monitor discussion forums and provide frequent feedback.
• Put your picture and a short introduction on your Akoraka | Learn course page.  This will help students feel that you are ‘always there’ and involved in their online learning environment.

For more guidance, see our page on Course delivery approach.