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Key takeaways:
- Online classes can make it harder for students to stay focused, especially if they’re multitasking or receiving fewer nonverbal cues from their tutor.
- Active learning techniques are a great way to turn students from passive listeners into active participants during online lessons.
- Tutors should keep an eye out for subtle signs as to when a student may be distracted or struggling to focus.
Why students lose focus during online class
Keeping a student focused throughout the duration of an online lesson is a tricky job. One moment, you’re positive you have their attention. The next, their eyes are looking somewhere else or glazed over entirely.
Unfortunately, modern research increasingly suggests that this is an unavoidable consequence of teaching in an online environment. In a 2021 study published in NeuroRegulation, researchers looked at a phenomenon that’s now commonly known as “Zoom fatigue.” They found that students will often be less responsive during synchronous online classes.
Online tutoring presents educators with a modern problem. While we might not be consciously aware of it, so much of our communication in physical classrooms happens through small, nonverbal cues:
- A confused expression
- A raised eyebrow
- A student shifting forward in their seat
- A look of concentration
But online, tutors don’t often get to observe those expressions as naturally as they would in a classroom, making them much harder to read. And as the authors of the study note, the nonresponsiveness associated with online learning leads to fewer of these valuable cues.
How to engage students online
The good news is that keeping students engaged online doesn’t require tutors to start designing their lessons to be packed with bells, whistles, and seventeen different activities. You just need to give your students a real reason to participate. And in many cases, it only takes a few small changes to make a big difference.
Broadly, your aim should be to give students regular opportunities to think, respond, and participate throughout the lesson. There are three simple ways to accomplish this:
1. Ask questions often
Questions are arguably the easiest way to bring a student into the lesson, especially in a 1:1 setting. Ask them to predict an answer, to explain their reasoning, to solve the next step, or to connect a new concept to something they learned in a past lesson.
The trick is to allow some silence after asking a question, too. The student should feel free to really think before speaking, as opposed to feeling pressured to answer immediately.
2. Make room for discussion
An online lesson shouldn’t feel like a one-sided lecture. In online formats, it’s essential to give students an opportunity to talk through their ideas, explain their answers, debate with you (or other students) about different possibilities, or teach a concept back to you.
Just a few minutes of discussion can make a massive difference, but the more, the better. The more frequent the discussions are, the more opportunities students have to process and respond to what they’re learning from you.
3. Use active learning techniques
Students are far more likely to invest in something that they’re playing an active part in. Depending on the subject, some simple ways to get students involved include asking them to:
- Solve a problem on a shared whiteboard
- Annotate a text
- Create a mind map
- Answer a quick quiz
- Work through an example before seeing the solution
- Play a game or watch an interactive video related to the topic
The activities themselves don’t have to be elaborate or time-consuming for you to prepare. All that matters is that your students get to play an active role in the lesson.
What’s great about online lessons is that they give tutors access to a host of tools that can make participation easier. Virtual classroom platforms like Pencil Spaces bring many of these tools together in one place.
The key is to remember that every tool should have an explicit purpose. Playing a game will only be useful in the long-term if it helps the student practice and demonstrate what they’re learning, no matter how fun it is.
Monitoring student engagement in online classes
Even with a well-designed lesson, it’s normal for students to still occasionally drift or lose focus. This is especially true for online lessons, where they can all too easily and discreetly be tempted by other applications or tabs on their device.
Since there’s no way to fully prevent distraction in an online lesson, the most important thing you can do as an educator is notice it early enough to do something about it.
Some signs of distraction are fairly obvious. In a 1:1 setting, your student might start giving abnormally short responses, look away from the screen/camera, or take much longer than usual to complete a task. In group settings, the signs are even harder to notice, as there are more students to keep track of.
According to a 2022 study published in Communication Education, students actually place a considerable amount of value on developing their own self-regulation skills in online learning. Even more notably, instructor-student interaction was the strongest of the three forms of interaction examined in relation to the students’ perceived learning; it mattered more than student-student and student-content interaction.
This is something worth keeping in mind for tutors, as it’s easy to forget that attention isn’t solely the student’s responsibility. Educators play a very important role in fostering an beneficial environment that encourages participation. That means noticing when a learner needs a little help getting back on track.
Thankfully, technology can also help here. Pencil Spaces includes built-in distraction alerts that give tutors an extra set of eyes on student engagement. If a student goes idle for too long or they switch to another application or browser tab, tutors instantly receive an indicator that they might be distracted. This gives tutors the chance to quickly and discreetly check in, switch up the activity, or give the class a moment to refocus.
It’s a small feature, but its impact isn’t. When a tutor is already trying to teach, manage the lesson, answer questions, and keep an eye on everything happening in the virtual classroom, a little help monitoring can go a long way.
Overall, student engagement online will work best if tutors give them ample opportunity to participate. And this is easiest when tutors have the right tools to help them notice when that participation starts to fade.
Frequently asked questions
How do I keep students engaged during online tutoring?
Keep students involved throughout the lesson by asking them questions, encouraging them to participate in discussions, and giving them opportunities to actively engage with the lesson via digital tools. Switching up the pace and format of a lesson can also help in preventing attention from drifting.
How long should online tutoring sessions last?
There isn’t a universally ideal length for every student or subject. Younger students may benefit from shorter sessions with regular changes in activity, while older learners may be comfortable with longer lessons. It can help to monitor a student’s unique attention span and energy levels in a lesson and adapt the lesson accordingly, creating opportunities to participate rather than relying on one long stretch of instruction.
How do I tell if a student is distracted in an online class?
Look for deviations in what you would consider the student’s usual behavior, such as fewer responses, delayed answers, looking away from the screen, or becoming unusually quiet. Some virtual classrooms, like Pencil Spaces, also offer technical indicators when a student appears to have become idle or switched away from the lesson.
Want to make online lessons more interactive? Pencil Spaces gives tutors a purpose-built virtual classroom with collaborative whiteboards, interactive teaching tools, distraction alerts, and much more. Try Pencil Spaces for free, or book a free demo to see how it can help you keep students engaged online.
