Students quickly disengage in a traditional lecture when the one-way delivery of content requires passive digestion by note-taking students. An alternative approach is to return to the chalk board and prompt students to actively reflect on content as you convey it through a technique I call ‘Lecture Pictionary’. 

The method has three advantages: 

1. It forces the

Exploit the asynchronous format of online delivery and recruited world experts in your topic areas to record ‘case studies’ on how concepts covered in your course relate to real-world settings. For example, in my 3rd year zoology course, I recruited leading researchers from across the world to record a lecture on their research and how it is relevant for understanding ourselves, the world

Online forums and discussion boards have a dismal reputation for poor student engagement. If these are used at all, it’s either by a small subset of students or as an administrative app for students to seek clarifications or guidance on assessment tasks. Instead, try combining the power of reflection and peer-engagement in an asynchronous forum activity that encourages your students to present

Online, asynchronous learning offers students the greatest flexibility: it allows delivery of content on-demand and irrespective of where a student happens to be. The key to success for this online format, paradoxically it seems, is to encapsulate this flexibility with structure. Without structure, a student’s self-regulation, motivation and engagement with the course flounders. Providing

Even before your course officially starts, get your students engaged by filling out a pre-course questionnaire. It’s easy to create using Microsoft forms or some other platform and then sending out the link to your students the week before classes start. This not only sets the scene for an interactive course but also allows students to convey information on their personal circumstances.

Not all of your students will have English as their first language and these students are inherently at a disadvantage. The speed of delivery, a lecturer’s accent, the use of jargon or the general complexity of words used present barriers to student comprehension. This may even be true for students who come from an English speaking background as well. There are two solutions: 1. providing

Asynchronous online (on-demand) video lectures have various advantages for students, but student engagement with this format often fails. Viewing a traditional 50+ minute lecture online is exhausting for students. Many simply stop watching and those that continue will attempt to brute force viewing at x2 speed. Comprehension suffers as much as the motivation to learn. Yet you can circumvent

Let’s face it, recording a 50 min lecture in your office is exhausting for you and exhausting for your students watching the final product. The reality is many of your students probably won’t even manage to view the entire recording (see ‘TiPs: Achieving 100% engagement