Think back to your college days…what classes do you remember most? Chances are, regardless of major or credits earned, they’re probably the ones that unexpectedly changed your perspective, where an instructor seemed to go the extra mile to help you, or in which you felt a true sense of belonging. What your most memorable classes all have in common is that they engaged you. Now, just how did those instructors do it?
That’s the question we set out to answer in our latest webinar, Teaching Foreign Languages Online: Mastering Language Learning in the Digital Age. During this webinar, French instructor from Victor Valley College, Bethany Thompson, and Spanish instructor from the University of Michigan, Dr. Nancy Perez, share their techniques for captivating your students and elevate their learning experience, including how to build an online community, using media, peer and feedback, enabling interaction, and supporting personalized learning.
Watch the Webinar Replay
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1. Be Crystal Clear in Assignment Expectations & Using AI
“Though fully online, it’s important to me that I meet with my students at the beginning of the course via Zoom and that’s where I lay out expectations,” shared Bethany Thompson. She wants to be sure students understand what’s expected of them and why she’s asking them to produce an assignment in a certain way. For both Bethany and Nancy, it’s important that their students know that they don’t expect perfection in the online discussion and written assignments — as both instructors reinforce that their online classrooms are a safe space for discussion and should be considered low stakes. That’s how learning happens.
“It’s actually the errors I want to see so I know where to provide more support and guidance,” said Bethany. She also is clear on expectations around using chatbots and AI or language translators. She works to clearly communicate the learning target and what she expects to see then students will be less likely to rely on external tools like AI or translators.
What both instructors want to see is participation and effort. One way to encourage that participation is to use the ChatGPT discussion prompt builder in Harmonize, which allows you to scale across multiple lessons, courses, and instructors. Here’s an example of how you can build better discussion prompts faster and at scale. The prompt is well thought out, designed to engage students from multiple viewpoints, and extensive in what it asks for and how students are expected to approach it. To do this every single time, for each discussion, across multiple instructors and courses, would probably make you run for the hills.
But then, what if you want to change the discussion strategy? Maybe it’s too early in the course for the class to engage in a debate. Perhaps a small-group discussion would encourage greater student participation and better engagement as well as lead to richer exchange at this point. No need to redo any work. We coach ChatGPT on a new discussion strategy — small-group discussions — and you get a new prompt.
Building creative and engaging discussions like this helps students circle back to discussions.
2. Build in Multiple Due Dates
As another way to set expectations for students, be sure to set multiple due dates for students, or what we call ‘Milestones’ in Harmonize, let an instructor set clear expectations for student participation. By setting milestones with notifications, students are reminded of approaching deadlines — pulling them back into the conversation on an ongoing basis AND eliminating the onslaught of eleventh-hour posts that often inundate instructors.
Milestones allow an instructor to set multiple due dates for an assignment, requiring a certain number of discussion posts, comments, and reactions by specific due dates. This provides students with clear instructions and sets baseline expectations for how often students should be interacting.
Students can easily view their progress and due dates on each post as well as in the calendar/to-do list within Canvas. Best of all, milestones encourage more meaningful contributions from students, encouraging them to post beyond the surface-level comments that often accompany last-minute submissions. And when you enable Harmonize’s auto-grading with your milestones, you can save time by automatically evaluating student participation.
3. A Mobile-first, Familiar-Feeling Interface
You know as well as anyone that today’s students are digital natives and accustomed to communicating with one another online and building community virtually. Because of that, they naturally expect this to bubble over into their online learning experiences — and that includes online discussions. So if you want to increase engagement in discussions, you’ll want to be sure your discussion board is something they’d want to use.
Harmonize’s intuitive, user-friendly design looks similar to social media apps, which makes it naturally easier for students and instructors to use. With familiar features like tagging, notifications, and in-app & email notifications, students can complete assignments without any training, which increases the likelihood they’ll continue using it. It’s also available 24/7 and made for mobile devices — perfect for students on the go and allowing all students to connect and participate at any time.
In fact, as Dr. Perez shared, the tool helps to build community. “Students build genuine connections through Harmonize that they wouldn’t necessarily have the time to do in a classroom.”
4. Multimedia & Annotation
Couple that social engagement with multimedia and annotation. The more traditional discussion approach to discussion forums only gives students one way to contribute, and that’s limiting for many. What results are long, text-heavy discussions, a lack of interactivity, and a recipe for total student disengagement.
But with Harmonize, students can submit written responses, create snippets of audio, make and send videos, annotate images and video, as well as launch or respond to polls right from within discussion boards. Instructors can also use multimedia and annotate students’ work, providing a visual form of feedback to help students improve — important when you consider the role visuals play in improving students’ learning.
Both the University of Michigan and Victor Valley use video to encourage students to use responding in the target language. In addition to peer review, the videos encourage students to comment on one another’s videos, especially using annotation. It’s a way to keep the discussion ongoing. Students can tag each other and the instructor, asking questions or providing analysis. It’s a way of making the text come alive.
For more tips from the webinar, including discussion prompts, assignments ideas, links and other resources, ChatGPT discussion prompt builder, check out this resource. Harmonize is everything instructors need to increase student engagement online, and in just 30 minutes, you could well be on your way to building a stronger, more engaged social learning community for students.
