How to engage participants during hybrid learning.

Educational technology has been advancing especially after the Covid-19 pandemic and the popularity of distance learning. Hybrid learning is a new trend in the education industry. Educational institutions have started using teaching strategies such as hybrid teaching in order to keep up with the pace of technology and improve their teaching quality. 

As every new trend requires enough knowledge and thorough teaching, we will discuss hybrid learning in this post. In addition, we will discover how to engage participants during hybrid learning.

Engage Participants during Hybrid Learning 

To effectively engage your participants does not necessarily mean that your participants should be present physically. Whether your students are joining your course in person or remotely, you should be able to engage them. Here, we will see how you can engage your participants during hybrid learning. 

1. Build an Online Course

You can create an end-to-end learning experience for your hybrid learning strategy and market your online course together with the course tests, all with Learnyst. With Learnyst, you can get to know almost all the solutions for your hybrid teaching. From resources to services, Learnyst can help you build your online course and educate your participants on the topics in which you are an expert. 

2. Go Live

Source: Unsplash

If you think you will have more influence on the participants of your course, you can try live lessons instead of sharing archived prerecorded materials. In fact, hybrid learning in itself means real-time learning, with both in-person and remote participants. Therefore, while your teaching materials can be pre-recorded, your course has to be run in real-time. Especially if you are an extroverted teacher, you can surely engage your students if you see them, either online or in person, and optimize your teaching methods for each participant. 

One good point in live lessons is that there is an opportunity for every participant to ask questions from you on the spot and in real time. This calls for efficient engagement with your course, as each question can bring light to the topic and more participants can actually understand what they are learning. Even if they do not ask questions, you can realize from their facial expressions whether they need more explanations or they have already fully understood the topic. 

If you prefer to go on with archived already-prepared courses, you should make sure that you have already addressed the probable questions of your participants. In addition, you should make sure that you have included enough interactive activities in the course. 

3. Include a Chat Box

Source: Unsplash

Depending on what platform you use for your hybrid courses, you may already have a built-in live chat box. But the point is that you definitely need to have a chat box in your hybrid teaching process. The reason is that the online participants should be given the equal chance as the in-person participants to share their viewpoints or ask questions. 

In other words, a chat box is necessary for better communication between your participants and you. If you want proper engagement from your participants’ side, you should give them the technical means to talk to you from their locations. 

If you are hosting a meeting and are looking to engage participants in your hybrid or remote meeting, try using a meeting minutes app. 

4. Add Fun

Source: Unsplash

Hybrid learning, as we mentioned earlier, is a new trend in the education industry with the purpose of better learning from any location. So, your teaching method has to be different from anything traditional. If you are a strict teacher, you should be aware of the fact that you need to add fun to your hybrid lessons. 

Please also note that people may not be as concentrated in their homes as they might be in a real learning environment. Therefore, it is important to avoid boring techniques. With fun methods, you can keep everyone engaged in your course and make the best of the course. 

For instance, you should remember to have icebreakers at the beginning of each lesson and involve as many participants as you can. Moreover, you should keep in mind to have fun and short breaks to keep everyone fresh and willing to learn. Also, at the end of each lesson, you can allocate some minutes to Q&A and engage the participants.

5. Organize Pairwork and Group Work

Source: Unsplash

As you have a mix of on-site and remote participants in your course, you have the opportunity to reduce teacher talking time (TTT) and add to student talking time (STT) by organizing pairwork and group work.

What you should notice is that it can be interesting for both categories of students to see each other and talk together about the topic. So, what you should do as the instructor is to give them this chance. It not only keeps your course from being boring but also engages students to work together.

6. Organize Presentations 

Source: Unsplash

Not only you can WOW your students with your PowerPoint presentations but also you can ask the participants to volunteer for presentations on relevant topics in return for some additional marks. There are always some students who would love to do presentations or else they would not enjoy the course. You can give them the chance to talk and present and let other students ask relevant questions about the topic of their presentation. 

7. Make Use of Social Hashtags

Source: Unsplash

One further step to make your hybrid learning strategy even more modern and technology-friendly, is to take your course to social media. Ask your participants to stay in touch with your topic by using hashtags on social media. There are two benefits to doing so. 

Firstly, everyone nowadays is active on social media. Therefore, it is not only not a burden to use a hashtag on social media but is also very engaging for modern people. Depending on the topic of your course, you can ask the participants to take your course to their social media accounts by using hashtags. 

Secondly, your course will reach out to its target audience and you will get more students in the future. This is good for you as you can earn more money from teaching and that you can educate a wider group of audience. In short, encouraging your students to use a particular hashtag is a way to market your hybrid course with the right marketing strategies.

Conclusion

People are adaptable. But only changes that are for the better would last. Hybrid learning is one of those methods that has already been popular among learners as it both facilitates learning and elevates the quality of learning. Try the tips mentioned in this post to engage participants during hybrid learning and go with the flow of educational technology. Wish you the best of luck!