This fall marks the start of my 10th year teaching undergraduate accounting courses at Oklahoma State University. In the Fall 2017, I remember thinking to myself, “Did I really just sign up for a public speaking career?” I was young, intimidated, and standing in a room full of 250 freshman and sophomore business students, wondering how I was going to get through a 75-minute lecture, let alone keep them engaged. Fast forward three more years, and I found myself in a similar situation again, but this time it was 2020. Amid the national pandemic, I was navigating similar challenges, but this time it was about engaging students online instead. Fast forward six more years, and many of my classes are still online. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but along the way I’ve learned a couple of best practices for fostering student engagement that I’m excited to share with you.   

The first thing I learned is that students crave structure. A well-defined syllabus, clear deadlines, and an intuitive, organized online classroom can go a long way toward earning your students’ trust from day one. I spend at least 2-3 weeks ahead of a new semester making my syllabus and online classroom as user-friendly as possible, and I’ve found that students are so much less anxious about the course when all of my assignments are ready to go, deadlines are in McGraw Hill Connect®, and they know exactly what to expect. I’ve also been able to leverage tools like Proctorio to help me ensure academic integrity for assessments and hold students accountable for fully learning the material, rather than simply searching for answers online.

Secondly, especially in my online courses, students want to be known. You may think students take an online class to avoid social interaction, but I’ve found that’s rarely the case. Sadly, online students today seldom go out of their way to build a connection with their instructors on their own. To help close that gap, I’ve added a simple assignment at the beginning of the semester requiring students to complete an “about me” survey that I can use to connect with them individually. I also have a required an assignment where students sign up for a quick, 10-minute “professor meeting” using my personal Zoom link and a booking tool, such as Koalendar, YouCanBookMe, Calendly, etc. Their appointments just pop up on my calendar at times when I’m available, and I get a chance to easily have a short one-on-one conversation to get to know them as a real person. This was a game-changer for my online students, helping them realize that I was more than just a pre-recorded video lecturer and enabling me to better understand their unique needs.

In summary, providing a clear course structure, holding students accountable for their learning, and making it clear that they are known and supported in your course can yield huge dividends throughout the semester. It’s hard to do this perfectly, but small steps towards those goals over the past decade have gone a long way for me.