When the entire education industry pivoted to online teaching and learning in the wake of the pandemic, it presented some unique challenges. Even though teachers coped up by preparing online educational content for their students, it took everyone some time to notice that the attention span of students has significantly fallen. This drop is noticeable across students of all ages, teens and adults alike.

In the modern world of distractions, getting a student’s attention is key for better learning and teaching experience. This is why there needs to be a shift in teaching methods to accommodate the short span of students and make the most out of it.

After thorough research, we have gathered a few ways that can help you retain the attention of your students during online classes:

Shorter Sessions

One of the biggest issues with online teaching content is that it is lengthy. While it is easier to sit for a movie for a couple of hours, it is equally difficult to focus on an educational video that is half an hour in length. Why? Because movies capture your attention with action, storyline, and excellent visuals which is difficult to achieve with an educational video.

Similarly, teaching a normal class for forty minutes or an hour was possible as there was personal interaction, movement, and fewer distractions. However, the same cannot be expected in an online class.

A way around this problem is to divide your class into shorter sessions. In-between these sessions you can interact with your students, answer their questions or have a quick quiz of the session that just ended. The goal is to increase student engagement.

Focus on What’s Important

Being a teacher, you want to teach everything to your students. However, in an online class, you cannot make the entire content engaging and interesting enough for students to focus. Remember, they are one click away from endless scrolling on social media.

If you agreed to follow our first suggestion of dividing your class into shorter sessions, then you are already doing better. The next step is to figure out what’s crucial and what’s not. Trimming the fluff off is important as it often leads to students losing interest.

Once you have decided on what’s important, you divide that into the shorter sessions you have planned. This way, the students only get short doses of important information without losing their focus thus, leading to more efficiency.

Miscellaneous Strategies

Incorporating these smaller strategies will have a compound effect on the quality and productivity of your online class.

Eye Contact: While not possible in an online class, looking into the camera rather than at yourself on the screen has proven to be more helpful.

Organization: Have a concise lesson plan already fragmented into smaller sessions.

Communication: Speaking clearly is extremely important to captivate the student’s attention.

Internet: Having a solid internet connection will lead to less downtime because of technical issues.

Creativity: Understand what your strengths are and capitalize on them. Surprise them, add humor, move around, and ensure there are no distractions around you as students can easily lose focus on them.