by Peggy Holzweiss, PhD
I have a confession to make.
I love teaching fully asynchronous, online courses.
You may wonder how anyone could love teaching online courses. After all, it can be difficult to engage students through a computer screen. Learning alone. Staring at a plain pixeled display for hours. Performing the same assignments in every course (Discussion, paper, test. Rinse. Repeat.). Students frequently choose online learning for its convenience, not because they think it will be fun. Unfortunately, they are often right.
Now I will share a secret.
Online learning can be fun and engaging because play works in the virtual space. And online students appreciate ANY attempt to liven up a digital classroom. Their engagement increases when play is introduced, just like in-person students.
There are a variety of ways to be playful in an online course – and they often don’t require a lot of time or effort.
Consider these Eight Strategies for Online Play:
1. Be Visual
Add color, images, and fun fonts to course documents. If you are short on time or creativity, use templates provided by Microsoft Word or Canva. You can even use new Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like Canva’s Magic Studio to create unique images for the documents. Just describe the image you want and let AI design some options. If you don’t like any of them, update your prompt and try again.
2. Try a Theme
Choose a course theme and align visuals, assignment names, slide decks, and other course materials. As an example, I chose a “Willy Wonka” theme for one course. Candy images appeared in the syllabus and all assignment instructions. Assignments received candy-related names, and lecture videos used free slide decks found on sites like SlidesMania and Slides Carnival.
3. Insert Your Bitmoji
Increase instructor presence by inserting a cartoon image of yourself (Bitmoji) throughout the course (i.e., course materials, modules, announcements, etc.). It is a playful way of reminding students you are always around. If you don’t have a bitmoji, create one through the free Bitmoji website. Simply establish your account and follow instructions. Once it is created, you will see a variety of “stickers” using your bitmoji likeness in different settings and poses. Find the ones you like, download them, and use them like any other image.
4. Inject Humor
Invite regular smiles by posting a “funny of the week.” The internet is filled with puns, jokes, images, and videos about the course topic or course theme. You can even let AI (i.e., ChatGPT, Bard) do some of the work by asking it to generate jokes on a desired topic. You can also share “class breaks” by posting something random like one of my favorite videos.
5. Offer Choices
Consider offering different options for course activities and let students choose which one(s) to perform. For instance, if you teach an intro chemistry course, assignment choices could include taking pictures of chemistry in action in daily life (plus narratives about the pictures), interviewing someone who works in a medical lab, sharing a biography of a specific chemist using an infographic format, or creating an instructional video about how chemistry is used in the fashion industry. Make it more impactful with a follow-up assignment where students review or reflect on each other’s projects.
6. Incentivize Play
Busy, online students will choose to play if tasks are short, easy to perform, and have some benefit such as extra credit or useful prizes (free quiz question, one-day assignment extension, etc.). You could use one-time tasks at different points in the course or offer an ongoing opportunity that invites students to play throughout the course. For example, I created a weekly virtual escape room (learn how to create your own on Google Slides) containing a link to a useful course resource, a funny image, and an image with a number. Students used the numbers to answer an extra credit math question at the end of the course. Any student who participated received at least a small amount of extra credit. Students with correct responses received more extra credit.
7. Play Hide and Seek
Hide things for students to find such as funny memes or videos, prizes such as a free quiz question or one-day assignment extension, or icebreaker questions students can answer about themselves. For one course, I hid the same theme-based image every week. It appeared in readings, assignment instructions, submission areas, and even popped up randomly in modules for a few days in the middle of a week. The first student to report the image location each week accumulated points towards extra credit at the end of the course. Students mentioned this little game as one of their favorite parts of the course.
8.Build Community
Build the course community by being intentional about how students interact. One of my favorite online tools is Padlet, a collaborative board where everyone can share images, websites, videos, etc. I use a Padlet board as a community space for students to introduce themselves, share where they found hidden items, answer extra credit questions, and so on. The board mimics what students do on social media and come with embed codes so they can be placed within an online course.
Check out an interactive poster with examples from my own courses then choose a strategy to implement in your online course!
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Peggy Holzweiss, PhD
Associate Professor Department of Educational Leadership
Sam Houston State University
pholzweiss@shsu.edu