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Engaging and motivating students online is challenging. As teachers, we must rethink our roles and delivery to create dynamic virtual learning experiences. Using artificial intelligence (AI), promoting active learning and designing engaging exercises will help students achieve learning objectives and stay interested. Here are some strategies we use.
GenAI
Generative AI can personalise learning experiences and enhance teaching and assessment practices. We encourage students to use it in our creative writing course to develop characters.
They use ChatGPT to describe physical features and create a prompt, which they then input into DALL-E or Ideagram to bring the characters to life. GenAI helps them refine and develop their characters, improving their stories.
AI is here to stay, and learning how to integrate it into your teaching will ensure your students do not miss out on valuable learning opportunities.
Universal design for learning
Our approach leverages universal design for learning (UDL) guidelines to craft engaging and accessible online learning activities. UDL is a framework that fosters meaningful, challenging learning opportunities that allow students to achieve their learning goals and develop specific skills.
Here are some exercises we have developed using this framework to promote engagement:
Recreating movie scenes
Storytelling is an important communication skill that helps students express themselves. It is highly sought after in the workplace and is commonly used during business pitches and formal presentations, when recounting events and persuading colleagues.
We develop these skills in our students by asking them to recreate a movie scene in the Metaverse. During this activity, students must critically analyse their chosen characters’ personalities, characteristics and moods to recreate the scenes accurately.
Conducting this activity in the Metaverse, students adopt avatars, customising them according to the assigned character and movie scene, leveraging the different available scenarios to recreate the scene and interacting with their teammates’ avatars during the performance.
Improvising a story
We use an improvisation activity in the Metaverse to encourage students to use their virtual surroundings to create a story. We do not provide prompts because we want students to rely on their creativity.
The ‘Big Bite’ presentation
The programmes Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank, where entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to wealthy investors, inspire this activity. Students must present their projects to a panel of “investors” (guest professors) who evaluate them and decide whether to grant funding. To create a compelling pitch, students must research a well-known brand and incorporate data and visual aids into their presentations.
Presenting an advertising proposal
For this activity, we give students a product and a specific target audience. They must research the product’s features and specifications, the target audience and other relevant aspects. Then they create a five-minute PowerPoint presentation to showcase a proposed advertising campaign. This exercise helps students develop persuasion skills and an understanding of audience needs and expectations.
Virtual reality
We can use virtual reality (VR) to promote students’ creativity, storytelling and speaking skills and facilitate deeper understanding of course material.
We use a platform called Van Gogh’s Room, which recreates the room the artist stayed in during his time in Arles, France. We prompt students to use this as inspiration for a story about Van Gogh or someone else staying in that room. The stories our students have created include one about an aspiring artist working as a waitress and others about the reincarnation of Van Gogh, a crime scene and a child art prodigy. The variety of ideas demonstrates the potential of technology to unlock creativity.
We want to provide diverse learning experiences for our online students. Harnessing technology and following UDL principles helps us achieve this, allowing us to create a motivational educational environment that keeps students invested in the learning process.
Angeles Carolina Aguirre Acosta is an academic coordinator; Gloria Anahí Molina Barrón is a professor tutor and Rebeca Elizabeth Alvarado Ramírez is director of digital experience and educational projects, all at Monterrey Institute of Technology.
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