Learner Engagement
Learner engagement tools are designed to encourage interaction, participation and collaboration to foster a more inclusive and dynamic learning environments for both in-person and online spaces.
They support active learning experiences by allowing students to contribute ideas, ask questions, and engage with course content in real-time either in-class or online. Whether through live polls, discussion boards, or collaborative activities, they create inclusivity and opportunities for increased student to teacher dialogue regardless of class size or format.
Why use Learner Engagement tools?
There are many reasons to use learner response tools in learning and teaching, but here are a few of the keys ones:
Enhance student engagement
Breaking up a lecture with instances where students can participate in an online poll or exchange ideas with each other through some kind of text wall or word cloud is likely going to keep people’s attention on the subject matter and make them feel more involved in the learning process.
Highlight areas where students are or are not confident with the subject matter
Online polling can be used to highlight areas where students are or are not confident with the subject matter, something the students can do anonymously without fear of their peers seeing that they may be academically struggling with some concepts.
Lecture content and clarity may be easily evaluated
This can lead to the tutor being more aware of the focus of their teaching, which in turn may lead to enhancements to the student experience.
Ease of use (mobile devices)
Students likely bring their mobile devices to lectures anyway, so why not get them to use them in a useful manner in the lecture?
Add interactivity
It breaks up the endless flow of lectures as presentations. We’ve all heard the phrase ‘death by PowerPoint’, and we’ve all sat through presentations that have gone on a bit too long, so why not break up your content and make it more interesting and thought-provoking with some interaction?
Supported tools
Recent Guidance
Below you can find some of our recent guidance on learner engagement tools.
Your stories
We would love to hear from you if you are doing anything exciting in Canvas.
Complete this MS form to suggest an idea for a story. We will then be in touch about getting your story published onto the site.