How To Create Interactive And Efficient Digital History Courses For Students
Nowadays, students prefer using technology means rather than traditional ones when it comes to learning. The “new” learning format, which is called eLearning, is currently getting a lot of popularity because it offers something that face-to-face learning can’t: Flexibility. No matter the discipline, more and more students shift to digital courses. History classes are sometimes (most of the times) boring, because there’s nothing fun in them. Pure theory. Many students complain about this discipline and wish they never had to deal with it. It may be that they don’t recognize what’s in it for them after learning all the information required, or it may be painfully boring and non-interactive. Whichever the reason, this process can change with the use of self-paced digital history courses. Today we’ll analyze why students tend to value them more than the traditional ways, and how you can implement interactive elements that will make their learning process easier and interactive.
Importance Of Interactivity In Learning
If we think about it, no one is going to do anything unless they’re motivated or engaged by some factors. These factors always differ from a person to another, but we can spot some similarities among student’s needs.
- Every student needs to understand the benefits for why they hustle so much in order to perform well at any discipline. If they don’t see any, they won’t even try, or they will just neglect the discipline.
- If a course or class is boring and doesn’t captivate even a bit of their attention, it’s all in vein. That’s why interactivity is a must.
- When a student doesn’t see progress in what they’re doing, they will quickly become demotivated and stop making effort.
Ok… So, what does an educator have to do in order to avoid these disempowering effects? Here are some great tips that will help you create amazing digital history courses:
- Make your course unique.
This may not seem easy at first, but once you understand how to do it, it’ll make a huge difference. First of all, you need to get some feedback. Ask your students what they liked and didn’t like about the previous courses - or about the competitor’s courses. Let your students tell you what they enjoy and what they hate. Find a balance. Second of all, you need high quality content… Even though History is more about facts, the way you put them makes a huge difference. Try to add as much value as you can and explain those facts as best as you can. Also make sure that you stay on the topic when adding extra information. - Let your students explore more sources.
When you create your course, you need to be aware of the fact that it’s impossible to include all the relevant information. Your best way to cover as many relevant topics is to add external sources that your students can access just by clicking on a hyperlink. Even though some of them won’t be interested in more than what you offer in your course, many others will want to explore additional details about a particular subject. Giving them this opportunity is great, because your history digital course will gain value into their eyes… Just like a “gold mine of information”. - Include more than just words.
The beauty of digital courses is that there are so many possibilities of including interactive elements such as pictures, videos, or info-graphics. Successful digital history courses always include these types of materials. Students need breaks from theoretical information, and you need to strive to offer diversity. Head out to YouTube.com and try to find relevant videos that cover additional subjects that your students need to learn. Also, find high quality history maps. Infographics are also an interactive element that can complete your course. If you think you can do better, make your own, and take credit for them! - Show the real life benefits.
There are many who think that learning History won’t do any good for them in the future. Before trying to teach your students history, you must play with their mindset and mentality. This means disrupting the belief that History is boring or not useful in the “real-life”. Like any discipline, History is totally useful in plenty of situations. In order to prove it to them, you need to find real life examples that are linked to what you’re teaching. For example, even telling them that travelling and visiting is not as interactive as it would be if they knew what actually happened, could make a difference in their perception. Find the real life examples, let them know about them, and you’ll soon begin to notice a huge difference! - Integrate quizzes.
Integrating quizzes not only lets you, the educator, learn more about your students and asses their learning, but also helps with interactivity. The reason behind is that students also enjoy evaluating themselves. If they see progress, they’re more likely to continue and desire more progress. There is one good way to approach this strategy: Add quizzes at the end of every module…it shouldn’t be too complicated…it just has to be the minimum required for moving on to the next module. This strategy is extremely useful because students can better summarize what they’ve learned, examine their overall progress, and kill the boredom. In order to be even more effective, make your quizzes interactive. They should include real-life situations, interactive games related to the topic, or even answers that they can get from watching a relevant video. - Make it aesthetically appealing.
If you want your e-learning course to be accessed and used by a lot of students, your job is to make it look nice. Like everything in life, we tend to choose the things that look nice and easier to visualize rather than those that don’t focus on this aspect. Big chunks of text are extremely annoying and can destroy focus. Look at this article for example, you can see that each and every paragraph is separated, there are bold words, and the structure is easy to grasp. Otherwise, I bet you wouldn’t be reading it until this point.
Try your best to create an aesthetically appealing digital course. It will help big time! Add images, videos, info-graphics, bolds, colors, hyperlinks. Beware not to overdo it… Too much fluff can damage more than help your history course.
Conclusion
Putting a lot of effort into creating interactive digital history courses is what every history educator should do. Unfortunately, most of them think that by just including the information, without working on the other aspects, will actually do the job.
That’s wrong. And we hope that our article successfully briefed you on how a good digital history course should be made. Take our tips and implement them into your next history course immediately!
