Remote student engagement ideas
Update | Friday, March 27, 2020
During this unique time of college learning, Student Engagement and Learning (SEaL) has developed a number of ideas to assist faculty wanting to provide more engagement. Using social media, SEaL is accessible on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To promote engagement, they are using #cscconlineengagement.
Remote Student Engagement Ideas
· Cooking video
· Kahoot Game (Trivia: CState resources and fun facts)
· Crafting videos or photo
· Finish the lyrics #csccfinishthelyrics
· Spring organization videos
· Virtual fitness classes
· Board Game Arena
· Send out daily reminders to stay healthy: Video of washing hands etc.
· Google Hangout meetings, virtual movie night
· Daily Photo challenge
o What are you doing to be productive today?
o Favorite activity?
o Favorite food?
o What are you binge-watching?
o Adventures of the day?
o Pets?
o Favorite destination?
o What’s your favorite quote?
o What music are you listening to?
o Random act of kindness
CougarConnect is Columbus State’s online engagement platform for connecting with students outside of the classroom. Any Columbus State program, department, club, organization, or affiliation is welcome to have their own page on CougarConnect. All you have to do is register for an organization. If you would like to know more about registering a new organization, please contact seal@cscc.edu for more info.
Are you brand new to CougarConnect? Here is a 7-minute video that introduces you to the system. When watching the video, you will see the system called “Engage.” This is the same thing as CougarConnect, but our version has been personalized to CState. Go Cougars!
Whether you are just getting started with using CougarConnect to engage students, or if you are a long-time admin, here are some creative ways you can use the system to stay in touch with your students even while working remotely.
1. Do you like to stay up to date on the news? So do students! Students benefit most when they can engage with news posts consistently and often.
a. A news post is just like it sounds, a snippet of news that you want to share with your community through CougarConnect.
b. Your page members will receive a notification when you submit a news post.
c. You can elect to have the News Post sent out as an email as well. You can choose to make this News Post visible to all the members of your page, the whole Columbus State community, or to the public.
d. Don’t forget to add a photo!
e. To learn more about sending News Posts, please click here.
2. Did you know that you can text your page members using CougarConnect?
a. For your students who prefer to use their phone for communicating rather than their email, you can keep in contact with them via text!
b. To learn more about texting students via CougarConnect (and how you can email them too!), please click here.
3. So, our resumes show our work history, and our college transcripts show our classes, but what can help us track our personal time outside of these two areas? Answer: The Co-Curricular transcript! You can help your students build their personal brand by encouraging them to report their on-campus and off-campus activities on their co-curricular transcript.
a. All CougarConnect members have a Co-Curricular transcript, which is a running record of your individual memberships on CougarConnect and your activities on and off-campus.
b. This Co-Curricular Transcript can serve as a record of all the amazing experiences and learning opportunities you have had outside of the classroom and when not actively working at a job.
c. Some examples of experiences students have added to their Co-Curricular Transcript are:
i. Volunteering for Ronald McDonald house
ii. Completing a BoyScout project
iii. Attending a networking event
iv. Completing a research project
v. Having art displayed at an art show
d. Here is a helpful video on accessing your personal Co-Curricular Transcript. For more information on how to add an experience to your Co-Curricular Transcript, please click here. These are both examples from another University that uses the same system as CougarConnect. You will see that their version of the system is called Hometown Life. The features on both systems are exactly the same.
4. You can utilize the Co-Curricular Paths tool to remind students of critical experiences that they can complete even when they are off-campus.
a. What is a Co-Curricular Path? It is a curated set of experiences that you can design for your student population. The Co-Curricular Path you design would guide your students to complete activities that are aligned with learning outcomes of your choice.
b. To learn more about Co-Curricular Paths, and how to create your own, please click here.
c. To see how students engage in a Co-Curricular Path, please click here.
d. What kinds of experiences can you use to construct a path?
i. Organization Membership
1. If you think your students would particularly benefit from being a member of the
Global Diversity and Inclusion page on CougarConnect, you can assign them the task
of joining the page.
ii. Self-Reported Activities or Reflections
1. If your students are supposed to meet with a mentor outside of class hours, you
can assign them the task of having a mentor-mentee meeting and ask them to self-report
when they have had this meeting. You may also ask them to provide a reflection on
what they gained from the meeting
iii. Event Attendance
1. Due to the current circumstances regarding public health and safety, in-person
on-campus events are not being held; however, there may be events or activities that
students can participate in remotely or at little or no risk to themselves or others.
2. You can assign attendance at an upcoming event (again, this is recommended to be a remotely accessible event during this time) that will offer the students social interaction and a learning opportunity.
a. This may be asking them to attend a webinar or join a remote Ted talk watching party with their peers.
5. Do you like inspiring visuals? Students do too! You can post photos in your gallery to inspire and encourage them.
a. Your gallery can contain photos from past events, fliers, memorable quotes, encouraging statements, etc.
b. Whatever you add to your gallery must be in jpeg or png format. Other than that, let your creativity blossom!
c. For more information on adding photos to your page’s gallery, please click here.
6. We all love data and feedback. Here’s some exciting news: you can use Forms to get your students’ feedback!
a. Did you know that you can create online forms and gather info from your students electronically?
b. Forms can be used for several different reasons. Maybe you want to survey your students on what support they need most during this time. Maybe you want to ask their top 5 favorite lectures from this year. You can customize forms to get the information you need, while helping students to stay engaged and stay safe.
c. To learn more about creating Forms on CougarConnect, please click here.
Systems we’re using to connect with students
· CougarConnect
· Kahoot
· TikTok
· Board Game Arena
If you have further questions or concerns, or if you would like to talk more about using CougarConnect to engage your students outside of the classroom, please feel free to email Genevieve Sharron or the Student Engagement Office at seal@cscc.edu.
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