Enhancing Learner Engagement in Online Classes

Pinar Sekmen

ESOL Teacher & Teacher Trainer

She has been teaching English for over 20 years and teaching Turkish to the speakers of other languages for 10 years. She is a graduate of the Department of English Language and Literature. She holds her certificates of TESOL and Pedagogy, and has been working in the fields of Translation Studies, IELTS Writing-Speaking and Teacher Training Programs. Having worked as an ESOL teacher in various private schools and universities in Turkey, her interests include professional development, project-based learning, education technologies and creative thinking.

As Pinar says – “Although upskilling is a need today, your wellbeing means a lot! You can't put students first if you put teachers last”. Below is obstracted summary of her presenatation done by her during Central Asia TEFL-2021.

Teaching and learning has been put through a rapid transformation since the outbreak of Covid-19. Hence the need for rethinking and redesigning materials is in the core of teaching and learning today in order to attain innovative and sustainable outcomes in online or blended environments. This presentation aims at supporting teachers with a set of effective and practical resources and tools for both synchronous and asynchronous instruction, student engagement and virtually interactive classes. As the main focus is on learner autonomy here, some ideas on how to boost the performances of learners and how to monitor and assess them will also be shared in terms of interaction, feedback and reflection. Some digital tools such as Padlet, Lino, Socrative and so on will be introduced as well to help forming a creative, collaborative, dynamic and communicative atmosphere on virtual platforms.