Teaching a class full of students is no easy feat, but it has become more challenging than ever before due to the students’ dependency on mobile devices and shorter attention spans. Educators have their hands full these days trying to engage students, help them retain knowledge, teach them to be successful in life, and mould their future careers.
That’s easier said than done, but educators and students alike have perfect solutions at their fingertips — student engagement apps.
Let’s see what makes them effective and how they make work easier for educational institutions and their students.
Why Are Student Engagement Apps Effective?
Student engagement & retention apps are designed with utmost usability in mind.
They help students access learning materials anytime and anywhere, communicate and collaborate with educators and peers, and streamline their learning.
At the same time, they help educators boost engagement and participation, track attendance and progress, gather feedback, and maximize knowledge retention.
What makes room for these key benefits is students’ reliance on technology. They spend a lot of time on their phones, so a proper tech solution that takes advantage of that dependency is a perfect way to engage them. It brings educators to their playing field, ensuring better collaboration and learning.
Top 6 Features of Student Engagement Apps
These apps come with many useful features. They differ slightly from one app to the next, but the following are some of the most important elements of every high-quality app for engaging students.
1. User-friendly interface
Every quality student engagement app comes with an intuitive interface that enables students to find the necessary resources without a hitch and helps educators complete their administrative tasks quickly.
They provide a higher level of convenience and efficiency, helping users access anything important with just a few clicks, whether it be an assignment, grade, term calendar, campus information, or any upcoming event details.
2. Seamless communication and collaboration
These apps allow students and educators to communicate thanks to real-time messaging features.
Students can use live chat to send questions to teachers and professors and engage with their peers, whether during lecture time or after class. They can even upvote their classmates’ questions, so educators can better understand their biggest challenges.
Engagement apps make room for live Q&As, group discussions, and peer-to-peer discussions, all of which can help increase engagement and collaboration.
3. Homework and progress tracking
Student engagement apps are excellent homework helpers, as they allow users to check their homework assignments and all the upcoming tasks, thus ensuring they complete them on time. They can receive notifications for anything that’s due soon and even keep track of their study time.
Educators can remind students when their papers are due, grade assignments, share notes, and monitor real-time progress and performance.
4. Student attendance dashboard
A growing number of educational institutions are going paperless even when it comes to tracking student attendance. Allowing students to check into a class via a dedicated app is more time-efficient and convenient.
Many engagement apps feature a user-friendly dashboard that keeps attendance history records, absentee records, and other important data.
5. Real-time feedback
Tools for gathering real-time feedback are some of the best features of engagement apps for students. They provide educators with key information on their learners’ knowledge and individual lectures’ effectiveness while allowing students to get feedback on their performance.
For instance, MCQ live polls can uncover knowledge gaps and help educators address their learners’ strengths and weaknesses, thus helping them improve performance.
These apps are perfect for gathering feedback on on-campus services and amenities, as well as checking in on students’ well-being. For instance, recurring quick polls or surveys can uncover how students are feeling or what they think about their educational institution so that the staff can assist them accordingly.
6. Third-party integrations
Third-party integrations are essential when it comes to utilizing multiple educational apps, as they enable a seamless retrieval of all important data.
An educational institution that provides its students with an engagement app should ensure that it integrates with its SIS, LMS, and other tools it may be using.
For instance, LMS integrations are vital for schools and faculties because they help automate administrative tasks, share content and feedback, monitor performance and progress, assess knowledge with quizzes and polls to maximize knowledge retention, share grades, etc. Go here to read more about the importance and different types of LMSs.
Conclusion
Student engagement apps are some of the latest tech innovations that are changing education as we know it. They are brilliant tools for educators and learners who can take engagement and knowledge retention to the next level. They empower both and help pave the way to academic success.
That’s why their global usage is growing every day, with numerous experts worldwide realizing that they could revolutionize education.
