When learners are emotionally engaged their academic performance improves which in itself can help to improve learner motivation.
1- Provide opportunities for learners to actively participate during sessions; in a larger group nominate, use names to allow them to turn on their microphone and individually contribute, or type the answer in the chatbox or select one learner to direct you e.g. in error correction tasks. If your platform allows, set up break-out rooms for learners to work in together. For example, to complete a jig-saw reading or listening in a small group. When learners work together, they not only have an opportunity to learn from each other but they can also keep each other on task. And varying ways to participate helps to maintain learners’ interest.
2- Select age and level appropriate materials and activities for your sessions. Age-appropriacy relates to relevancy and meaningfulness, for young learners enhance interconnectedness between home & school by asking them to bring one item to the session they can find for example in the kitchen! Considering the level of cognitive challenge of activities is another key factor if you want to keep learners engaged. If the cognitive challenge of an activity is too high, they can easily get frustrated or overwhelmed and if it’s too low learners may become bored and disengaged.
3- Allow learners choice and a voice; Creating different follow-up activities learners can choose from to complete after the session not only personalises the learning process it also gives them ownership of the learning process. Learners could select out of 3 options to show what they have learned, so you can assess if learning objectives have been met. They could choose the topic they want to explore (e.g. transport, food or countries). Then they can also choose how they want to express their ideas; they could simply record their voice (vocaroo.com), create a flyer (smore.com) or just write it up (googledocs).