Pedagogical Tips to Engage Students in Social Based Online Discussion

1.Share something that will make your students laugh.

2.Post notes to remind your students about the instructions of important assignments, as well as the submission deadlines.

3. Encourage your students to post links to great online resources related to the curriculum. You can give extra points for this activity through setting up a course Anar Seeds goal.

4. Set discussion topics every week. Think of a topic close to the most engaging lesson of the week, and invite everyone to discuss. You have to motivate the students to participate, so ask relaxed questions that will make them think, but won’t stress them out.

5. Allow and encourage the students to ask any question they have. If they don’t know how to handle the assignment, help them surpass the difficulties they face. You may want to create a hashtag #Quesitons and let your students use this hashtag when they post questions. You can then filter all these posts and provide help.

6. Discover motivational TED talks and post them in the group. There are many successful people who made progress because they had great goals and worked hard to achieve them. There is hardly a better motivator for learning than a great TED talk. 

7. Constantly search for new online resources that make learning fun, and share the links in the group. Then, ask your students to watch/read/listen to those materials and share their opinions during class.

8. You can introduce a daily hashtag related to a certain topic you elaborated in class, and ask each student to discover a fun fact related to it. Then, they should post under that hashtag, and the entire class will follow the activity. This is a great way for the students to realize how the things they learn at school are being implemented in the real world. For example, you can set #spiders for a daily hashtag and start posting fun facts like no 2 #spider webs are the same. Then, ask your students to dig through online resources and discover their own fun facts about spiders. You can all discuss the information you find the next day in class.

9. Use the Poll tool to survey students' opinions, seek feedback, quiz them before quizzes/exams. Students will soon pick the idea and create polls to engage their peers. 

Reference: 5 Ultimate Tricks Of Using Social Media As Learning Tools. https://elearningindustry.com/5-ultimate-tricks-using-social-media-learning-tools