Many students look at online learning courses as a respite from the rigors of brick-and-mortar learning, but that’s only true if educators and administrators choose not to maximize the digital learning environment to challenge their student populace. 

While digital learning has its limitations and flaws, it can also be used as a powerful tool to stimulate critical thinking in students. In fact, there are plenty of ways to induce such propensities for critical thought without a student even being aware of it!

Your student may simply be enjoying themselves and enjoying the outlay of the course. However, intuitive educators can use this to the advantage of the students by basically tricking students into thinking and thinking efficaciously!

Gamification Can Turn Traditional Learning Into Fun For Your Students

The process of gamification adds gaming concepts and structures to inherently non-game environments. Digital learning environments are rife with opportunities to gamify content and interactions in order to stimulate learning (in a sneaky fashion!).

Whether it’s interactive multimedia that posits the students as a player in an important game rather than a student just reading materials or leaderboards that allow students to work with and against each other for recognition, gamification elements can do wonders in online learning.

The best part about these gamification elements is that it can also serve to get your students to think critically without all the normal dissonance. Because they’re legitimately having fun doing the work and putting in the thought necessary to succeed and outstrip their competitors, students likely won’t be aware that they’re accessing the same critical thinking structures that would help them succeed in a traditional classroom environment.

Approach Things In Creative Ways That Spur Thinking, Engagement

In a lot of ways, digital learning environments are a blank slate. Such environments remain in their nascent stages of implementation, even if they’re proliferating widely and becoming more and more essential to institutions around the world.

Such a blank slate means a wide array of possibilities for administrators and educators looking to spur critical thinking and engagement within their student populace. 

It behooves those creating these digital learning environments to think outside of the box. Perhaps bringing in pop culture materials and memes from around the internet to reinforce key concepts could help increase student interest and engagement.

Maybe there’s a really entertaining video on YouTube that can be uploaded/embedded to help students parse through high concepts and see things in a different light. 

In short, digital learning administrators can use the accessibility and depth/breadth of the Internet of Things to augment the courses as they go along. This allows educators to tailor the digital learning experience to the students in the class in an intuitive fashion.

Such intuition and forethought will compel students to think about things in ways they perhaps wouldn’t in a traditional classroom. When done effectively, you can actually cultivate critical thinking capacities in a way perhaps unseen in most brick-and-mortar classes.

Concluding Thoughts

Digital learning has so many possibilities that completely outweigh its inherent limitations. With the right approach and the right tools on hand, digital learning administrators can get students thinking critically without knowing they’re doing so!