Low student engagement is a major challenge in schools today. A recent survey of 630 US teachers found that 68 percent considered it their biggest challenge.¹ Still, educators need to drive academic progress, and engaging students is crucial for their educational success.² So, how can you boost student engagement with your lessons? In this article, we’ll explore three ways to use BenQ Boards to achieve this.

Today's tech-savvy students appreciate the role of technology in enhancing their learning experience.³ Whiteboard explainer videos, a form of microlearning content, can effectively capture their attention and prepare them for in-class discussions.

With the BenQ Board’s EZWrite whiteboard software, you can create detailed explainer videos using the program’s pens, highlighters, math tools, and multimedia. With a single tap, you can record your short lesson, including your voice, and then save the finished video to your cloud storage for students to access from anywhere. They’ll then arrive in class ready to discuss and apply the new concepts you explained in your video.

You can also use this type of explainer video to create individualized learning materials or provide tutoring support to students who need extra help in class. For added convenience, you can use EZWrite on the web with your tablet or you can install it on Windows and macOS devices.

Students who sit at their desks for the entire lesson can remain engaged, but it’s much easier to engage them by giving them active learning opportunities. One way to do this is to get them to physically interact with the board themselves, in some cases by having them race up to it.

Young learners will likely want to interact with the board, so to keep some order and make things fair, let EZWrite’s built-in random number draw decide which students will compete. Need an activity for them to do on the board? EZWrite has a Team Post function that splits the board into three. Give the teams a problem to solve and let them use their space on the board to write their answers. There’s also a scoreboard tool that lets you easily keep track of which team is winning. Want to add more urgency to the proceedings? Try out the built-in timer to get students racing to answer first, thereby ratcheting up their excitement and engagement.

If you want to hold a discussion or debate, you can use open-ended questions in conjunction with EZWrite’s built-in interactive templates. This will aid the talk by giving it a visual structure. Research shows that 65 percent of students are visual learners, ⁴ and visual aids have been shown to improve learning retention, ⁵ making them a valuable tool for many students.

For larger classes, try grouping students in teams and displaying an open-ended question on the board. Give the teams an interactive template to work on by casting the whiteboard to their devices. This allows them to quickly jump into the discussion and not worry about who’s going to draw up the diagram for the group. Limit the activity time to add urgency and excitement. Finally, have students share their answers by writing on the board or casting to the board from their devices.

For smaller classes, you can stage a whole-class debate by splitting the room in half and having each side discuss their arguments. Then, ask students to write on the board or cast to it with their devices during the debate. When the discussion ends, create another whiteboard page for students to share their reflections and takeaways. Lastly, you can easily share the whiteboard with students and save it for future lesson planning.

Keeping students engaged in lessons and their academic careers is challenging, but with technologies such as the BenQ Board, this task becomes much easier. By providing interactive opportunities for students at the board or using their personal devices, BenQ Boards can create an environment where engagement and learning go hand in hand, transforming the educational experience.

Ready to transform your classrooms with BenQ Boards? Get started by talking to one of our experts.