Enhancing Students’ Lack of Engagement in the Virtual Learning Platforms: The Role of Theory of Knowledge and Certain Basic Communication Skills

Various researches on the relationship between student engagement and learning reveal that engagement is a predictor of academic achievement, student performance, and educational development. A student’s performance remains a top priority for educators, and engaging students is a challenge faced by lecturers worldwide. Many efforts on how higher education might further inculcate and strengthen student engagement have been explored. This is truer when emphasizing the virtual learning platforms, especially during the actual COVID-19 pandemic, which has stimulated and propelled the virtual classes’ platform. However, among the tripartite nlms influencing students’ engagement in the virtual learning platforms, the students, technology, and the instructor, lecturers received little emphasis in the virtual learning debate. The present research focuses on certain basic instructor skills that might help overcome the students’ disengagement issue to address this gap. Instead of dealing with the condition of students’ disengagement in virtual classes, this review tackles the roots of the instructor’s mission and fundamental role, which can be traced back to the primary aim of delivering knowledge, hence, related to the “theory of knowledge.” Also, efficiently communicating knowledge is related to certain basic communication skills. Hence, the present research is designed with two main objectives. To advance the debate on overcoming students’ disengagement in virtual classrooms by emphasizing the crucial role of basic instructor’s skills and implementing strategies that support student engagement by digging in both the theory of knowledge and some basic communication skills.

Keywords: Communication Skills, COVID-19, E-Learning, Digital Classrooms, Higher Education, Internet, LMS, Online Classes, Online Courses, Online Teaching, Online Learning, Online Platform, Pandemic, Pedagogy, Student Engagement, Technology, Theory of Knowledge, Virtual Classes, Virtual Learning, Virtual Platforms.