2. Make learning active

Harvard Business School Online, which offers 13 courses and has eight new ones under development, Crowley said, presents activities every three to five minutes to drive student engagement during classes. She said these include polls, Family Feud-style questions, “shared reflections,” or “cold calls,” in which students are unexpectedly put on the spot to answer

“Faculty are intimately involved in the creation of the courses,” Crowley said. “They narrate and facilitate each course through short and engaging videos, … but we knew that alone wouldn’t be enough to keep students engaged and learning. We had to engage our students in other ways. All this variation and interaction keeps it interesting.”