Twelve tips to enhance student engagement in synchronous online teaching and learning

Synchronous learning is a component of online learning for engaging students in real-time. It is the nearest we can get to a live feeling in the e-environment. These sessions must be designed in a way to keep students continuously involved. This paper aims to provide health professional educators with tips for increasing student engagement in the online synchronous environment. The relevant literature regarding student engagement and synchronous online learning was reviewed and collated with the authors' own experiences, to formulate these tips. Health professional educators can use these tips to enhance student engagement in online synchronous classes. Increased student engagement in online sessions, means better learning. These tips have been tried and tested by the authors as being satisfactory for increasing student interest in synchronous sessions and hence providing an optimal learning experience online.