Student
Engagement
How can one
tell they are not engaged?
By Prof. Jonathan
Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
School of English
Faculty
of Social Sciences
Universidad
Latina de Costa Rica
Tuesday, April 26,
2016
Post 256
When taking an online course with
Laureate Education back in 2014 on Higher Education, we participants were
prompted with three questions to somehow measure student engagement in our
courses. As a simple though realistic exercise, as an instructor one gets to
reflect on how much one’s learners are taking a course seriously. The prompting
questions are the following, for anyone who also wants to question the amount
of learner engagement students are experiencing in a course.
1.
Consider one of the lessons you are
interested in; what is its learning goal?
2.
Reflect on your student performance and
identify how you can tell that your learners are not engaged in this lesson.
3.
How can you explain the your students
are not engaged with your lesson?
For
this particular reflective exercise I took into consideration my Introduction
to Drama class, which at the time of the reflecting task was a bit sidetracked,
and students were not getting at a very realistic deep learning of the concepts
being studied in the course: from Classical Greek Theater to Contemporary
Theater. The following chart summarizes my observations and reflections
regarding my lesson.
Lesson to focus on
|
Summarizing the evolution
of theater
|
Learning goal
|
After providing Ss with
the tools to produce their presentations, Drama Ss will produce a graphic
summary for the class with good visuals and design.
|
Lack of engagement
|
Ss are a bit down in
terms of energy at this point of the term and they need to be reenergized
somehow and this could be the chance
|
Reasons for lack of
engagement
|
Length of the course and
amount of critical reviews they have to produce
|
Additional strategies
|
Have them work on http://www.powtoons.com
to produce more engaging critical reviews that they can eventually use in
their courses
|
Stages of learning
|
1.
Students enrolled in this class with
pre-reflective thinking skills, and that needs to be modified.
|
2.
Students start moving into
quasi-reflecting thinking skills by understanding how this class connects to
the overall ELT program and how they will use this knowledge in their future
or current teaching.
|
|
3.
Students towards the end of the
course become reflective thinkers when they have learned the basics and start
creating their own arguments and building their long-lasting knowledge.
|
As a conclusion, and after revising
this information provided in the chart above, it is highly recommendable that
all teachers question a bit their lessons from time to time to find evidence of
what seems to be going on with student engagement. It is wise to go over the
questions/statements provided at the very beginning of this blog entry to find
yourself consider how you can measure learner engagement in your courses and in
very specific lessons. One is bound to discover a bit of how one’s teaching
practices can affect student deep learning.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
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