{"id":147,"date":"2019-11-22T12:12:41","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T12:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sovorelpublishing.com\/?p=147"},"modified":"2019-11-23T10:16:49","modified_gmt":"2019-11-23T10:16:49","slug":"engage-students-in-all-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sovorelpublishing.com\/index.php\/2019\/11\/22\/engage-students-in-all-environment\/","title":{"rendered":"Engage Students in All Environments"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Is\nstudent engagement in a classroom really that important; can\u2019t they learn just\nas well by passively listening to a lecture? No, they can\u2019t learn just as well,\nand research has shown again and again that lecture is the least effective\nmethod of instruction; students want engagement, and that increased student\nengagement results in improvements to students learning persistence, academic\nachievement, motivation, and satisfaction (Anders, 2019; Taylor &amp; Parsons,\n2011; Trowler, 2010). By engagement, I am specifically talking about presenting\ninstruction in a way that maximizes students\u2019 interactions with the\ncontent\/process, the instructor, and other students. So, getting straight to\nthe point, how can an instructor improve student engagement in every class,\nsmall or large, face-to-face, or online?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Recommendations<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>Small classrooms<\/em><\/strong>\nare of course the easiest to increase engagement in. The class feels more\nintimate because there are fewer people and this also generally makes students\nfeel less judged by the crowd. This then leads to opportunities for more\ndiscussion, questioning, and active learning (demonstrations and practical\nexercises). Techniques such as think-pair-share (students contemplate a\nquestion for a short time, then pair up with another student, then share with\nthe class or table) and the Socratic method (learning is realized discovered by\ngoing through and answering ongoing questions from the Instructor) can easily\nbe implemented. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>Large classrooms<\/em><\/strong>\nhave the perceived problem of \u201cthe crowd,\u201d with too many people the intimacy is\nlost so it can be hard to have a discussion or engage people in a personal\nmanner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Overcome shyness\/introversion<\/strong>\nby first engaging the crowd (warming them up), asking questions that simply\nrequire opinion and answering by raising their hands to show overall group\nthoughts. <\/li><li><strong>Go from easy to more challenging<\/strong>.\nInitial questions posed should be simple and easy to get things going. Summary\nquestions about the last class or asking students to put what was just said\ninto their own words are good easier type questions to start with before using\nthe Socratic method in large classrooms. <\/li><li><strong>Think-pair-share<\/strong>\nquestions can and should be done in large classrooms as well. Simply pose\nquestions and tell the students to first think it through and then work as a\ntable, or in groups of two or three (change this up by asking this several\ntimes and each time telling them to form a new group). A key aspect of this is\nto give them only enough time to work together and answer the question, too\nmuch time and students will get bored and lose interest. The key thing is to\nhave different students present their answers\/finding to the rest of the class.\nThen ask other students about what they just said. Note, don\u2019t overuse\nthink-pair-share, keep the students thinking with various types of engagement\/active\nlearning (fill in the blank lecture notes, physical movement, group project\npresentations, skill usage, and learning games).<\/li><li><strong>Use students\u2019 names<\/strong>.\nUsing students\u2019 names goes a long way to improving instructional presence and\nimproves interaction and personalization. Call on a student by name, if you\ndon\u2019t know their name, ask them to state their name and then refer to them by\nname and come back to them later in the class (by name) to address a question\nor as a reference. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>Online Classes,<\/em> <\/strong>a major aspect of making online courses better is by understanding that it is a different format, but it still needs the same components. There still needs to be a lot of engagement and action in order to have the best class possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Use video.<\/strong>\nThis is the year 2019\/2020 you need to be using video (in the right way) for a\nmultiple of reasons. Show video of your self explaining and commenting on the\nlearning material. This helps students understand the concepts, humanizes the\ninstructor (making them more approachable), and enhances instructional presence\n(Anders, 2017).<\/li><li><strong>Feedback <\/strong>engagement\nis an important interaction that is needed throughout the course. Be sure to give\ndetailed feedback (as quickly as possible) on all assignments\/tests, as well as\non message boards. Email students and investigate the appropriateness of using\nsocial media tools for further engagement. <\/li><li><strong>Motivate\/encourage and get them to talk\nto each other.<\/strong> Online learners tend to need a bit more\nmotivation\/encouragement sometimes so be sure to address that through your\nengagements. Also, since these courses are at a distance, there often aren\u2019t\nthe same opportunities for students to talk to one another. Overcome this by\nassigning group projects and needed interactions via message board use. <\/li><li><strong>Online learning should also use\nactive learning components.<\/strong> Consider the use of online games and\ncreate assignment projects that require more than just writing. Ideas such as\ngroup projects, video creation, interviewing a real person (either as a video,\npodcast, or written work) would be a powerful real-life experience. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A key to all of this \u201caction,\u201d using the philosophy of more doing and less sitting (Bolliger &amp; Colleen Halupa, 2018; Dixon, 2010). Students want to be engaged and learn so much more by going through the process of applying what they have learned as opposed to just sitting, listening, and then that\u2019s it (Smoot, 2016). All aspects of the experiential learning process should be contemplated and addressed to maximize learning. Engagement is a vital piece to this learning process and should be used as much as possible to continually improve the education to transform students through effective learning experiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">Reference<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anders,\nB. (2017). <em>How to enhance instructional\npresence: Research &amp; experience based techniques to improve both online\n&amp; face-to-face instruction.<\/em> Manhattan, KS: Sovorel Publishing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anders,\nB. (2019). <em>The Army learning concept, Army learning model: A guide to\nunderstanding and implementation<\/em>. Emporia, KS: Sovorel Publishing Company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bolliger,\nD. U., &amp; Halupa, C. (2018). Online student perceptions of engagement,\ntransactional distance, and outcomes. <em>Distance Education, 39<\/em>(3),\n299-316. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dixson,\nM. D. (2010). Creating effective student engagement in online courses: What do\nstudents find engaging?. <em>Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and\nLearning, 1<\/em>-13. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> Smoot Jr, J. A. (2016). <em>Military instruction: A mixed-methods study of strategies for teaching critical thinking to enlisted military personnel<\/em> (Doctoral dissertation, Capella University). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Taylor, L. &amp; Parsons, J. (2011). Improving Student Engagement. <em>Current Issues in Education<\/em>, 14(1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trowler,\nV. (2010). Student engagement literature review. <em>The higher education\nacademy, 11<\/em>(1), 1-15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is student engagement in a classroom really that important; can\u2019t they learn just as well by passively listening to a lecture? No, they can\u2019t learn&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_customify_content_layout":"","_customify_sidebar":"","_customify_page_header_display":"default","_customify_disable_header":"","_customify_disable_header_top":"","_customify_disable_header_main":"","_customify_disable_header_bottom":"","_customify_disable_page_title":"","_customify_disable_content_vertical_padding":"","_customify_disable_footer_top":"","_customify_disable_footer_main":"","_customify_disable_footer_bottom":"","_customify_breadcrumb_display":"","_customify_header_transparent_display":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3,17,6,5],"tags":[24,23,25],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-face-to-face-instruction","category-instructional-methodologies","category-instructional-presence","category-online-instruction","category-video","tag-active-learning","tag-engagement","tag-large-classrooms"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sovorelpublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/engagement-all.jpg?fit=1920%2C1092&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sovorelpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sovorelpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sovorelpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sovorelpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sovorelpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sovorelpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154,"href":"https:\/\/sovorelpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions\/154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sovorelpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sovorelpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sovorelpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sovorelpublishing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}