Module I: Introduction to Student Engagement
Module Objectives
Learners be able to:
- Define student engagement
- Identify how student engagement affects student success
- Describe the four learning styles of education
- Describe the importance of getting to know your students
Reflect
Before starting the mini-course, use the Google Doc link below to reflect on what student engagement means to you.
Think back to a time you were in school and really excited about a project, content area, or assignment and why you may have been excited about it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jrmqBw9f_C1hciuDKWB3D3A0FqB8AkVZp7JiSC8Hbk0/edit?usp=sharing
What is Student Engagement?
- Behavioral engagement: Participation in academic, social, and extra-curricular activities. Establishing classroom routines, cues, and student roles to help students be more productive and see greater value in their work.
- Emotional engagement: Focusing on positive and negative reactions to their teachers, classmates, academics, and the school community to facilitate the learning process. Checking in on students more mentally and offering the proper support systems to help them.
- Cognitive engagement: Focus on students’ level of investment in their learning. Create more activities and implement the information the students would find "valuable" and increase their motivation to learn and succeed.
The Glossary of Education Reform took it a step further to discuss four more learning components of engagement:
- Intellectual engagement: Students have more choices over the topics they are learning about and have the opportunity to spark more curiosity about the subject. Educators may also let students choose the way they will demonstrate their learning in a way that is most meaningful to them (paper, video, presentation, etc.).
- Cultural engagement: Creating a safe space for students of diverse backgrounds and communities where they feel valued and welcomed. If they feel comfortable, give the students and other community members opportunities to speak about their experiences to students and school staff. Incorporate more activities where there can be an integration of multicultural songs, beliefs, experiences, values, and other important components.
- Social engagement: Stimulating engagement through focus interactions; Collaboration in group work, or pairs where there can also be contests for the students to experience friendly competition (Debates, clubs, fairs, etc.).
- Physical engagement: A focus on “kinesthetic learning”; meaning a greater use of physical motions and activities during the student’s learning. Allow students to come up and write out answers, and implement optional brain break exercises to give students a break.
Student engagement is not just about students being able to recite information to pass an exam. It is about students becoming fully invested in their learning as they actively engage with the content and the materials while also having a strong desire to learn and complete the assignments.
Why does student engagement matter?
Fostering student engagement in your classrooms can go further than you think. For starters, one of our top priorities as educators is to develop student growth. Student engagement has been proven to contribute significant positive effects with student growth. Student engagement makes a critical impact on students’ learning because when students are able to engage themselves behaviorally, emotionally, and cognitively (as described above), they have a greater chance of being able to succeed in their academics, develop stronger connections to their communities inside and outside of school, and develop more confidence and positivity in their capabilities.
Educators and schools that focus on student engagement have been proven to better prepare their students for their future endeavors. Students who are engaged are 2.5 times more likely to get outstanding grades and strive to do well in school and are 4.5 times more likely to be excited and hopeful about the opportunities their future holds. This includes being more likely to obtain a successful and high occupational career.
Take a look at the statistics below from Learning Sciences International to see how the COVID-19 Pandemic affected student engagement:
On the other hand, educators have to be alert when noticing when a student has significantly low levels of engagement. A lack of student engagement can result in a series of negative circumstances such as rebellion, delinquency, and violence, to name a few. These can all be linked in how you manage your classrooms. Students who are engaged and invested in their work will care more about listening to directions and completing assignments. Students who are not engaged can often act out and have little to no care about completing the necessary assignments to develop their growth. Student engagement can be difficult to crack, but developing essential student-teacher relationships and showing your students that you care can be the first step in knowing what factors can engage your students.
If you are interested in finding out more about student engagement in a post-pandemic era, click here: https://www.learningsciences.com/blog/why-is-student-engagement-important/
The ABC's of Student Engagement
Whenever you are struggling to remember the essential components of student engagement, think of your ABCs.
A is for Affective Engagement
- Students feel a sense of belonging in the classroom and are actively expressing interest, curiosity, and excitement about the content and activities.
- Example: a student who loves to study astronomy would thrive in a lesson activity where the students have to recreate the solar system in a way that they feel best demonstrates their knowledge.
B is for Behavioral Engagement
- How much time a student has to complete a task and their active participation in class activities.
- Example: Timed multiplication tables in elementary school where you had to complete 100 multiplication questions in under 5 minutes. Added a certain level of stress that was either helpful is you were good at math or anxiety if you struggled.
C is for Cognitive Engagement
- A student's perseverance through academic struggles and using metacognitive and other developed skills and strategies.
- Example: A student who stays after school almost, if not everyday, to work with the teacher on content they are struggling with in that unit.
The Importance of Getting to Know Your Students
Building student-teacher relationships based on trust and mutual respect has proven to have significant benefits to students' learning and how the instructor manages the class. One of the most important things to remember about students is that they want to know that you as an educator support them and care about them. Showing your students you care unlocks a level of emotional engagement that can do wonders in helping them to succeed. We are also studying why it is important to understand your students' learning styles. If you do not take the time to get to know your student, then how will you know what ways they learn best? How will you know what factors about their lives excite them and can be integrated into the classroom to develop their learning? Getting to know your students' interests can show them not only that you care, but that what matters to them also matters to you.
Watch this speech given by a student on why it is important to understand your students: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axiLNBiFrIc
How to Measure Student Engagement
Watch this short video on ways that educators can measure student engagement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymLUFlt4AR8
- Answer these questions in the Google doc link below:
- What ways to measure student engagement struck you the most?
- Which measurement strategy do you believe is the most effective and why?
- Which measurement do you think you would include in your instructional design
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jrmqBw9f_C1hciuDKWB3D3A0FqB8AkVZp7JiSC8Hbk0/edit?usp=sharing
There are many ways we can evaluate student engagement. Here are some more common ways that educators are able to measure and get a better understanding of how engaged their students are:
- Students are actively participating in class discussions
- Students are enthusiastic about their learning
- Students express a positive outlook and attitude toward their schoolwork
- High participation in group work
- Eager to complete class assignments
- Strives to overcome academic struggles and asks questions when there is something that is not understood
The Four Learning Styles of Education
Reading/Writing
Reading/Writing learning includes:
- Basic reading and writing
- Use/Create lists
- Glossaries to understand words throughout the lesson
- Re-reading/re-writing book information and notes
When teaching students who prefer learning by reading/writing, incorporate more activities and assignments that allow students to read and take notes on the material. Also, give them time and opportunities to re-read and re-write information as they need and allow them to write the notes and information in their own words.
Bodily-Kinesthetic
Bodily-Kinesthetic learners prefer:
- Learning by doing
- Using the five senses (Sight, touch, taste, smell, sound)
- Practice exams
- Opportunities to get up and move
- Incorporate notes into activities and labs
When incorporating bodily-kinesthetic as a learning style, it's important to remember that these learners learn by doing. Provide more activities where students can get up and move around the classroom and can learn by doing hands-on activities. For example, let's say you were teaching a social studies classroom about World War II warfare and how the U.S. learned to build planes to land and take off on navy ships. You could have the students build their own paper airplanes and then give them a platform to try and land the paper airplanes on. Students are moving, creating, and implementing their work into the lesson while learning about how difficult it was for soldiers to land planes on ships during World War II.
Auditory
Auditory learning includes these essential components:
- Listening
- Lectures
- Use class and group discussion frequently to discuss the notes
- Record notes on tape
- Tools to use include:
- Reading the text out loud
- Recognizing the tone of the speaker
- Discussing concepts with others
Auditory learners learn by listening and this can be done through lectures, videos and other spoken tutorials, group discussions, and group collaborations. Encourage students who prefer to learn by listening to read any written information and notes out loud so they can have a greater opportunity to learn in a way that works best for them.
Visual
Visual learning can be summarized by these components:
- Prefer learning by seeing/watching
- Prefers using visual displays such as:
- Graphics
- Diagrams
- Charts
- Pictures
- Uses highlighting, symbols, and different colors to organize note-taking
When teaching a visual learner, try and implement more note-taking that uses symbols, colors, and other graphics that can help present the information in a way that is more comfortable to visual learners.
Why are learning styles important to know?
Learning styles are essential to know when discussing student engagement because a student who does not understand the information and has a tough time with the learning style used, will have a significantly low engagement level. Incorporating different learning styles can mix up the lesson to keep things engaging, but it can also accommodate different learning needs. A variety of students who learn with different styles can each develop their learning abilities and develop skills using other learning styles as well. If a student prefers learning by doing and all you do is lectures and note taking, they are going to struggle to retain the information. However, if you incorporate a lecture in the beginning and then a hands-on activity to re-learn the information, then the kinesthetic students will have a greater chance of engaging in the lesson and finding the information valuable.
Activities
- Complete a KWL Chart on what you know about student engagement using the link below
- Go back to your Google doc at the start of the module and reflect on what you think your preferred learning style may be (Bodily-kinesthetic, auditory, reading/writing, visual) and what it was like in school with that specific learning style. Think about educational practices that you think would have increased your student engagement by implementing these learning styles.
- Read these articles on student engagement and learning styles:
- Axelson, R. D., & Flick, A. (2011). DEFINING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT. Change, 43(1), 38–43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23568219
- Roorda, D. L., Koomen, H. M. Y., Spilt, J. L., & Oort, F. J. (2011). The Influence of Affective Teacher-Student Relationships on Students’ School Engagement and Achievement: A Meta-Analytic Approach. Review of Educational Research, 81(4), 493–529. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41408670
Proceed to the Next Unit
You may be learning about all of this and thinking to yourself, "Why does this matter?". Let's look on the next page to see the benefits of incorporating student engagement into your instructional designs.
Find out why student engagement matters here: Module II: The Benefits of Student Engagement
Home Page:
Engagement Strategies for Student Success
Modules:
Module I: Introduction to Student Engagement
Module II: The Benefits of Student Engagement
Module III: Creating an Instructional Design for Student Engagement
References
Bernstein, L. (2022). What is Student Engagement and Why Does it Matter? [web blog]. Xello Inc. Accessed from https://xello.world/en/blog/student-engagement/what-is-student-engagement/.
Karlson, S. (2021). Why student engagement is important in a post-COVID world. Learning Sciences International. Accessed from: https://www.learningsciences.com/blog/why-is-student-engagement-important/
Parsons, S. A., Nuland, L. R., & Parsons, A. W. (2014). The ABCs of student engagement. The Phi Delta Kappan. Vol 95(8), pp. 23–27. Accessed from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24374604
The Glossary of Education Reform. (2016). Student engagement definition. Great Schools Partnership. Accessed from: https://www.edglossary.org/student-engagement/
Wilfrid Laurier University. (2008). Understanding Your Learning Style. Wilfrid Laurier University: Study Skills and Supplemental Instruction Centre. Accessed from: https://web.wlu.ca/learning_resources/pdfs/Learning_Styles.pdf