Measuring student engagement? Quite a number of years ago, I was asked to champion a classroom walkthroughs program in a large school district. In this program school administrators would conduct “walkthroughs” as a way to assess how their school was implementing improvement goals. These administrators would get real data and a “feel” for how things were going in a quick and simple way. Principals and associate principals were to quickly pop into classrooms while teaching was taking place and, using a checklist with certain look-fors, make a five-minute assessment based on their observations of the lesson:
These and a number of other questions were all organized on a one-pager with checkboxes that administrators could quickly fill out. At the end of each day (or week) they would be expected to enter the data into an online database so they could combine all of their quick snapshots (crunch the numbers) and see “the big picture” for their school. A walkthrough mosaic, if you will. While I sympathized with the intent of the walkthroughs and was happy to get principals out of their offices and into the classrooms, I didn’t especially like the tool. It’s hard to reduce something as complex as a teaching environment into a series of “Yes I saw it!”, or “No I didn’t!” checklists. One question especially rankled me: Determine levels of class engagement:
The question was based upon a model for describing classroom engagement from the Phillip Schlechty (2002) which has five different levels of engagement: 1) Authentic Engagement, 2) Ritual Compliance, 3) Passive Compliance, 4) Retreatism, and 5) Rebellion. (for short summary of these levels check this document from Stockton University Center for Learning Design: levels) This question always bothered me. While the model professed to illustrate levels of “engagement”, there really was only one level where student were really engaged – the other levels just showed how disengaged they might be. The question elicited many questions from me. How do we know exactly what engagement looks like? Is it about eye-contact, question-asking, discussion, and busyness? Or could quiet students, who might be judged as day-dreamers, perhaps be more engaged than students who know how to “play the game”? Is a classroom of students quietly doodling as a teacher reads a story to them less engaged than those down the hall conducting a science experiment? Which group is merely compliant? I began to think about the types of engagement and considered a model of my own: 1) causing chaos, 2) confused or disconnected, 3) simple compliance, 4) making connections (personal or real world), 5) consolidating learning (building a frame for understanding), 6) challenging assumptions, and 7) creating new understandings or interpretations. Of course, most of this kind of engagement happens where we can’t observe it – inside the mind of the student. So, it wouldn’t work very well as a tool for quick observation (although it might work when reviewing student responses, written or recorded). After working with our district administrators for six months with what I thought was a flawed tool, I managed to convince the website builders to remake our walkthrough tool to expand the choices for observable engagement, and to better reflect our district improvement goals (for assessment, inquiry, and critical literacy). Then, only a year into the process, the district decided to drop the contract with the educational website designer, and walkthroughs - at least in our district - became a thing of the past. My fuss and bother about defining “student engagement” was put on hold. Student engagement as it is understood on college campuses After making the transition over ten years ago from k-12 education to post-secondary contexts, I quickly became re-acquainted with the term “student engagement”. I learned that the term “student engagement” is one that has taken on a lot of territory in and around the college scene in the past decade or so. As a result, the term itself has become rather “fuzzy”. On college and university campuses, student engagement is referred to when:
In our present post-secondary context, “student engagement” is something that is often used as a justification for many decisions made by learning institutions, but it is rarely defined and more often only fleetingly understood. More work is necessary in this field to clarify just what the students are to be engaged with and how, to help clear away the misconceptions and make decisions that most benefit our institutions, our students and our instructors. However, for the purposes of this series of blog entries, we will be focusing on only the first of those four notions of student engagement; engagement as it pertains to the kind of connection students make when involved in learning activities. Our immediate context at NorQuest At NorQuest, we currently have a faculty learning team considering how we might better engage our students in online activities, but even in this group of highly interested educators, we have had trouble pinning down what exactly we mean by student engagement. Just this past week we wrestled with a few critical questions:
Several of the instructors on the faculty learning team expressed frustration with their current online – Covid necessitated – teaching context. They lamented the loss of engagement from face-to-face contexts and the connection they always felt with their students. Now, because many students choose not to attend regularly (but might watch the recordings later), keep their cameras off, and only ask questions or use the chat box feature infrequently, these instructors feel like there is little to no engagement. And this feeling raised several more questions:
These six questions are going to become very important as we look to the future in teaching and learning at NorQuest. In next couple of blog entries, we’ll try to work though these questions with an eye to the college learning context. References: Schlechty, P.C. (2002) Working on the work: An action plan for teachers, principals, and superintendents. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Education Series. Ashwin P., McVitty D. (2015) The Meanings of Student Engagement: Implications for Policies and Practices. In: Curaj A., Matei L., Pricopie R., Salmi J., Scott P. (eds) The European Higher Education Area. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20877-0_23
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The Future of Faculty In the past few weeks, I have been part of a NQ Futurist group tasked with opening up conversations and getting feedback regarding the future of teaching and learning at NorQuest. More specifically, gauging how ready our instructors are for the rapidly changing nature of post-secondary education. It was kinda fun. I ended up working with a small group (Heather, Justine, Farah and Rasoul) and we did some reading and research, considered the various scenarios that were already part of the Reimagine Higher Education document and tried to design an interactive workshop that might also secure meaningful data and suggestions. Then our little group went “on the road” (digitally) and did seven presentations in two weeks, reaching a sizable number of NorQuesters (126 responded in the Mentimeter polls!) All the same, I think we broadsided some instructors. Very early in our presentation, we asked participants to gauge how ready they were for current and emerging trends in post-secondary learning. For many, who focus mainly on supporting their students on a daily basis, the terms may have been a bit unfamiliar. I thought I might use this MMM to tackle these terms and provide helpful, reader-friendly links for those who want to know more. (No dry research articles in this lot!) Overall Trends https://thebestschools.org/magazine/current-trends-online-education/ Personalized Learning As the name suggests, this kind of learning allows students to complete an individualized or “customized” course/study that adapts and adjusts in light of their prior learning and experience, their specific learning strengths and needs, and their program and professional goals. This is a major shift from the standardized, one-size-fits-all courses and programs that most of us have encountered in post-secondary or at least, undergraduate education. For a better understanding of how personalized learning might look at the college level check out these links:
Students as Co-Creators This idea takes personalized learning and agency to the next level. From what I could learn, this approach asks students to help frame and build their own educational programs. Initially it reminded me of a couple of courses I designed for myself when completing my doctorate. My supervisors had to step aside from being the “experts” and facilitate my learning through coaching and check-ins while I tackled concepts and models that were unfamiliar to them. However, these co-creations seem to be more of an instructor-student collaborative study that has connections to research and designs for learning. While students collaborate with other students and instructors to do research In the process they learn and get credit for it. Moreover, there are co-creator programs that involve partnerships with organizations or industries. Although I could find could find many “references” to the idea of student co-creation being employed at a college level, I had a tough time finding short, summary-type articles on this. Instead, I pass on to you several examples of programs that use a co-creation model.
Online Facilitation Online facilitation is nothing new. We’ve been taking and hosting online courses for a couple of decades already. What is new is the extent to which we are now teaching online (it’s 2020!) and they way in which online teaching has evolved in terms of course design, flexibility, student engagement, OERs, interactivity, assessment, synchronous and asynchronous delivery, and online platforms, tools, and apps. Here’s a few articles and links that explore the advantages and disadvantages of learning in this way and some of the recent developments in online facilitation.
Micro Credentialing
A micro-credential is a certification or badge of assessed learning. It allows students and employers the flexibility to take small and targeted studies to develop a specific skill or competency without having to spend time in a comprehensive program. Micro-credentials can help prospective students effectively address learning gaps or continuing employees acquire immediately required training. In post-secondary, These credentials can be bundled to provide equivalencies for courses and programs. At this moment, many Canadian colleges and Universities are using microcredentialing to attract more part-time students and are looking at how to make these micro-credentials transferrable from institution to institution. Here are some more detailed explanations of micro credentialing from some institutions you may know:
HyFlex Learning At our Teaching and Learning Day last Friday, Jenni Hayman shared the HyFlex approach to course design. Unfortunately, I had to run my own session so I was unable to attend! However, with a little surfing on the net, I was able to gain a better understanding of this approach. HyFlex courses allow students to choose how they want to participate in their courses. One day they might attend class in person, another they could choose to join synchronously online, and on a third day they might watch the class asynchronously when it was more convenient. It is the “hybrid” or “blended” approach taken to another level of flexibility. HyFlex allows students to choose when and how they might go through their course, allowing students to stay engaged (f they have self-discipline). However, HyFlex requires a lot! Instructors must become very familiar with their program outcomes and to be extremely adaptive using in-person and online strategies and structures to construct a learning experience that is complex (multi-layered and varied) yet consistent in learning expectations and overall assessment. More information on the HyFlex approach is here:
Virtual and Augmented Reality Virtual and augmented reality is something that our college has been experimenting with for a little while. In the Innovation Studio, we had a VR set up where nursing students could put on the VR goggles and attend to a patient in a hospital setting virtually. On the other side of the retractable wall, students learned about human body systems by using the Z Boards, which allowed students to explore various parts of the body through 3-D interaction. This fall, NorQuest is investigating VR models and systems with an eye to helping students learn professional judgement through simulated interactions. More information on how VR and AR are changing the face of education can be found here:
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AuthorJeff Kuntz Ph.D. ImagesExcept where indicated, images used in the blog posts are personal photos, images from NorQuest College or images from Pixabay. Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright free images, videos and music. https://pixabay.com/ Archives
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