Your "secret sauce" for engagement
Learner engagement is always a hot topic in teaching and learning circles. While there's plenty of literature out there to suggest what works and what doesn't, I'm curious hear from others here what engagement strategies work best for you? What's your "secret sauce" to get learners to open up, to share their thinking, to move beyond being extras in the movie?
التعليقات
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Here's a PowerPoint presentation (saved as a PDF in order to upload here) that offers some suggestions. The presentation is a bit dated and I didn't check to see if the embedded links still work,
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I think hands on activities and projects which allow the creators to discuss how they came up with an idea and explaining the process while giving others starter questions that provoke additional discussion. This creates a back and forth allowing all stakeholders to have a part in the discussion. Another style I have used is for group projects, have the groups assign each person a role(transcriber, speaker, designers, builders) depending on their talents and the tasks needed. I also give them choice/autonomy in the project. This makes presenting easier and all member participate and present.
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Thank you for sharing @John.T.67 and @Stephanie.H.864
John, thank you for sharing those slides. The elements of engagement that I immediately resonated with were caring/compassion, empathy, being present, being available, being organized, and providing well-timed feedback. As you note, this dance we’re in with our students is super relational. That is, in many cases, students are looking for a deep, positive, academic/professional relationship with their instructors. It’s what I would argue they’re paying big bucks for. We can be cold and hands off, tepid like a 86F degree bath, or engaged with lots of healthy back and forth discussion and debate. Well, maybe that’s just me. It’s definitely what I looked for with most of my professors.
Stephanie, thank you for sharing your perspective as well. I note your focus on activities and projects, i.e., an active approach to teaching and learning which typically gets students deeply engaged in their learning experience. I also like how you assign roles in your group work example so that everyone knows what’s expected of them. One semester I assigned my students roles that they were comfortable with, then, for the next group project, I asked them to switch roles. One of my students wrote me a letter that argued (citing research) that they should not have to switch roles and instead focus on their strengths! We had a great discussion/debate about this approach. I too went and did some research that argued the value of trying on new roles as a way to see things from a different point of view and the value that could generate for them especially in a safe environment like our learning community. We agreed to disagree and in the end both learned something new. This is why I love facilitating learning experiences so much!
