Engagement^[1]

Did you know that students are more likely to learn if they are motivated to do so? It seems obvious, but when we build motivating factors into our courses they help students to learn more deeply. It also helps them to engage and keep up their performance when they are faced with shifting priorities and expectations from the other parts of their lives.

In the context of learning, motivation influences the direction, persistence, and quality of the learning behaviours in which students engage… As students enter college and gain greater autonomy over what, when, and how they study and learn, motivation plays a crucial role in guiding their behaviours. In addition, because there are many competing goals that vie for their attention, time, and energy, it is crucial to understand what may increase or decrease students’ motivations to pursue specific goals related to learning.

Susan A. Ambrose, 2010

Often, when we think about student motivations, we think about extrinsic motivations. Extrinsic motivation is the external rewards that you receive. Daniel Pink calls these “if/then” rewards. Some of the extrinsic motivators of education are credentialization, bonus points and good grades. These drive students to complete tasks that they may not otherwise want to, but they do not foster a love of learning or a love of a particular discipline.

Learning science suggests that extrinsic motivations are useful in the short term, but are ineffective in the long term. In fact, if we rely too heavily on extrinsic motivations, some students will lose their intrinsic motivation and actually lose interest in a topic they once loved. Intrinsic motivations are incentives to do something because you anticipate you will enjoy the activity on its own terms. It is not about an external benefit but instead is about enjoying the moment and getting lost in the work. Many of us choose to become academics because of our intrinsic love of our subject matter— we get totally caught up in the nuances of our discipline because the discipline itself excites us.

This is why intrinsic motivations are important to consider when building your course. Intrinsic motivation can also be linked to mastery. When students are internally driven to do something because they really see the value in it, then they are far more likely to put effort into achieving mastery.

Watch “Daniel Pink – Motivation” to learn more about motivation.

Refer to How teachers can support student wellbeing for a variety of teaching approaches that support student well being and increase their intrinsic motivation.

Types of Engagement

One of the best ways to increase students’ intrinsic motivation is to make them an active part of the learning process. Students need to be able to engage with material to turn it into something that they care about. They need to practice the skills of the discipline in order to see the value of that discipline. The time and effort they put into engaging with the central themes of your course will increase their satisfaction and make them persistent when they encounter problems and roadblocks. You might even find that they achieve higher grades, even though they aren’t driven to do so. So, as you plan your course, engagement needs to be front and center. Even in a totally self-paced course, students are motivated by interaction. They need to engage actively with what they learn and have ample opportunities for social interaction. There are three types of engagement to think about when planning your course: student-to-course, instructor-to-student, and student-to-student.

Student to Course Engagement is focused on the student’s engagement with the material and activities themselves. This is primarily the way that students engage with material and activities on their own time, both within the classroom and outside of it.

Instructor to Student Engagement is focused on the student’s engagement with you as the instructor. These are the ways that the student sees you as participating in the learning process. It includes all of the ways you are visible in synchronous and asynchronous spaces.

Student to Student Engagement is focused on the student’s engagement with their peers. These are activities that allow your students to think and work collaboratively. It includes all conversations and group work, formal and informal, that takes place between the students in your course.

Take a look at the engagement indicators and best practices compiled by the National Survey of Student Engagement. Page 2 is the most important!

Student-to-Course

Student-to-course engagement is all about incorporating best practices related to student learning. Students need to practice what they know. They cannot passively receive information; they need to practice categorizing it, analyzing it, and working with it. The more that students engage in higher-order thinking processes related to your course, the more deeply they will learn.

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Read Dr. Maryellen Weimer’s short article in Faculty Focus on student engagement. She describes three distinct parts to student engagement with a course:

• [Behavioral] Engagement means that the students are conforming to the classroom norms. They are participating in a way that is expected of them (e.g. taking notes, raising their hand, etc.). See Virtual Online Classroom Management Chapter for further discussion.
• Emotional Engagement means that the students have a positive attitude toward what they learn.
• Cognitive Engagement means that they are actively practicing their skills, and potentially doing more than the bare minimum to try and understand the topic at hand.

Student-to-Course Strategies

Here are some suggestions for how to foster student-to-course engagement as you develop your course plan:

• Provide multiple ways to engage with the course materials and activities
• Design practice activities for each instance the student is working on the course
• Create a case study to help students apply knowledge
• Add simple interactions (drag and drop, multiple choice) to passive learning material
• Design a weekly quiz to help students practice retrieving central concepts from the course
• Plan to use a student response system to poll the room and identify knowledge gaps

Instructor-to-Student

Students need to feel your presence online. Even though you may never physically meet your students, your presence should be felt by your students throughout the course. The students need to see the person behind their course; their instructor needs to be made visible—made real—in a way that is unnecessary in a traditional face-to-face classroom.  One of the biggest obstacles of online learning is the isolation of the learner. To discourage these feelings from taking root, we need to come up with a comprehensive plan to be present in our learning environment and to ensure that we are available for our students when they need us.

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Read Rob Kelly’s short article in Faculty Focus on instructor presence.

Instructor-to-student engagement can best be summarized using the term instructor presence. Being present as an instructor means more than just showing up. It means working as a course guide, a facilitator who pushes the students to deepen their learning and engage with the core questions of the course.

Instructor-to-Student Strategies

Here are some suggestions for how to foster instructor-to-student engagement as you develop your course plan:

• Create an introductory video to frame the course where you introduce yoursef and show your face
• Plan to use a profile picture and actively respond to discussion boards
• Draft weekly announcements, reminder emails or updates to deliver at regular intervals throughout the course
• Find opportunities to draw on your personal experience and expertise
• Plan to pop into breakout rooms to check on group work
• Develop questions to gauge comprehension and engagement with the material
• Plan opportunities to solicit student feedback on your performance
• Set aside time for office hours
• Provide clear methods of how students should communicate with you

Student-to-Student

We are all social creatures. One of the most important soft skills that students learn in university is how to interact with their peers in both professional and personal contexts. Students often look to their peers to establish social norms, and often particularly value the feedback and judgments of their peers. Since online courses separate the students physically from one another, we need to work harder to bring the students back together to create an online learning community. For online learners to be fully engaged, they need to feel like they are participating in something that extends beyond themselves.

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Read a great summary of peer-to-peer interactions that increase student engagement from the Centre for Instructional Technology and Training at the University of Florida. Peer-to-peer engagement can and should be centred in peer learning. When learning becomes collaborative, it becomes something that happens between students. We can’t rely on students to do this on their own. Collaboration needs to be meaningful and to deepen the learning experience. If possible, students should have multiple ways to interact with each other in order to create meaningful connections among them.

Student-to-Student Strategies

• Take advantage of online collaboration spaces like Zoom, Blackboard Collaborate and Microsoft Teams.
• Incorporate collaboration software into group work projects (e.g. OneNote, Planner, OneDrive)
• Create online discussion forums around open-ended questions
• Include group work
• Use icebreakers and create a virtual space for introductions
• Create a central learning place where students go each week that includes a space where they can see their learning and their peers’ learning (e.g. OneNote, Moodle)
• Set clear rules for how students are expected to communicate with each other in online discussions
• Engage in multiple opportunities for peer feedback

Your Engagement Strategy

Download the Engagement Strategy Template to write out the three components of your engagement strategy. As you complete the template consider the following guiding questions:

• How are you going to present material in your course? Is there a way to make passive learning into active learning?
• How will you show students you are present?
• When do students get to collaborate? What components of the course allow them to work together?

Additional Resources for Increasing Online Engagement

Increasing Engagement in Synchronous Online Courses

The following resources offer a variety of strategies to boost student engagement in live, online (synchronous) courses. They cover general best practices for online teaching, specific techniques for synchronous sessions, and broader ideas about fostering engagement in both live and self-paced (asynchronous) learning environments. Think of them as a toolkit for creating more interactive and dynamic online classes. The resources include:

• Faculty Learning Hub | Synchronous Engagement: This webpage contains short readings describing how to use active learning techniques, such as Padlet, annotate, Mentimeter word clouds, whiteboards, and breakout rooms in online synchronous courses, and how to get students to participate in breakout rooms.
• Specific Strategies for Engaging Students During Synchronous Online Classes: This webpage contains resources for faculty teaching online synchronous courses. Some of the resources include teaching in Teams, facilitator notes for the academic team, and teaching in Zoom. It also discusses active learning on Zoom, such as using Padlet, annotate, Mentimeter word clouds, and whiteboards. Additionally, it discusses breakout rooms and other ways to up engagement in your synchronous online class.
• Engagement in Synchronous and Asynchronous Environments: This resource takes a broader view, addressing engagement in both live and self-paced online learning. It may help instructors think about how to create a cohesive learning experience across both formats.
• Active Learning Kit: Engaging Ideas for Live Online Instruction: This kit is likely a practical guide filled with specific activities and ideas for making online classes more interactive and engaging. It will probably offer ready-to-use strategies for instructors.

Increasing Engagement in Asynchronous Online Courses

The following resources provide strategies for boosting student engagement in asynchronous online courses, where students learn at their own pace. They focus on creating a dynamic learning environment even without live interaction. The resources cover key aspects of asynchronous engagement, including:

• The Asynchronous Cookbook: This open education resource is about asynchronous learning. It discusses some key concepts of asynchronous learning, such as preparing students to engage in asynchronous learning and framing learner engagement with the Community of Inquiry Model. Additionally, the document provides a list of asynchronous activities, such as discussion activities, mapping activities, games, simulations & labs, writing, storytelling, and publishing, and presentations. Finally, the document discusses how to create a positive class climate for asynchronous learning.
• Faculty Learning Hub | Asynchronous Engagement: This webpage contains short readings describing how to use active learning techniques for asynchronous courses.
• Engagement in Synchronous and Asynchronous Environments: This resource takes a broader view, addressing engagement in both live and self-paced online learning. It may help instructors think about how to create a cohesive learning experience across both formats.