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Module 5
Lecture Notes

 

Engagement

In order to engage students, or anyone for that matter, we must give them something to do. A task that is
a) challenging enough to require effort,
b) interesting and relevant enough to justify the effort,
c) supported enough to give the feeling that effort will be fruitful, and
d) rewarding enough (i.e. graded) to encourage sustained effort and desire to succeed
(see the "References and Additional Resources" page for Module 4).

Students participate in a course because they want something (e.g. a good grade, their money’s worth, knowledge and skills, or some combination of these). Their level of engagement with a course will ultimately depend on the degree to which they

• know what tasks they have to complete to get what they want,
• find the required tasks at once difficult (i.e. challenging) and doable (i.e. students feel supported by the resources, the instructor, and their peers), and
• find the required tasks interesting and relevant (or at least they are convinced of their usefulness).

The Theory of Engagement document published by The Schlechty Center for Leadership in School Reform provides a good and concise guide on what facilitates and what impedes student engagement. Although the center focuses on K-12 education, the information in the document is applicable to most learning contexts.

The main challenge for instructors is to create tasks that are engaging (i.e. fulfill the above requirements) while at the same time exposing students to content and resources that support accomplishing a given course’s learning objectives.
 
Providing students with multimedia-rich content and an attractive and sophisticated online course environment must be seen as the last step in dealing with this challenge. The benefits of this last step can be fully reaped only if it accompanies well-designed learning objectives and collaborative assignments, and well-selected and aligned additional relevant resources (McKinney et al., 2009; Swan, 2002, in Rice et al., 2005).

 

Multimedia Resources and Learning

Incorporating multimedia resources to learning environments

• helps tap into the students’ learning-style strengths,
• facilitates understanding of concepts and absorption of information though multisensory, multimodal stimulation
• can promote cognitive flexibility by presenting information in a multitude of relevant contexts (e.g. using analogies, illustrations, interactive demonstrations, etc.), and
• helps students develop intuition on the subject at hand (e.g. it facilitates systematic and controlled manipulation of a concept’s parameters and monitoring of the results).

(e.g. Salomon et al.,1991; Sun, 2004; Swan, 2004; Weinman and Perkins, 2005)

Teaching requires from faculty much more than simply impressing students with subject-matter knowledge and competence and involves much more than simply presenting amassed information. For such information to turn from a series of isolated data pieces, destined at best for memorization, into true knowledge, it has to be dissected, reflected upon, and re-presented in a variety of ways that students can identify with and explore in order to develop expert-like subject-matter intuition.
Multimedia instructional materials and systematic and well-designed assessments assist in this task and become increasingly necessary to instruction as the time devoted to individual courses continuously shrinks and the amount of material to be covered grows.
 

Students learn in multiple ways and use auditory, visual, tactile, and kinesthetic cues to different degrees, depending on their individual learning styles. By providing various alternatives of information dissemination, the instructor may provide a richer learning experience for all students. This multiplicity may decrease efficiency in the short term by increasing an online course's development time. However, it also encourages the development of powerful new learning and teaching environments in the longer term (Bransford et al., 2002; Jenkins et al., 2006; Levin et al., 1999; Wang and Resta, 2002).

For an excellent up-to-date (2018) outline of ways new classroom technologies can enhance learning see this post by Jen Miller 9 Amazing Benefits of Technology in the Classroom (+18 Best Ways to Incorporate Technology).

Examples of Multimedia Educational Resources

Generally speaking, multimedia resources can be classified as demonstrative (e.g. videos, animations, audio examples, etc.) or interactive (e.g. games, interactive animations, tests, etc.) and may be used to facilitate the acquisition (e.g. as part of the course materials) and/or assessment (e.g. as part of an assignment) of knowledge and skills corresponding to a course’s learning objectives.
Preview this short (one page) list with examples of engaging collaborative activities (.pdf) and browse through the educational multimedia examples below for ideas.
For assistance with finding/creating multimedia resources relevant to your courses and with incorporating such resources to your course materials and assignments, contact one of the IDD consultants.
 

 

Quality Matters Standards

Standard 4: Resources (.pdf)
"Instructional materials are sufficiently comprehensive to achieve stated course objectives and learning outcomes and are prepared by qualified persons competent in their fields."

Standard 5: Learner Engagement (.pdf) 
"Meaningful interaction between the instructor and students, among students, and between students and course materials is employed to motivate students and foster intellectual commitment and personal development."

Standard 6: Course Technology (.pdf)
"Course navigation and the technology employed in the course foster student engagement and ensure access to instructional materials and resources."