Student Engagement More Complex, Changeable Than Thought

This might explain a lot! ;-)

 A student who shows up on time for school and listens respectfully in class might appear fully engaged to outside observers, including teachers. But other measures of student engagement, including the student's emotional and cognitive involvement with the course material, may tell a different story -- one that could help teachers recognize students who are becoming less invested in their studies, according to a new study coauthored by a University of Pittsburgh researcher.

More importantly for educators, the study, published online in the professional journal Learning and Instruction, suggests that student engagement -- essential for success in school -- is malleable, and can be improved by promoting a positive school environment. The result paves the way for future work to offer teachers diagnostic tools for recognizing disengagement, as well as strategies for creating a school environment more conducive to student engagement.

"Enhancing student engagement has been identified as the key to addressing problems of low achievement, high levels of student misbehavior, alienation, and high dropout rates," said Ming-Te Wang, assistant professor of psychology in education in the School of Education and of psychology in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at Pitt, who coauthored the study with Jacquelynne S. Eccles, the Wilbert McKeachie and Paul Pintrich Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Michigan.

"When we talk about student engagement, we tend to talk only about student behavior," Wang added. "But my coauthor and I feel like that doesn't tell us the whole story. Emotion and cognition are also very important."

Wang and Eccles' study is among the first attempts by researchers to use data to explore a multidimensional approach to the question of student engagement. In the past, only behavioral measures of student engagement -- such as class attendance, turning in homework on time, and classroom participation -- had been evaluated when gauging student engagement. By conducting a study linking students' perceptions of the school environment with behavior, the authors have provided one of the first pieces of empirical research supporting the viability of the multidimensional perspective, which had previously been largely theoretical.

The researchers designed a 100-question survey that includes the evaluation of emotional engagement and cognitive engagement. Sample survey questions that tested emotional engagement in classes across all subject areas asked students to agree or disagree with statements such as "I find schoolwork interesting" and "I feel excited by the work in school." Sample questions concerning cognitive engagement asked students to provide ratings to questions like "How often do you make academic plans for solving problems?" and "How often do you try to relate what you are studying to other things you know about?"

Using the survey, Wang and Eccles conducted a two-year longitudinal study, tracking approximately 1,200 Maryland students from seventh through eighth grade. The authors also measured students' perceptions of their environment by having them answer questions in five areas: school structure support, which gauged the clarity of teacher expectations; provision of choice, which assessed students' opportunities to make learning-related decisions; teaching for relevance, which evaluated the frequency of activities deemed relevant to students' personal interests and goals; students' perceptions of the emotional support offered by teachers; and students' perceptions of how positive their relationships were with fellow students.

The authors found that students who felt that the subject matter being taught and the activities provided by their teachers were meaningful and related to their goals were more emotionally and cognitively engaged than were their peers. Adding measures of emotional and cognitive engagement could broaden researchers' perspectives on student engagement in future work in this area.

Also among the paper's main findings is that the school environment can and, indeed, should be changed if it is impeding student engagement. A positive and supportive school environment is marked, Wang said, by "positive relationships with teachers and peers. Schools must provide opportunities for students to make their own choices. But they also must create a more structured environment so students know what to do, what to expect, from school." Wang also noted, however, that there is no "one size fits all" strategy to the problem of student engagement.

"Usually people say, 'Yes, autonomy is beneficial. We want to provide students with choices in school,'" Wang said. "This is the case for high achievers, but not low achievers. Low achievers want more structure, more guidelines."

As a result, Wang said, teachers must take into account individual variation among students in order to fulfill the needs of each student.

Wang's current work, undertaken in partnership with six Allegheny County school districts, focuses on developing a diagnostic tool that teachers can use to identify students who are disengaged from school, with a specific emphasis on math and science classes.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130620162844.htm

Online universities: it's time for teachers to join the revolution

Interesting insight by the Gaurdain on the future of online education:

The past few centuries have witnessed revolutions in virtually every area of our world – health, transport, communications and genomics, to name but a few. But not in education. Until now, that is, with the advent of Moocs (massive open online courses).

Moocs are transforming education in both quality and scale. As president of edX, the only non-profit Mooc provider, I have the privilege of being part of this revolution. It's the most exciting time in education in decades.

One way Moocs have changed education is by increasing access. Moocs make education borderless, gender-blind, race-blind, class-blind and bank account-blind. Up to now, quality education – and in some cases, any higher education at all – has been the privilege of the few. Moocs have changed that. Anyone with an internet connection can have access. We hear from thousands of students, many in under-served, developing countries, about how grateful they are for this education.

Moocs are also improving the quality of education. Online learning promotes active learning, where the learner watches videos and engages in interactive exercises. At edX, our team has focused on capturing this element of online learning through an innovative user interface. Moocs and online learning also enable instant feedback through automatically graded exercises, self-paced learning through the ability to pause or rewind videos, peer learning through online discussion forums, and the application of gaming mechanisms to virtual laboratories.

But why is this transformation happening now? A confluence of factors has contributed to a perfect storm for learning. While, over a decade ago at MIT, Eric Grimson and Tomás Lozano-Pérez experimented with "interleaved" videos and online exercises in a flipped class model — in which the lecture becomes homework and class time is for practice – it took video and content distribution networks, cloud computing and social networking to produce the right environment to support the huge worldwide enrolments we see in Moocs. The old ways of funnelling a small number of privileged or lucky students into traditional higher education will go. Moocs are democratising education. We have seen teenagers who lacked top educational pedigrees obtain perfect scores in demanding online courses. Some are now getting the opportunity to pursue higher education. Through Moocs, many more talented people in the world can take part in great learning.

I do not believe online education can replace a college experience, but the days of the old ways of teaching are numbered. Students have always been critical of large lecture halls where they are talked at, and declining lecture attendance is the result. But today we see that there is deep educational value in interactive learning, both online and in the classroom. Colleges and universities are beginning to use Moocs to make blended courses where online videos replace lectures, and class time is spent interacting with the professor, teaching staff and other students. Blended courses can produce good results. Last autumn San Jose State University used course material from edX. The percentage of students required to retake the course dropped from 41% to 9%. So how many people are we reaching? We were overwhelmed by the response to our pilot course in early 2012 on circuits and electronics – 155,000 students from 162 countries signed up. This sent a clear signal that the world was ready for online education and hungry for knowledge. We now have one million students from 192 countries. Delivering knowledge to otherwise excluded populations is just part of what Mooc providers do to change education. Research is another.

EdX and its partner universities are using the data we collect throughout a class to research how students learn most effectively, and then apply that knowledge to both online learning and traditional on-campus teaching. At MIT and Harvard, researchers David Pritchard, Lori Breslow and Andrew Ho have been studying how people learn. Pritchard computes that the data from the first prototype course alone – one my colleagues and I taught on circuits and electronics – is staggering and would fill 110,000 books. We recorded every click. All 230 million of them.

Using the data we gathered, we found that more than half of our students in the circuits and electronics class started working on their homework before watching video lectures. It appears that students get more excited about learning when they try to puzzle out a problem. In such classes, we are now looking at whether professors should assign homework before the lecture, instead of after.

Another way technology has driven these revolutionary changes in education is through using artificial intelligence to help teachers effectively assess students' work. Last month we unveiled our experimental assessment tool, which combines AI assessment, peer assessment and self-assessment, to provide professors with the tools to grade open-ended questions in a massively scaled environment. We also piloted cohort technology on our platform, which is a way for instructors to divide the large discussion forums into smaller, more intimate sub-groups.

We are part of a movement that seeks to change the face of education. In April we announced that our entire learning platform would be released as an open source on 1 June, and that Stanford University, along with Berkeley, MIT, Harvard and others, would start collaborating with us to continue to improve the platform. We are looking forward to universities and developers everywhere enhancing the platform that powers our edX courses.

I love teaching. I love teaching at a university, and I love teaching anyone who has a desire to learn. Everything I knew about learning (and therefore teaching) is a moving target now. I am like a kid in a candy shop when I think about what our research will show. I look forward to being surprised. Lao Tzu said: "If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading." It's time for teachers to rethink learning methods. I invite everyone along for the exhilarating ride.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/jun/15/university-education-online-mooc

Chalkboard vs Motherboard...:)

Self-Directed Learning

I found a good summary of what Malcom Knowles view are on SDL, many points are good to remember as I think it is important to go back and really appreciate what the pros and cons of this type of learning can entail: 

Self-direction

In its broadest meaning, ‘self-directed learning‘ describes, according to Malcolm Knowles (1975: 18) a process:

… in which individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing appropriate learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes.

Knowles puts forward three immediate reasons for self-directed learning. First he argues that there is convincing evidence that people who take the initiative in learning (proactive learners) learn more things, and learn better, than do people who sit at the feet of teachers passively waiting to be taught (reactive learners). ‘They enter into learning more purposefully and with greater motivation. They also tend to retain and make use of what they learn better and longer than do the reactive learners.’ (Knowles 1975: 14)

A second immediate reason is that self-directed learning is more in tune with our natural processes of psychological development. ‘An essential aspect of maturing is developing the ability to take increasing responsibility for our own lives – to become increasingly self-directed’ (Knowles 1975: 15).

A third immediate reason is that many of the new developments in education put a heavy responsibility on the learners to take a good deal of initiative in their own learning. ‘Students entering into these programs without having learned the skills of self-directed inquiry will experience anxiety, frustration , and often failure, and so will their teachers (Knowles 1975: 15).

To this may be added a long-term reason – because of rapid changes in our understanding is no longer realistic to define the purpose of education as transmitting what is known. The main purpose of education must now to be to develop the skills of inquiry (op cit).

Malcolm Knowles’ skill was then to put the idea of self direction into packaged forms of activity that could be taken by educators and learners. He popularized these through various books and courses. His five step model involved:

1. diagnosing learning needs.

2. formulating learning needs.

3. identifying human material resources for learning.

4. choosing and implementing appropriate learning strategies.

5. evaluating learning outcomes.

As Merriam and Cafferella (1991: 46) comment, this means of conceptualizing the way we learn on our own is very similar to much of the literature on planning and carrying out instruction for adults in formal institutional settings. It is represented as a linear process. From what we know of the process of reflection this is an assumption that needs treating with some care. Indeed, as we will see, there is research that indicates that adults do not necessarily follow a defined set of steps – but are far more in the hands of chance and circumstance. Like Dewey’s conception of reflection an event or phenomenon triggers a learning project. This is often associated with a change in life circumstances (such as retirement, child care, death of a close relative and so on). The changed circumstance provides the opportunity for learning, the way this is approached is dictated by the circumstances. Learning then progresses as ‘the circumstances created in one episode become the circumstances for the next logical step’ (op. cit.). Self-directed learning thus, in this view, becomes possible, when certain things cluster together to form the stimulus and the opportunity for reflection and exploration.

However, once we begin to take into account the environment in which this occurs then significant concerns arise with Malcolm Knowles’ formulation. Spear and Mocker, and Spear (1984, 1988 quoted in Merriam and Caffarella 1991: 46-8) found that ‘self-directed learners, rather than pre-planning their learning projects, tend to select a course from limited alternatives which happen to occur in their environment and which tend to structure their learning projects’. This is of fundamental importance. It is in this light that Brookfield’s (1994) question is pertinent: ‘What are the essential characteristics of a critical, rather than technical, interpretation of self-directed learning?’ Two suggest themselves:

• self-direction as the continuous exercise by the learner of authentic control over all decisions having to do with learning, and

• self-direction as the ability to gain access to, and choose from, a full range of available and appropriate resources.

Both these conditions are, he argues, as much political as they are pedagogical and they place educators who choose to use self-directed approaches in the centre of political issues and dilemma.

http://infed.org/mobi/malcolm-knowles-informal-adult-education-self-direction-and-andragogy/ 

Positive Learning Environments and Technology

I found an interesting article that states the importance of creating a "sense of place" for students that are taking online courses in order to better support and enhance the students quality of and experience of learning.   

"Just as effective face-to-face teaching and learning, online learning and teaching benefit from purposeful curriculum design in which learning purposes, learning guidelines and appropriate resources and learning activities and interactions are structured in meaningful ways. Without such guidance, individual online learners can find themselves confused, misplaced and even frustrated in terms of their lack of place-ness. Agger-Gupta (2002, p. 144) describes these emerging issues and defines some of them as “self and identity” and “relational spaces”, which require analysis in the complex world of online learning. So, although the benefits offered by flexible, technologically-rich learning contexts often outweigh the problems associated with this type of virtual learning, the confusion and disorientation sometimes felt by students during online learning experiences is real and requires purposeful consideration by online course designers. "

By having these issues in mind when creating and taking an online course will better help promote a positive learning environment for the digital student  

http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/melbourne08/procs/northcote.pdf 

What is Active Learning?

Why Active Learning?

Here is another good summary about the importance of active learning in the classroom and potential barriers that may hinder learning as well as some insightful methods to overcome these obstacles.

http://www.ydae.purdue.edu/lct/hbcu/documents/Active_Learning_Creating_Excitement_in_the_Classroom.pdf

Strategies that foster Active Learning in the Classroom

The following website link has a plethora of handy ideas and strategies to better help active learning in the classroom: http://www.usciences.edu/teaching/tips/spal.shtml

Characteristics of Adult Learners

• Adults are autonomous and self-directed. They need to be free to direct themselves. Their teachers must actively involve adult participants in the learning process and serve as facilitators for them. Specifically, they must get participants' perspectives about what topics to cover and let them work on projects that reflect their interests. They should allow the participants to assume responsibility for presentations and group leadership. They have to be sure to act as facilitators, guiding participants to their own knowledge rather than supplying them with facts. Finally, they must show participants how the class will help them reach their goals (e.g., via a personal goals sheet).

• Adults have accumulated a foundation of life experiences and knowledge that may include work related activities, family responsibilities, and previous education. They need to connect learning to this knowledge/experience base. To help them do so, they should draw out participants' experience and knowledge which is relevant to the topic. They must relate theories and concepts to the participants and recognize the value of experience in learning.

• Adults are goal-oriented. Upon enrolling in a course, they usually know what goal they want to
attain. They, therefore, appreciate an educational program that is organized and has clearly defined elements. Instructors must show participants how this class will help them attain their goals. This classification of goals and course objectives must be done early in the course.

• Adults are relevancy-oriented. They must see a reason for learning something. Learning has to be applicable to their work or other responsibilities to be of value to them. Therefore, instructors must identify objectives for adult participants before the course begins. This means, also, that theories and concepts must be related to a setting familiar to participants. This need can be fulfilled by letting participants choose projects that reflect their own interests.

• Adults are practical, focusing on the aspects of a lesson most useful to them in their work. They may not be interested in knowledge for its own sake. Instructors must tell participants explicitly how the lesson will be useful to them on the job.

• As do all learners, adults need to be shown respect. Instructors must acknowledge the wealth of experiences that adult participants bring to the classroom. These adults should be treated as equals in experience and knowledge and allowed to voice their opinions freely in class.

http://carrie-ekey.com/handouts/Rotterdam2012/Eu_Coaches_Conf2_Rott_Day_1_A4.pdf

By keeping these characteristics in mind when teaching adult learners I think we can better help tailor instructional strategies instead of taking  generic approach.

The surprising truth about what Motivates us!

Learning Spaces

I found an interesting article that states the importance of creating a "sense of place" for students that are taking online courses in order to better support and enhance the students quality of and experience of learning.   

"Just as effective face-to-face teaching and learning, online learning and teaching benefit from purposeful curriculum design in which learning purposes, learning guidelines and appropriate resources and learning activities and interactions are structured in meaningful ways. Without such guidance, individual online learners can find themselves confused, misplaced and even frustrated in terms of their lack of place-ness. Agger-Gupta (2002, p. 144) describes these emerging issues and defines some of them as “self and identity” and “relational spaces”, which require analysis in the complex world of online learning. So, although the benefits offered by flexible, technologically-rich learning contexts often outweigh the problems associated with this type of virtual learning, the confusion and disorientation sometimes felt by students during online learning experiences is real and requires purposeful consideration by online course designers. "

I think that this discussion forum is a good example of a positive learning environment or "sense of place" designed to allow students to express themselves and add to each others learning humanizes us more. 

By having these issues in mind when creating and taking an online course will better help promote a positive learning environment for the digital student  

http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/melbourne08/procs/northcote.pdf 

Personal Learning Environments - the future of eLearning?

The following link is for an interesting article and take on the future of learning and how we can incorporate new technological advances to better help our learning and perhaps create a new type of learning system altogether (Personal Learning Environents or PLE's) .  Endless options! :)
http://www.elearningeuropa.info/files/media/media11561.pdf 

Journal 3: The power of Introverts

In Susan Cain’s video entitled “The Power of Introverts” she discusses some challenges she has faced throughout her life that have hindered her true self from being shown.  She mentions several situations and decisions she was a part of that encouraged her to put forth a more extroverted version of herself where in fact all she wanted to be was her own introverted self. 

Reflective: 

             After watching the video “The Power of Introverts” I felt really connected with Cain’s thoughts and situations she had been through as I too am a huge introvert myself!  I found myself nodding my head to practically everything she said!

Interpretive: 

Growing up in a small town and in a small family perhaps had a bit of an impact on my introverted tendencies.  From a young age I was a shy kid always clinging to my mom or dad.  But as Cain not so fondly recalls, this is considered as a social faux pas and we should all be more adventurous and outgoing.  True enough, my parents doing what they believed would be best for me put me in countless number of afterschool and weekend activates.  From ballet to gymnastics, swimming, girl guides, the list goes on.  Looking back at that today, I can truly appreciate all of the effort, time, and money my parents put into all of those extracurricular activities for me; however at the time it was nothing but that.

 As Cain mentioned all she wanted to do was read.  For me all I wanted to do was draw, paint, color, and make things with my hands.  I do think that making a child participate in something that they haven’t expressed or shown any interest in can be a challenging issue.  For example, I remember the first day of ballet I ended up crying because I didn’t know what I was doing whereas all of the other kids seemed to grasp on fairly quickly.  Swimming wasn’t that great either as I quickly realized I had a fear of water!  Cain’s message about letting somebody just be themselves really hit home.  Why not just let somebody be themselves and do what they want to do?

Decisional:     

I agree with Cain’s point about stopping the need for an abundance of group work or projects.  Sometimes it’s nice to just work by yourself and see what your own true capabilities are without having somebody to share the work or add their own opinions and thoughts. 

One of my most favorite quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson is “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”  I think that this quote really ties into Cain’s main point of her video.  I do believe it is important to be open and share your thoughts with one another.  It is important to try new things occasionally to “change things up” per say.  But it shouldn’t be necessary to go beyond one’s comfort level just to be liked or to appear more engaging. 

References:

Cain, S. (2012). The power of introverts.  Retrieved from

http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html

A Different Take on our Education System....

Case Study Instructional Strategy

The following link is a video describing the case study instructional strategy.  It briefly describes what a case study is, how it is best used, some limitations and advantages to this strategy.  The roles of the educator and students are also discussed along with an example on how to use the case study technique within the classroom.

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/14567759/pid-instructional-strategies-video