Volume XXXVII, No. 26 | November 6, 2015
Student Engagement: Getting 21st-Century Students Hooked Into Your Instruction
When I enter a class, I’m thinking about several things—getting my points across clearly, hoping that students show up willing to have relevant discussions rather than engaging with their cell phones, and hoping that my students and I are not bored by my lecture and activities for the day. As an educator, I am a lifelong learner and a student. I collaborate with colleagues within and outside my department and seek out innovative ways to engage students in my classes. In my practical experience and based on several studies, student engagement includes different activities—e.g., behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement measures.
Behavioral Student Engagement
Behavioral engagement involves student participation that can be observed. Are students:
…attending class regularly?
…taking notes on content?
…asking questions relevant to the content?
…actively involved in small and large group discussions?
…attentive to the lecture?
Cognitive Student Engagement
Cognitive engagement involves demonstrating critical thinking and mastery of course objectives and other challenging tasks, projects, or assignments. This is an extension of behavioral engagement; just because a student is taking notes, attending class, and listening to lecture does not mean that learning is occurring. Behavioral engagement can sometimes be misleading. It is not possible to know what students are thinking or what they have learned, unless they articulate their understanding in some meaningful way. Are students:
…using vocabulary in the discipline correctly?
…having in-depth discussions with others about the course content?
…reflecting on their own thinking with others or in writing?
Emotional Student Engagement
Emotional engagement has also been referred to as motivational engagement and involves affect. Are students:
…expressing how much they enjoy the class or instruction?
…expressing an interest in the discipline?
…sharing how the course content might be applied to their lives in relevant ways?
…taking pride in the quality of discussions they are having and the work they submitted?
When students are engaged, they are motivated and involved in learning. In today’s classroom, we must consider that the increasing use and reliance on technology has had a tremendous impact on how students learn and how we teach. A student may have spent the last 48 hours before attending a class actively engaged with audiovisual stimulation that proves to be a tough act to follow in a classroom when it comes to generating interest. Students are experiencing the conveniences of having information and entertainment at the click of a button, be it through television, cell phones, social media, internet searches, videos, movies, or music. Research supports the use of multimedia and images in class instruction to enhance student engagement and learning in the classroom.
The “Hook”
In television and movies, new shows or stories are initially presented through previews and teasers. People can decide in less than three minutes whether or not they are interested in seeing full episodes. They decide quickly whether they will turn the channel or watch the show. In the classroom, I don’t want my students to tune out or turn away. Before classes, I usually offer students a brief teaser, an interesting preview of what they can expect to learn more about in class for that day. My goal is to “hook” students by starting the class with something that gets them talking, thinking, and interested. A “hook” might include a video clip, intriguing and thought-provoking questions, a vignette or dilemma, or current events.
Video clips may be readily obtained from the internet, campus library databases, or recorded from your own device. They can then be shared with students to grab their attention right away. Seek out clips that include explicit or implicit references to key content that will be reviewed in class or in the course textbook. Instructors can even integrate cartoon clips in class. If telling jokes are not your thing, cartoons are an innovative way to introduce topics while sharing a good chuckle with your students. Video clips used as teasers at the start of class should be brief and should stimulate interest, discussion, and be connected to course content. Using video clips is also an excellent way to encourage critical thinking. Students can identify similarities and differences between what they view at the start of class with what they learn throughout the remainder of class. An example of a clip for an accounting course might be a real estate reality show. Students can share their own insights, critical analysis, or later complete a task based on changing or improving the outcomes of what they witnessed.
Intriguing and thought-provoking questions visible to students before class begins can be posted on a board, the projector screen, or on the classroom wall on poster paper. If you want to engage students as soon as they walk into the classroom, make sure the questions are displayed in a location and large enough to attract their attention right away. I know that I have engaging questions when the buzz in class is not from vibrating cell phones, but comes from students expressing their opinions, knowledge, experiences, or curiosity about the questions. The goal is to have them hooked from the start so they can look forward to finding out if their answers are complete, correct, and reasonable.
Vignettes or dilemmas presented to students can encourage them to think about how the class content can be applied to real-world situations. Use of vignettes and dilemmas encourage students to engage in problem-solving, making predictions, and understanding the importance of applying what is learned in class to diverse issues. Vignettes or dilemmas can be handed out or picked up by students as they enter the classroom. For instructional pacing and time management, encourage brief opinion sharing at the start of class and plan to refer to the situation in greater depth throughout the class as different concepts are discussed.
Current events can be located using newspapers, magazines, bulletin boards, social media, television, or the internet. You can display an image, read an announcement, or share a news article with the class that’s relevant to what’s currently being experienced, discussed, debated, or studied in your community, state, country, or the world. Integrating current events encourages students to think about the influence of culture in a global society. Vary the sources of information so that students have opportunities to hear perspectives that may be different than their own. In a July 2015 issue of TIME magazine, there was an article referencing the impacts and prevalence of students drinking energy drinks. This type of article could be used as a “hook” across disciplines such as health and nutrition, biology, and psychology.
Integrating the idea of the “hook” in classes has been a gateway for students to get ready for instruction and to share their own background, experiences, and opinions in order to create a sense of value in or connectedness to the class. Every minute of instruction counts, but those first few minutes are a great opportunity to get students engaged right from the start.
Kentina Smith, Assistant Professor, Psychology
For further information, contact the author at Anne Arundel Community College, 101 College Parkway, Arnold, MD 21012. Email: ksmith56@aacc.edu
