Last year I wrote about the difficulties teachers have in getting students engaged:
Fostering Engagement
ne of the initial problems a distance designer faces is how to get students engaged. The reason that this is such a problem is that people who are new to the process assume engagement while designing instead of building engagement into the design.
Engagement is one of the enduring themes in this class. What does it mean? How do we get it? How do we keep it?
I’ve suggested that a lot of what games do to engage people should be built into classwork. I’ve asked all of you to think about that those things might be. When you strip away the interface, the flashy graphics, and the gore splatter, what’s left in a popular game? Can you evaluate that without getting caught up in the specifics of a particular game?
September 27th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
The teachers that I considered to be the best ones were the ones that made me stress out the most…in a good way. Those teachers posed challenging questions and pushed me until I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. After all the smoke cleared, I felt as though I had learned more than I ever did in any other class. Students need to be pushed, not tapped, but pushed outside of their comfort zones to learn..truly learn. They may hate you when you do it initially, but later on they will come to thank you.
September 28th, 2007 at 7:57 am
I agree that teachers who challenge their students find that those students are the ones that make more progress. Having special needs students I find myself challenging them all the time. I have high expectations for each of them and want them to succeed in my classroom. They do not get that in the general classroom. Most of those teachers set them up for failure. I hate that, because it is not fair to them. they challenge them without the help and modifications that they need.
September 28th, 2007 at 10:31 am
For the most part, I think engagement occurs when students are active in a lesson, in a manner that is meaningful. This can certainly present a challenge, as you mentioned in your entry, when teachers mistakenly assume it is occurring within the lesson without taking measures to make it happen. I also like what dancingnancy says in the comment above- teachers have to be aware of their students’ zones of proximal development, and strive to work students frustration levels in a way that challenges them, and helps them to grow. Essentially, a teacher needs to know their students, create situations where two-way communication occurs, and design lessons that are dynamic for his or her learners.