15 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.
Exercises
Read Dr. Maryellen Weimer’s short article in Faculty Focus on student engagement. She describes three distinct parts to student engagement with a course:
- Behavioural 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.)
- 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
