Engaging+Learners+in+Online+Courses

** Philip A. Pecorino, Ph.D.   QCC, CUNY,   Philosophy  ** Engaging learners is interacting with them. The more interaction, the greater the satisfaction , and the greater the satisfaction , the higher the academic achievement. I have taught online classes for over five years now and have accumulated a good deal of experience in working with students I have never met face to face. I have taught more than 70 sections of three different Philosophy classes in the SUNY and CUNY systems to over 2,000 students. They have ranged in age from 18 to 70 and have been traveling while learning as well as been confined in their homes or hospitals due to illnesses. Some were in military field tents in the Middle East as part of a Reserve Unit. Some are women with young children asleep nearby while they work at the computer. Some are at work and staying later to make use of the employer's computers. Some have been quite brilliant and many have been quite poor. With all of them, as with my traditional classes taught over 25 years , my aim is to do the best that I can do for them and to assist them to learn and develop their intellectual skills. My quest is to discover new ways to get my learners to succeed. I have learned from them that the more involved they are in the course and with me, then the more work they will do and the better they will do. So, how to get them involved? Well, engage them! How to do that? Well, my experience confirms what studies have revealed and that is that interaction is the key. How to get the learner to interact with what is going on is the challenge. I'll provide a quick listing/sketch here and invite my colleagues engaged in online instruction to consider them and those who are considering teaching online are invited to consider them as well and to find ways to include as many as possible in your instructional designs for the classes you will teach. Engagement is not be mistaken for entertainment. We seek not to amuse but to muse. We do not want to become so engaging that we are distracting the learner from the learning. The engaging is for focusing and directing the attention and the intellectual efforts of learners. We are not out to generate sensations for the sake of sensations but to attract the learners into experiences with which and from which they can learn and become educated. We want to engage learners in experiences that will develop their intellect and encourage their growth. Sensations are transitory and renewable. Experiences are rich with potential and are meant to endure and to develop further into the stuff of a life. The technologies employed for the engagement are there to provide for the experiences from which a person can learn and with which a person can grow. They are not there to be used for their own sake nor for the passing pleasure of the amused learners. The sorts of experiences that lead to learning are the experiences that engage the learners and involve them with effort, even struggle, which is transforming and not fleeting. Education involves learning and that involves change and that involves effort and some resistance to be overcome. This is anything but amusing and passing on the moment, forgotten in the next. Neither are to engage the learners in order to bring them into a comfort zone in which they can rest and not themselves engage in experiences that will lead to their growth. Engagement can take place that leads to constructive work and yet work that can avoid becoming frustrating if the level of engagement can be maintained. The level of motivation can not be frustrated into decline by engagements that are so transitory or so distracting or so ephemeral or superficial. Motivation can be maintained and work produced by engagements that are meaningful and appealing directly to the person as learner rather than to the client or consumer as passenger. So how to engage? And engage for experiencing and not mere sensations? There are a number of different ways to engage Online L earners. 1 Engaging through communications with the Online Instructor 2 Engaging through interactions with fellow learners 3 Engaging through instructional experiences 4 Engaging through the instructional design itself In all of this the instructor wants to infuse the engagements and the interactions with all of the enthusiasm for learning that was and is the instructor’s own joy. 1Engaging through communications with the Online Instructor A.) TELEPHONE i. Require a direct telephone contact in the first week of the semester during office hours-talk about the class and special concerns of the student    Ii.Require a direct telephone contact in the third week of the semester during office hours- talk about how well the student understands what is expected and how well the student is doing    B) EMAIL How many ways can an instructor interact with student via email? There are many types of emails that can be sent and the instructor can keep boilerplate samples of each and use them throughout the semester as needed. GENERAL
 * Forms of Engaging Learners in Online Classes: Engagement for Success**

? Initial greeting ? Email Protocols –what is expected, required, polite, impolite, dangerous ? Announcements ? Assignments ? Bonus assignments ? Grades ? Class status reports REACHING OUT

? Excessive absences ? Participation problems ? Needing additional work ? Needing advisement SENDING important Information

? Corrections ? Additions to lectures, handouts, notes, etc… ? Sample of model assignments RECEIVING

? Notice of absences/explanations ? Requests for assistance ? Assignments RESPONDING

? Calls for Help ? Questions ? Requests ? Assignments GROUP WORK C) CLASS WEBSITE COMMUNICATION Create an Ask the Professor Area in the discussion area of the online class where the stduents can post questions pretaining to the course that all will be able to read and see the answers posted by the professor..   D) DISCUSSIONS The instructor should particpate in discussions of the course content with stduetns. It is also both possible and desireable to set out discussions to be led by stduents. 2 Engaging through interactions with fellow learners Discussions of the course content with fellow students and the instructor Learning Communities - where students assist one another to master the material Group Projects - where they work together to address problems, cases, or tasks Socializing- Student Cafes and Chat rooms - provided within the class website to permit direct student to stduent communications about matters other than the class. 3 Engaging through instructional experiences Presentation of information- lecturers readings Assignments Interactive Assignmen t s Assessments 4 Engaging through the instructional design itself The physical design of the course Its appearance-aesthetic engagement Changing the appearance as a sign of "virtual presence"- let them know that you are there! The organizational structure of the course The location of materials and assignm ent s and the location of areas for interaction The types of materials- learning objects Multi media presentations and assessment exercises So, in a fully online class there are many different ways in which the online learner can be engaged by the instructor both inside and outside of the class website and the course management program. The more the forms and number of such engagements the more likely the learner will get involved and remain involved with the class and the instructor, classmates, the course and the academic program.. * //  The problem is that of engagement. How do we engage our students? How do we teach them not only the facts of a subject but the love it? The answer is twofold and quite simple. // // First, stop demanding that teachers teach to a test. Let them, within some broadly set parameters, teach their students what they love in a way that they love to teach it. Something brought them to teaching in the first place, a love of learning, a love a of subject, a book, an idea, a vision of life or simply the place knowledge and understanding has within it. Let them do it. Let them share their unique love affair with some particular branch of knowledge in their own fashion. Learn to respect that learning and commitment for its own sake. Shortly after his appointment as a professor of music at UCLA, the famed violinist Jascha Heifitz was asked why he left the glamorous world of performance to become a teacher. "Violin playing is a perishable art,” he replied. “It must be passed on, otherwise, it is lost.” He then recalled his old violin professor in Russia who told him, “that if I worked hard enough, someday I would be good enough to teach." // // Second, take the time to do the same with our own children. Share with them something we love, some pursuit, some discipline, some knowledge or skill. Teach them to see the fun in it. Teach them to see that only through our own hard work and struggle did we begin to master it. If we don’t have one, go back to school ourselves and try and refind it. Don’t judge them or ourselves. Just do it, for the pure joy of it. And if they can learn to share our love, that will carry over into the other areas of learning they encounter, into their school life, their work life, and eventually into the lives of their own families and children and generations of students and their teachers to come.---Bob Rogers, QCC, 2006 //