Sean Combs

Content Area Reading

Mary Dunn
Wednesday 6:00pm

Improving Student Engagement Summary/Analysis

Student Engagement. This is a concept that has been sought after for a rather lengthy

time, and that hasn't completely been reached yet. Student engagement has been looked at as

many things over the years from teachers, from students, and from others on the outside looking

in. The hard part is that none of them have really been wrong. The idea of this is very broad and

can be very difficult to obtain, but I believe that throughout this article student engagement can

become a lot closer to attainable. In this article they decided that the most common categories

that have an effect on student engagement were 1. Interaction, 2. Exploration, 3. Relevancy, 4.

Multimedia, 5. Instruction, 6. Authentic Assessment. With these six categories I believe that we

should be able to look at student engagement and increase it by bounds in our classrooms.

Students want stronger relationships with teachers, with each other, and with their

communities.Students Want their teachers to know how they learn. They want their teachers to

take into account what they understand and what they misunderstand (pg. 8). Todays students

have turned out to be very social creatures and want to interact with everyone whether it be

teachers, classmates, or the community. The T-TESS could definitely be tied in here when it

comes to learning environment and the relationships between student and teacher. The learning

environment section of the T-TESS rubric goes into more detail about this.

With this being said there are certain modifications that should be made to the education

process such as interaction, negotiation, and exploration (pg. 9). The only thing that we should

be wary of is what Professor Baron mentions. As Professor Baron states if we simply teach to
their expectations we expect them to come, or become engaged, but instead we will just kill

higher education. I agree with both of these viewpoints in a position of yes we do need some

modification in the way we teach this technologically advanced generation, but I also don't see

the need for teachers to meet their expectations nearly as much as students meeting teachers

expectations. If this isnt the case students are going to have a rude awakening when they enter

the real world and are forced to meet their employers expectations to a T.

This is where exploration will play a large role in their education and how students will

stay engaged. The interaction between teacher and student is definitely something to be explored

further. This may be something that you could task your students with in the future. The article

also states that students today would much more be likely to want to explore the internet to do

research. They want to be able to look at the subject, tear it apart, see how it works then go about

business from there. This is something that could definitely be addressed in the classroom as well

as those modifications mentioned above. Along with this the T-TESS fits in her as well. In the

rubric the section about Instruction plays a key point this go around. Under instruction there is a

piece that states, The teacher differentiates instruction, aligning methods and techniques to

diverse student needs.

Relevancy plays a massive role in student engagement even with myself. Relevance has

become a major thing to students everywhere. Students want to see that what they are being

taught will have a significant effect on their lives after class, and I can't blame them. As a teacher

you could possibly try to correlate everything you are doing with real life situations and possibly

even engage those students who never would have become so.

In my opinion multimedia and instruction are two things that can be joined together very

easily. With multimedia when going over a subject you have the entire world as a resource even
when you can't speak face to face to an actual expert. This also aids in presentations during class.

It gives everything relevance and engages the learners because for one it's not out of a book and

for two it actually holds weight. When it comes to teaching with multimedia and just engaging

the students in instruction in general a constructivist learning environment is needed. A

constructivist instruction requires strong respectful relationships and safe learning

environments, especially as teacher-student relationships shift from expert-disciple towards peer-

based collaborative learning (pg. 18). This tie directly into the T-TESS as well. Safe learning

environments comes right out of the learning environment section of the T-TESS rubric.

Under assessments there were several suggestions as to how to do so. They mentioned

using assessments to improve and guide the lessons by using formative, guided and independent,

assessments. Along with this they also spoke of regularly sharing how they were learning and if

they understood or learned anything at all. They also seemed to be wary of too much testing as

they did mention that standardized testing often leads teachers to teach to the test instead of to

learners needs, interests, and abilities (pg. 21). One other way they thought would help with

engagement through assessment was active participation in assessing and managing their own

learning. This reminded me of blackboard and discussion board. Throughout this passage

magnificent points were made and fantastic controversial topics were covered, overall through

these processes student engagement should be something that isnt as worried about in the

classroom.