What do we mean when we ask students to engage?
Moodle analytics are often touted as adequate measure of engagement, however what does it mean to engage; and whose engagement is it anyway?
by Dr Samuel D’Elia
Imagine looking through the activity logs for a week of your Moodle module. It may show that many students have accessed the lecture video, a higher number have completed the multiple-choice quiz, and a smaller group have contributed to the discussion forum. This will give you a useful picture of participation with content, but how much does it tell you about students’ engagement with the learning?
A student may have opened a reading without getting beyond the first paragraph. Another may have downloaded the slides worked through it alongside the reading offline and returned to class with questions and other contributions. Understanding the impact of learning experiences requires a different perspective.
We often talk about making our teaching more engaging. We want students to engage with the reading, engage and contribute to discussions and engage with feedback to help their learning. Yet what we mean by engagement is not always clear, particularly when Moodle analytics for engagement do not extend passed View or Complete. For the DABL design team, this is a key question that forms our conversations because the meaning we give engagement shapes the learning we design.
What does engagement look like?
It is commonly assumed that engagement refers to the contribution students make towards their learning: the time, commitment and resources invested in the learning journey. This provides a useful starting point, but it can condense a complex learning experience into a set of expected and measurable behaviours.
A student who attends every lecture and contributes regularly may be labelled as ‘highly engaged’. Another student may say little while internally analysing evaluating an argument, making connections with previous learning, or preparing a considered research question. In a digital environment, opening a resource establishes that it has been accessed; it does not establish what the student has understood or done with it.
This matters when we consider what we want an activity to achieve. If the purpose is to help students evaluate an argument, knowing they have opened the resource tells us less than seeing how they explain their judgement through an explicit production activity. Making the intended learning explicit in the storyboarding of learning helps us decide what evidence would be useful demonstrations of knowledge and understanding.
Three ways to think about engagement
A common categorisation distinguishes behavioural, cognitive and emotional engagement. Fredricks, Blumenfeld and Paris (2004) brought these dimensions together in a review of school engagement. Although developed in non-tertiary education context, the distinction offers a dimensional split for thinking about university learning.
- Behavioural engagement concerns students’ participation and effort: attending, preparing, contributing and carrying out learning activities. These are often the most visible aspects of engagement and the easiest to record; and the most common for universities to look to for measures of engagement.
- Cognitive engagement concerns the psychological investment and mental energy students bring to learning. It directs our attention towards how students approach a task: whether they examine an explanation, persist with a difficult problem, connect ideas or reconsider their understanding or think about their learning in interesting ways.
- Emotional engagement concerns students’ feelings in relation to learning, including interest, enthusiasm and their responses to the learning environment. It prompts us to consider whether students find meaning in a task and how they experience participating. This is an essential dimension as emotional engagement is the gateway into other forms of engagement. A student’s willingness to contribute may depend on whether they feel their contribution will be valued. Persistence with a difficult task may depend on its perceived relevance. Equally, completing the procedure of a task does not necessarily mean that the student has invested deeply in it.
Kahu (2013) makes a useful distinction between engagement itself, the factors that influence it, and its outcomes. For example, clear instructions that help students prepare may help with initial emotional engagement with learning, while a well-reasoned assignment may provide proxy evidence of sustained emotional engagement. Understanding engagement also means considering what happens between those points: how the student participates, thinks and feels as they work through the their learning sequences and tasks. For instance, a an appropriately deep investigative task can positively affect motivation and enthusiasm to interact with other tasks that we could measure.
Whose engagement is it anyway?
The student body of contemporary higher education is wonderfully diverse. This makes any expectation that engagement will manifest in the same behavioural way for everyone instantly problematic.
Students bring different educational experiences, cultural expectations, academic resources and capital into the learning environment. Their familiarity with university hidden curriculum practices, confidence in public contributions, and the opportunities to participate with learning will vary. A requirement to speak spontaneously in a large group, for example, creates a particular route into participation. It may also make some students’ thinking more visible than others’. It is an ostensive display of learning, however, does spontaneous contribution serve the purposes needed for an inclusive demonstration of the dimensions of engagement?
This raises a question about whose behaviours we recognise as engagement. Zepke (2014) encourages a more critical examination of the assumptions behind student engagement research. In our teaching, we can ask whether our expectations give students appropriate opportunities to demonstrate their involvement. Would a short written response before a discussion help more students prepare a contribution? Could time to compare ideas in pairs support a more considered whole-class exchange?
We can retain appropriate academic challenge while making the routes into that challenge clearer and more accessible. Students’ experiences should inform how we do this.
What does this mean for active blended learning?
Design for Active Blended Learning (DABL) encourages us to consider how learning connects across physical and digital environments. Before selecting a tool or adding an interaction, it helps to identify what we want students to think about, contribute or develop, and how the activity fits into the wider sequence of their modules and learning.
Consider a seminar built around evaluating competing explanations. Before the session, students might read a short case and record an initial judgement in Moodle. During the session, an anonymous poll could make the range of judgements available for discussion. Students could then compare the reasoning behind different responses and revisit their original judgement afterwards.
The value lies in the relationship between these stages. The initial response gives students time to prepare. The poll provides a shared resource for discussion. Comparing reasons creates an opportunity to examine an argument, while the later reflection allows students to articulate how their thinking has developed.
Each stage offers different evidence of engagement. A submitted judgement shows participation. The explanation accompanying it gives us more insight into the student’s reasoning. Asking students about the experience can help us understand what supported or constrained their involvement.
Providing opportunity for interaction is not an exclusive domain of technology. In active blended learning, our task is to connect physical and digital learning opportunities so that each has a clear purpose. Adding a digital activity does not, by itself, establish that engagement has improved.
A useful starting point for your next activity
For our design conversations, a useful working definition is: engagement is students’ behavioural, cognitive and emotional involvement in learning, experienced within a particular social and educational context. This brings together the ideas discussed here as a working definition rather than a strict definitionaccount shared across the literature.
Consider selecting one activity in an upcoming week of your module. What will students need to do? What thinking will it require? What might help them feel able and willing to take part?
Then consider how you and the students will recognise that involvement, and what you could ask them about the experience.
A small change might be enough to provide a clearer route into the learning: a guiding question alongside a reading, time to prepare a response, or an opportunity to revisit an initial idea after discussion. Asking students what helped them get started or what made the task difficult can help us understand what the activity records cannot show.
Learning is blended by design and active by intention. Being clearer about engagement helps us make that intention explicit and keeps the student at the centre of the experience.
If you would like support with designing active blended learning opportunities in your module, book a consultation with a Learning Designer.
References (All available through the library at Kent)
Fredricks, J. A., Blumenfeld, P. C. and Paris, A. H. (2004). School engagement: Potential of the concept, state of the evidence. Review of Educational Research, 74(1), 59–109.
Kahu, E. R. (2013). Framing student engagement in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 38(5), 758–773.
Zepke, N. (2014). Student engagement research in higher education: Questioning an academic orthodoxy. Teaching in Higher Education, 19(6), 697–708.