Student Engagement in Online Learning: The Case of Knowing Just Enough to Feel Good

Student engagement is probably the most widely used “benchmark” to indicate how meaningful or impactful an online learning experience is (Robinson & Hullinger, 2008; Paulsen & McCormick, 2020). It is often publicized to indicate how effective a certain pedagogy or technology is too. Unfortunately, it is also a “catch phrase” that causes many misleading judgements about one’s ability in being an effective teacher. The truth is, be it online or in-person, student engagement is a challenging aspect to deal with.

Just like the “engagement” of two souls, sometimes we’re confused whether we’re loving the new experience or the person whom we are going to be engaged with.

Photo by Stephen Leonardi on Unsplash

The Irony of “Stop Being Boring”

The novelty effect in teaching is akin to the show business. Students are constantly on the look out for something new, something exciting. And with the abundance of information and entertainment circulating our lives 24/7 now (thanks to the advancement of the Internet and mobile devices), it makes it even harder to please the students. This is perhaps why teachers in remote/rural schools are often able to please their students easier as their source (and resources) of learning is limited to the access they have with the teachers.

Let’s face it, while they know the importance of certain subject matter or topics, they would be able to search for something cooler on the Internet to learn about it. There is, in many cases, no need for them to be sitting in front of the screen listening to the teacher and lecturer explaining a content in the most boring way. But then, how boring is boring? Defining this would be a challenge especially in a class of diverse learners with mixed abilities. It would be difficult to address. I personally conducted several experiments in my own classes (in-person and online) for the past 5 years (using a variety of approaches from active learning to gamification) and the outcomes so far have been very interesting:

1. The “top” students don’t really bother whether the class is interesting or not, they mainly want to know how to score or get extra tips. In fact, Dunleavy and Milton (2009) pointed out that successful students often describe their learning experience as “boring, hectic, stressful and disconnected from the real world” (p. 11), yet they still perform. These students are normally very self-determined and rely on various resources to learn. So they would be attending your classes just to make you happy or for the sake of compliance (e.g. attendance ruling). I used to teach several cohorts of medical students a generic course and they would be using the class time to read through their medical notes but whenever I need them to participate in my activities (designed to suit their real-world needs), they happily complied. Sometimes I did feel like they were faking it just to make me happy as I could see they are more anxious of their core subjects. Some students may even think all your efforts in creating a “fun” learning environment is a waste of their time. The irony.
2. Our education system is still pretty rooted in achievement-based assessments in which numeric scores are more important than the overall learning experience and satisfaction. This is common as the latter is very subjective and not easy to measure. Students ultimately are programmed to get the best scores or to anticipate “rewards” like being the top of the class or being awarded Dean’s Honors regardless how good or bad their learning experience is. In one of my surveys, I asked my undergraduate students who obtained Dean’s Honors, and they would tell me that they had pretty bad experience with collaborative work, assignments, or even boring lectures. Yet, they would rate the course highly because of the grade they obtained. And this situation applies to almost all students, not just the high achievers. Those who barely passed the course with minimal efforts would still say they “enjoyed the course”. I think this happens in schools as well. Who cares if the online learning experience is bad if you get straight As in SPM or STPM. The irony.
3. Students don’t hate learning, they hate how learning is packaged. Students who seem to dislike learning are actually being fed with the mental images of “conventional learning” (e.g. going through units after units, completing homework/assignments or memorising for exams) . In other words, there is no room for them to be flexible in deciding what interests them. So when they see a “different type of packaging”, they get very excited. Again, going back to the show business metaphor, students’ level of engagement tends to increase when teachers or lecturers are doing something, which are out of the norm. Jónsdóttir (2017) shared a good collection of narratives on how eight teachers took the challenge to adopt creative approaches in their teaching. One point that they raised was “engaging students in personal interpretation sometimes challenged their roles as receivers, but by drawing on their interests and strengths, we fostered their possibility thinking. We tackled these by applying flexibility, taking risks by doing experiments, having fun, using technology, and connecting with life outside school.” (Jónsdóttir, 2017, p. 19). So when they are not attending your online classes or not wiling to participate actively, maybe they are still trying to appreciate the way learning is packaged by you. They may not respond immediately. Sometimes, this takes forever. The irony.

The gamified collaborative activities that I conducted. You can see it’s not all “fun”.

So when students say “stop being boring”, it’s not enough by quickly plan something “fun”. What it means is in fact, get to know them better especially what interests them.

The Case of “Knowing Just Enough”

Don’t get me wrong, what I have mentioned earlier doesn’t mean you have to ignore student engagement altogether. The pertinent question is as educators, “are we taking deliberate actions to know more about our students and hence try to increase their engagement levels?” or “Are we still feel it’s good enough to just do whatever we feel is right and get on with it?”

Whenever I speak educators who complain about low student engagement, one pattern always emerges. It’s always the students’ responsibility to engage and participate. There is a lack of intentional instructional strategies (Read how to be an Intentional Teacher by Epstein) to check what can be done better, or what else would be beneficial to the learning process. In the end, it falls back to the “fear mongering” strategies (e.g. “if you don’t do this or attend my class, you’ll fail”).

On another hand, I have also spoken to educators who constantly seek new ways of engaging their learners. They come up with wonderful lesson plans and engaging activities using various web tools and apps. But when I asked “how do you measure student engagement” they would normally answer “see how active they are, if many of them are responding, then I’m happy”.

You see, it doesn’t take much for an educator to feel good about their teaching or the lesson. For as long as most of the students are showing signs of “being engaged”, they would be pleased. But in order to get there, educators must be aware of learner variability, take deliberate actions to know more about the learners and plan accordingly.

You don’t have to know everything about them. Just know enough to make you feel good in teaching and let the learning happens. That’s the key.

When it does, you’ll feel it anyhow. No report cards can ever replace that feeling.

Happy teaching!

Further Readings

Dunleavy, J., Milton, P., & Willms, J. D. (2009). What did you do in school today. Exploring the concept of student engagement and its implications for teaching and learning in Canada. Canadian Education Association (CEA).

Epstein, A. S. (2007). The intentional teacher. Exchange, 734–742.

Jónsdóttir, S. R. (2017). Narratives of creativity: How eight teachers on four school levels integrate creativity into teaching and learning. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 24, 127–139. doi:10.1016/j.tsc.2017.02.008

Paulsen, J., & McCormick, A. C. (2020). Reassessing disparities in online learner student engagement in higher education. Educational Researcher, 49(1), 20–29.

Robinson, C. C., & Hullinger, H. (2008). New benchmarks in higher education: Student engagement in online learning. Journal of Education for Business, 84(2), 101–109.