In March of 2021, Edward J. Glantz, Chris Gamrat, Lisa Lenze, and Jeffrey Bardzell wrote an article discussing the immediate changes in higher education at the start of COVID-19, and the impact it would have on college students. While many instructors had to quickly adapt to the unknown in teaching during a pandemic, Glantz and his team have compiled five teaching strategies to engage students in higher education’s “new normal”.
With the CDC requiring all institutions to exit the common classroom mid-March of 2020, instructors had to flip their emergency switch and redevelop curriculum for virtual learning. As of November 2021, a large portion of schools have slowly integrated their classes back to campus. Glantz’s team believes these five strategies can assist with student engagement: Collaborative Technologies for Sense-Making, Student Experts for Learning and Technology Support, Back Channels for Informal Communication, Digital Breakout Rooms for Collaborative Learning, and Supplemental Recording for Expanded Learning Space.
Motivation to Learn Through Satisfying Outcomes
The “use of feedback that reinforces a student for successfully completing an optimally challenging task by including a congratulatory comment together with an internal attribution for success helps sustain intrinsic satisfaction” (Brophy, 1981). In Glantz’s Collaborative Technologies for Sense-Making and Back Channels for Informal Communication, students are given multiple outlets to receive and apply motivation to and from their instructor and peers. With a virtual educational setting, there is more room for collaborative documents in Google, discussion boards, and digital collaborative technologies. Through discussions and collaborative technologies, students and share and receive feedback, increasing the exchange of ideas and helps the students develop critical thinking through peer review. Additionally, the instant feedback motivates the student to allows them to feel satisfied in all areas of their academics. Glantz shares how this strategy connects students with the content, with the instructor, and with one another. With Zoom being an integral part of the virtual and online learning community, the informal platform allows for students who would normally not participate, engage with other students and share engagement in the class lecture. Knowing that you are in a safe environment to ask questions and participate in a class conversation is incredibly motivating and promotes student-engagement on many levels.
Motivation Through Curiosity
In the online learning environment, it’s easy for students to have a continuous educational gap that needs filled, sparking the curiosity of what’s next on the class agenda. Supplemental Recording for Expanded Learning Space is the perfect strategy that higher education can use for the online learning environment, but also incorporate into the “new normal” of campus instruction. Reiser and Dempsey share, “Those who have higher sensation seeking needs have higher levels of boredom susceptibility and will require more frequent changes of topic, instructional tactics, or media to remain engaged in the learning process” (Reiser & Dempsey, 2017). With the return to campus for many institutions, instructors are learning how to incorporate the Zoom sessions into their campus instruction. Students who require frequent changes are starving for a different environment, especially if they entered college on campus and had to pivot to a Zoom education. By incorporating recorded Zoom sessions for online and campus students, additional information can be shared to the students for extra instruction, but also as a source for alternative assignments. For online, a great way to engage students is what I like to call a Host & Post. An instructor hosts a Zoom session at a particular time each week of the term, making themselves available to students, but informing students of the material that is covered that week. After they host the Zoom session, they post the Zoom recording to the Learning Management System, and can even incorporate an H5P practice quiz to help the students review what was covered. These Zoom sessions can display epistemic curiosity to the students in what information is shared, and what H5P engagement is utilized.
Motivation Through Student’s Relation to Goals
One of the most learned and integrated strategies the pandemic provided to higher education is the use of breakout rooms, leading us to the fifth strategy from Gantz’s team: Digital Breakout Rooms for Collaborative Learning. With the use of digital breakout rooms, students have felt an ease with the pandemic’s virtual shift to their education. With students who enrolled in classes with the goal of networking with other students, collaborating, and having a sense of family/community at school, digital breakout rooms became the answer and relief for students. While some students aim to have straight-A’s, or make the Dean’s list, Reiser and Dempsey shares how, “Goals can also be nonspecific and even emotionally based, as in wanting to feel good about oneself, having opportunities to enjoy friendly interactions with other people, or being successfully engaged in challenging activities.” (Reiser & Dempsey, 2017). Not only are digital breakout rooms beneficial for collaboration in the classroom, but there are multiple avenues presented for however a student can reach whatever goals they may have.
With a combination of technological advances, drive from instructors, and the support of institutions, it’s likely there will be a plethora of solutions for the hopeful, post-pandemic classroom. Students are hungry for a way to feel connected with their peers, and now is the time to try new student-engagement approaches for the post-pandemic classroom that we hope is near.
References
Improved student engagement in Higher Education's next normal. EDUCAUSE Review. (n.d.). Retrieved November 10, 2021, from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2021/3/improved-student-engagement-in-higher-educations-next-normal.
(n.d.). Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Higher Education: A Critical Review. Retrieved from http://www.guninetwork.org/report/impact-covid-19-pandemic-higher-education-critical-review.
Reiser, R. A., & Dempsey, J. V. (2017). Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology (4th Edition). Pearson Education (US). https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9780134237039
Reflection
Post-Pandemic education for higher learning has become a passion of mine. It was a difficult time as an educator. There were areas of challenges we never anticipated. Learner motivation and mental health played a role in engagement. Two years later, we are teaching a different type of student body. Student readiness suffered because of the pandemic (Rapanta et al., 2021). Instructors will need new skills for online readiness (Rapanta et al., 2021). We can learn from the various strategies below and implement them as instructional designers in the future. Gamrat et al. (2021), refer to this time as the "next normal".
The Dynamics of Boredom
The case study argues online learning environments spark curiosity. In distance-based learning, the…
Case Study: by Sam Angello
Blog post: Higher Education in A Post-Pandemic Classroom
by Edward J. Glantz, Chris Gamrat, Lisa Lenze, and Jeffery Bardell, 11/5/2021
Blog Link: https://drdeason.wixsite.com/201911-blog-idt520/post/higher-education-in-a-post-pandemic-classroom
Meaningful Learning and Goals
In 2020 many students and instructors experienced online learning firsthand. Attending online schools for most of my education, I had a good understanding of how to make engaging material that would help students understand the curriculum and deal with the situation they were in—during COVID, developing content that was meaningful to the student’s passion and goals as related to their degree and what they were trying to accomplish as their life’s work became more important. One of Reiser & Dempsey’s principles states, “motivation to learn is promoted whe…
Engage Through Curiosity
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Motivation to Learn
Young, (2021) speaks about the use of digital breakout rooms and the ease it has brought in the shift process of education after pandemic. During Covid 10, educators faced the uncertainty of how to transitions to an online platform for instructions. I remember the first time I was introduced to zoom and how challenging I thought it was going to be. Fortunately, my school already had an online platform although it was introduced as a supplementary resource for our classes. Once confronted with the pandemic we transition smoothly to an online platform and quickly adopted zoom as our form of communication and instruction for our students. The Covid-19 outbreak prompted widespread school closures around the world and…
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused global chaos as numerous systems have been forcibly altered and would never be the same again. The changes that have been unceremoniously applied to the lives of everyone have not all been easy or welcome. One of those changes that were foisted on both the students and staff/teachers was the mandatory switch from in-person to remote learning for an extended period. While it was sudden and initially problematic, it was a necessary evolution that was a long time in the making.
Extrinsic Motivation
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