Online Activities

A teacher can increase student engagement and retention using online learning activities: Wikis, Blogs and WebQuests' uses case studies, surveys, and literature reviews to critically examine how these technologies are being used to improve writing and publishing skills, student subject awareness, and literacy; create engaging communities of practice; and are experiential learning tools. Chapter subjects include the design for a robust use of wikis, using blogs to enhance student engagement by creating a community of practice around a course, integrating blogs across a range of college level courses, publishing activist biographies on Wikipedia, using blogs to increase out of class student engagement, using video and wiki technology to engage learners in large international places, using wikis as an experiential learning tool, consuming and constructing knowledge through WebQuests, and rethinking WebQuests in second language teacher education

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Disciplined Set Up in the Classroom

Part of student engagement comes with having a disciplined classroom in the way the class is set up. For instance, In a social studies class, having the objectives projected on the screen or written on the board everyday. Then proceeding to go over them. This lets the students know that class starts right when the bell rings and they need to pay attention in order to understand what is going on for that day. Then I would move to giving a fact of the day or today in history pertaining to the lesson. This always sparks student's interest. Within the lesson I would encourage having the students doing some sort of interpersonal activity or bodily kinesthetic activity, this will keep them the most engaged.

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Five Levels of Student Engagement

It should not surprise anyone to know that one of the most consistent findings in educational research demonstrates that the more times students spend engaged during instruction, the more they learn. Some researchers even identify differing levels of engagement.  Schlechty (2002) defines five levels of student engagement:

• Authentic Engagement—students are immersed in work that has clear meaning and immediate value to them (reading a book on a topic of personal interest)
• Ritual Compliance—the work has little or no immediate meaning to students, but there are extrinsic outcomes of value that keep them engaged (earning grades necessary for college acceptance)
• Passive Compliance—students see little or no meaning in the assigned work but expend effort merely to avoid negative consequences (not having to stay in during recess to complete work)
• Retreatism—students are disengaged from assigned work and make no attempt to comply, but are not disruptive to the learning of others
• Rebellion—students refuse to do the assigned task, act disruptive, and attempt to substitute alternative activities

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I believe the one aspect you have to consider as a teacher to have a secondary education student engaged is to incorporate him/her into your lesson. Whether it be from hands on learning, simulation, or student lead discussion. Have the student involved. An example for an activity I can give is to have the student pick a topic to present. You are making the student in charge of his/her own learning. This ultimately makes the student need to be involved. This also puts an emphasis on making other students listen to each other during the presentations. A good idea is to incorporate the presentations into an upcoming test or quiz. This will make the students take notes for every students’ presentation. A last idea would make the spectating students ask at least three questions each before the presentations are all over. This will allow the students to be fully engaged in your lesson.




http://burroughs.mpls.k12.mn.us/native_american_project