Engagement Withdrawal

While Jennifer Hall’s recent post reminded me that student behavior is not the only way to think about engagement, I must admit that I have been sorely missing those face-to-face signs that students are thinking about course material. As a teacher for over 20 years, I’ve gotten hooked on particular cues that I am doing a good job. I feel validated as a teacher when students talk. Over the past couple of semesters, I’ve been wanting to see my students’ engagement, and the pandemic has severely limited that possibility. I miss it, and it sometimes makes me sad. I am guessing that some of the discussions I’ve had with faculty where they have been discouraged by their online teaching experiences probably has to do with this feeling. But Jennifer’s post on considering other types of engagement has helped me to rethink my sense of how things are going.

I recognized early in my teaching career that seeing engagement because a few students eagerly talked during in-class discussions was not necessarily an indicator of how much the rest of the class was involved. Using structured, small group discussions (the POGIL approach is helpful) and short writing assignments (like those promoted by Writing Across the Curriculum), I gradually learned to raise not just the number of students talking, but also the level of what Jennifer describes in her post as cognitive and emotional engagement. Over the years, as I added more online discussions to my courses I had more concrete evidence of student engagement in the writing they were doing. Some of this was simply behavioral- All the students did their posts this week! But much of the student writing showed that they were critically and personally engaged with the material. As I began to teach my classes as hybrid, a back and forth between online and in-class discussions gave me increasing confidence in their engagement, and I had plenty of evidence to back up this feeling.

The move to fully online disrupted this confidence in my teaching this fall. It’s difficult to try to parse out what was Covid (I had to switch the modality 3 times in the weeks leading up to the semester), what was particular to that semester (I was teaching a much larger course than I usually do), and what was simply the move to asynchronous online. Regardless, I spent the entire semester feeling like the course was not engaging the students, and that was depressing.   While the course was asynchronous, I tried to add experiential learning by offering optional walking tours connected to course material. I also offered optional small group in-class and WebEx discussion sessions. A small number of students showed up to these, and they were clearly eager to have these opportunities to connect in real time.  This allowed me to see their engagement in the way I am accustomed to, but mainly it depressed me because most of the students were not taking these opportunities. But looking back through the lens of other types of engagement does change my perspective a bit. The vast majority of students were doing the required work of the class, and in their discussion posts they were often curious and thoughtful. At the end of the semester, I was shocked that my evaluations were reasonably good. Much of this I’m sure is that the students recognized that it was a difficult semester for everyone and their expectations were lowered. Their comments suggested though that they appreciated the clear organization of the class, with regular, weekly assignments. While most of them did not take advantage of the synchronous activities that I look to to gauge their engagement, they were understandably concerned about coming to campus and had difficulty scheduling time around their jobs and families. They did consistently do the work of the class and much of this work showed that they were engaged beyond just doing the bare minimum.

This spring I have a much smaller class and we have regular online discussions. That’s helped with that more immediate feedback on their behavioral engagement. After my fall course, having several students talk on WebEx early in the semester was an adrenaline rush. But that excitement was pretty quickly tamped down by the fact that none of their videos were on. The added level of awkwardness of not knowing when you can speak also stifled the more spontaneous back and forth discussions that we often hope for in class. Bandwidth and other technology limitations are real issues. The students aren’t doing anything wrong here, or at least I can’t tell if they are.  And that’s the point. I am missing that feedback and that causes me anxiety. Jennifer’s post was helpful in reminding me that I might be looking for the wrong signs of engagement in the wrong places. I’m finding that asking questions during the WebEx sessions hasn’t been very effective. That has led me to question their engagement, perhaps unfairly. With their videos off, I can’t see the students to know if someone is about to speak. But measuring their engagement by the eagerness to answer questions seems inappropriate considering the newness and technical problems of this modality. But I do want to regularly take the pulse of the class beyond the discussion board. I’ve started to ask students to elaborate on their weekly posts and I’ve found that every time students are willing to speak up when asked directly. In addition, for every WebEx session so far, over half the students have remained online well beyond the end of the class session. Because I can’t see them, my first thought was that some of them dropped off the discussion at some point, but they continue to respond and some of them say thank you before leaving.          

I don’t doubt that there were very real problems with student engagement last semester. The rise in DFW rates makes this pretty clear. I also feel strongly that many of our students need to feel a part of a community to keep them engaged, and I am struggling to figure out how to do this effectively. But, as Jennifer does a great job explaining, it’s also helpful to consider some of the ways that we might be measuring engagement in not very helpful ways.