Module 7: Engaging Students in Synchronous Sessions 

Read, Watch, Explore

What is Engagement? 

Before we talk about making synchronous sessions more engaging for students, let's first define engagement. "Engagement" is a term that gets used all the time in many different ways. However, without a clear definition it is meaningless. I've conducted research on the term engagement and found that there are primarily three types of engagement: 

1. Behavioral: Students' physical effort to accomplish a learning activity (hand). 

2. Emotional: Students' positive feelings while accomplishing a task (heart).  

3. Cognitive: Students' mental effort to understand and master a concept or skill (mind). 

If we are to better engage students in synchronous sessions we need to focus on what students are actually doing during the sessions (behavioral engagement), what they are asked to learn (cognitive engagement), and how they will feel about the activities (emotional engagement). Behavioral engagement is key to engaging students emotionally and cognitively. However, it's also possible to have strong behavioral engagement with low emotional and cognitive engagement. That's what students call "busy work." In this module we will be focusing more on behavioral engagement but it's up to you to make sure that the behavioral engagement also engages students emotionally and cognitively. 

What Are the Levels of Behavioral Engagement? 

The PIC Model  was developed by researchers Royce Kimmons, Charles R. Graham, and Richard E. West and helps us to identify the different levels of behavioral engagement. PIC describes students' participation in a learning activity and stands for Passive, Interactive, and Creative. 

• Passive: Students are asked to "sit and get" information. Common passive activities are watching a live or recorded video, read an article, or listen to a podcast. 

• Interactive: Students become an active participant in their learning by interacting with the content and others (teachers and peers). These interactions actually change the learning experience. This requires students to make choices or contributions. For instance, technology such as games and even internet searches adapt to the students' behavior and contributions. Similarly, when a student makes a comment in class the teacher and the student's peers respond.  

• Creative: Students actually create something new. For instance, students can create essays, presentations, or movies to demonstrate their understanding. 

Passive Activities 

There has been a lot of talk recently about requiring students to show their webcam video when attending live sessions. These type of issues are important but perhaps it's more import to consider what students are actually doing in the call. Too often teachers are the ones who are doing the large majority of the talking, resulting in a highly passive learning experience for students. Lectures tend not to work well for many students in an in-person classroom and it's even less effective online. At least in person teachers have more of a captive audience but in a video call students are much less likely to be "there" even if they are sitting in front of a camera (see this hilarious example).  That's why it's best to limit the passive learning time and engage students in interactive and creative activities as much as possible. However, there are times when passive learning activities can be valuable, especially if they are frequently broken up with interactive and creative activities. 

If you are doing passive activities (either in-person or online) just know that you will have to work a little harder to maintain students' interest. We know that recorded videos where teachers are speaking with enthusiasm, showing themselves in interesting locations, and drawing or writing while speaking are most likely to maintain student interest and that's likely the case in live videos sessions as well (Guo, Kim, Rubin, 2014). However, even in some of the best videos students stopped watching after about 6-10 minutes and I'm guessing that students' attention spans would be similar in passive activities during a synchronous session. 

The following are tips for maintaining student attention during passive learning activities. 

Enjoy Yourself 

Be sure to enjoy yourself. If you are not enjoying it, it's a safe bet that your students aren't either. Have fun and be sure to show it. 

Play the Part

One way to enjoy yourself is to play the part--literally! For instance, when Dr. Borup taught 9th graders about Julius Caesar he dressed up as Julius Caesar and boasted about "my" (Julius) accomplishments while he did his best Italian accent (for some reason Caesar sounded a little like Borat). There is a Mason psychology instructor who dresses as Spock when he teaches about logic. In one of Dr. Borup's research articles, they highlighted a school administrator dressed up as Batman because--BATMAN! 

There is also a teacher in Bolivia who dresses up as different superheroes to engage students. 

Use Actual Items in Your Home 

If you are working from home, you may not have all of the resources that you are used to using in the classroom. However, on the flip side you have resources at home that you wouldn't have at school. For instance, Joan Shin took students into her kitchen to show them actual food rather than simply showing pictures. 

BONUS: Here is an educator comedian (yes, that's a thing) who made the following video showing a lot of at-home props. 

Guest Speakers

Hearing from a guest speaker can be a powerful experience for students but can be a bit of a hassle for the teacher and guest speaker to arrange.  It's likely never been easier to have guest speakers because all they need to do is hop online at a specific time.  Additionally, some guest speakers may actually be able to show things that would be difficult in a classroom setting. Virtual guest speakers can also live anywhere so you're not restricted to those who live in your community. In the following video, Jenifer Garner was giving a presentation to her daughter's class. Who knows what stars you have in your PTA! 

You can also be your own guest speaker, as Leah Carper demonstrates below. 

Interactive Activities 

There are several ways to make your students' learning more active during synchronous sessions. There are also different levels of interactions but the following are some of the most common. 

• Hand signals and written messages: When students have their webcams on they can still participate in some traditional ways. For instance, some schools are providing students with actual personal whiteboards and dry-erase markers so that they can respond to questions and prompts during live sessions. Other teachers are teaching their students' hand signals that they can use to make synchronous sessions more interactive. 

• Chat box: All live video communication tools have some sort of chat box where students can type in comments for the entire class or to specific people. However, depending on the school district, that ability may be turned off. Even when it's available students may feel uncomfortable typing comments into the chat box so teachers need to help them to feel comfortable using it. 

• Polls: Some live video communication tools allow the teacher to post selected-response questions for students to respond to. Even if the platform you use has polls it's likely that it is not very robust. As a result, many teachers have turned to other tools such as Poll Everywhere that allow teachers to use different types of questions, such as word clouds. 

• Kahoot: Kahoot is a fun quiz game that even includes music and cool nicknames. Kahoot also has a "teach" mode for live instruction and an "assign" mode for on-demand learning. 

• Whiteboard: Some live video communication tools allow the teacher to share a digital whiteboard for students to add to. There are also stand-alone whiteboard such as: 

  • Canva's Interactive Whiteboard  (YouTube Tutorial)

  • Mural. (YouTube Tutorial)

• Breakout Groups/Rooms: Commonly, in in-person classes teachers will commonly have students work in groups. Similarly, in most live video communication tools, the teacher has the ability to create rooms for small group discussion and collaboration. If you use breakout rooms it's important that students feel comfortable with both the technology and their peer(s) that they are in the room with. Theresa Wills recommends the three phases of breakout rooms shown in the graphic below. 

• PearDeck: PearDeck is a popular tool that allows students to interact with presentation slides and answer questions. PearDeck offers a free version for teachers. PearDeck also allows for live and on-demand activities. This is a getting started tutorial video. Nearpod is a similar tool that your school district may provide. Nearpod also has a free version for teachers. 

Google Drive: The files in Google Drive can be a powerful interactive platform. Theresa Wills does a great job showing the many possibilities of engaging students in interactive activities using Google Slides. It's helpful to use Google Presentations because what occurs on one slide will not impact the other slides. As a result, each student or student group can contribute to a slide and the teacher can easily scan all of the sides to see everyone's progress. 

Dr. Borup interviewed Theresa and created the video below that gives an overview of her approach. She also has a website full of webinar recordings and short video tips (1-3 minutes). Please take some time now to watch a few of the videos under, "Tips making the most of Synchronous Online Learning" on this page. 

Creative Activities 

Your synchronous time with students can also be used to give students the opportunity to collaborate on projects. In this approach the instructor may start the session with a whole-group activity and then break students up into breakout rooms where they can work on their projects using collaborative documents such as those found in Google Drive.  

Create and Reflect  

Create (pick 2)

The hope of this assignment is for you to create something that you can actually use with your students. I've created several options for you to select from. Pick two of the options below. One of the two can be something that you've created previously but one has to be original for this course. 

If you create a Pear Deck or Google Slide be sure that I have access to view it by sharing it with jeredborup@gmail.com. 

IMPORTANT: DO NOT PAY FOR ANY ACCOUNT. YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO COMPLETE THIS ASSIGNMENT USING ONLY THE FREE ACCOUNTS. 

Create a Pear Deck or Nearpod Presentation for your students. 

• PearDeck allows you to integrate interactive activities into a Google Presentation. If you pick this option I'm leaving the requirements fairly open in terms of the number of interactive slides but I would like you to include at least three types of questions. This information page will help you to create an account and get started with your Pear Deck presentation. Some of the most interactive question types are locked in the free account.

Create a Kahoot for your students. 

• Kahoot allows you and your students to engage in a sort of quiz show game. Kahoots are pretty easy to create and this video shows you how. This is a more detailed video that is especially helpful because it shows you how to create a free account (it's a bit tricky) and shows the student and teacher view. 

Create an interactive whiteboard activity 

• Canva and Mural allow you create interactive whiteboard activities as described above. 

  • Canva's Interactive Whiteboard  (YouTube Tutorial)

  • Mural. (YouTube Tutorial)

Create an Interactive Google Slide Deck activity

• The Google Drive files are powerful because they allow students or student groups to contribute by adding text/media or interact with the media that was previously placed there by the teacher. You should have already watched some of Theresa Wills' video tips under, "Tips for making the most of Synchronous Online Learning" on this page. If you pick this option, please start by exploring her website some more, including the PD recordings. 

Pitch your own project 

• Not liking the options above? Have you been wanting to try something else to make your live sessions with students more interactive? Have you already created something that you would like to include as one of your projects? Please send me an email with the idea and I will get back to you ASAP. If you email me on the day that this module's work is due, I will give you a day extension since you will need to wait to get my "okay." 

Reflect 

Once you've completed at least two of the options above, answer the questions in this document to reflect on your previous experiences as a student and teacher in synchronous sessions. In the document, you will also share the links to the products that you created above. Be sure that jeredborup@gmail.com has editing permissions.