2a. The importance of student engagement

• Fostering Engagement: Facilitating Online Courses in Higher Education
• Unit 1. Introduction to online learning
• 1a. Who is the online learner?
• 1b. Format and delivery of online courses
• 1c. Defining your facilitator role in your online course
• Unit 2. Student engagement online

• 2a. The importance of student engagement

  • What is student engagement?
  • Cognitive engagement
  • Emotional engagement
  • Behavioural engagement
• 2b. Community and interaction
• Unit 3. Student-facilitator interaction
• 3a. What is student-facilitator interaction?
• 3b. What are the benefits of student-facilitator interaction?
• 3c. Strategies for building student-facilitator interaction
• Unit 4. Student-content interaction
• 4a. What is student-content interaction?
• 4b. Factors for engagement in student-content interaction
• 4c. Strategies for improving student-content interactions
• Unit 5: Student-student interaction
• 5a. What is student-student interaction?
• 5b. How student-student interaction leads to engagement
• 5c. Strategies for building student-student interaction
• Conclusion

What is student engagement?

Our modern understanding of student engagement can largely be credited to the pioneering research of Alexander Astin in the 1980s. Astin framed engagement as “the quantity and quality of physical and psychological energy that students invest in the college experience.” Such engagement fosters learning that is proportional to that student investment (Axelson & Flick, 2010). Engagement entails more than just exposure — real engagement happens when students take interest, become invested, and feel involved in learning and have a sense of connection with the concepts and other people in the course (instructors, TAs, and other students). Essentially, authentic student engagement involves cognitive focus (attention) and emotional fuel (motivation, interest, curiosity), which sets the groundwork for constructive learning behaviour that leads to deep and long-lasting learning (Astleitner & Wiesner, 2004). When students are focused, interested, and motivated, learning becomes more efficient, requiring less time on task (e.g., studying) (Nonis & Hudson, 2010).

With that definition in mind, let’s dive a little deeper by looking at key types of engagement — cognitive, emotional, and behavioural — and some of the science behind how student engagement is cultivated.

There is a large body of literature from the fields of cognitive and educational psychology on the topic of cognitive engagement and how to cultivate it in online course delivery. A big part of building cognitive engagement is understanding what enhances attention and memory and what impairs these core faculties. Here we are focused on online course facilitation and delivery, so we will not go into the principles of designing online teaching materials and resources. An overview of the most impactful principles and strategies, however, can be very helpful if you are going to be presenting information or creating learning materials (for instance videos and webpages, slides, reading materials, and even course announcements); we have included some supplementary materials on the design and development of learning resources.

The key faculty associated with cognitive engagement is attention. Without capturing and maintaining attention, students will struggle to remember and integrate information. Attention is required for information to pass into memory, and a person can focus on only a small amount of information in a given moment (Cowan, 2010). There are many strategies that we, as online course facilitators, can implement to remove factors that impede attentional focus and to foster the type of attention that is most conducive to learning.

Principles for enhancing cognitive engagement

There are a handful of principles that are known to impact how students attend and learn, which guide the strategies that course facilitators can use to foster cognitive engagement.

• Guide attention to relevant information, so that it may be efficient and selective.
• Reduce unnecessary distractions or information processing so that these limited cognitive resources are not wasted on extraneous processing/information.
• Present personally relevant information, which captures attention rapidly and effortlessly (Röer, Bell, & Buchner, 2013). Further, information that is made personally relevant is better stored and remembered, a phenomenon known as the Self-reference effect (Lieberman, Jarcho, & Satpute, 2004; Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977).
• Consider the conditions that support optimal learning states, such as Flow. The state of being in Flow (“being in the zone”) is considered an optimal state for learning (Csikszentmihalyi, 2014).  Flow states are characterized by a sense of getting lost in the task and losing the sense of time passing. When in Flow, maintaining attentional focus feels effortless, even when engaged in tasks (for instance playing an instrument or sport) that are typically challenging and effortful (Csikszentmihalyi & Nakamura, 2010). Flow is an intrinsically rewarding state (Landhäußer & Keller, 2012) and is associated with positive affect (Ullén, de Manzano, Theorell, & Harmat, 2010). For this reason, it is an ideal condition to learn in.

Cognitive engagement is essential to student success in all aspects of an online course. It is of special importance when fostering student-content engagement, a topic we will cover in Unit 4. Student-content interaction.

Emotional engagement reflects the degree to which a learner is emotionally invested and motivated to maintain and sustain attention and put in effort. It is the fuel for learning and what propels learners forward.

Emotional engagement is characterized by several cognitive emotions, such as interest and curiosity. Both positive and negative affective states impact attention and how we approach and process information. For instance, research by cognitive psychologist Barbara Fredrickson shows that positive affective states can broaden attentional scope and capacity (Fredrickson, 2001). Being in a positive affective state is conducive to

• openness to new ideas,
• making novel connections,
• creativity,
• cognitive flexibility, 
• taking an exploratory approach, and
• creative problem-solving.

On the other hand, negative affective state (such as mild stress, anxiety, or confusion) can have the effect of:

• narrowing or focusing attention,
• leading to selective and detail-oriented processing,
• taking a more exploitive approach of sticking with a concept, and
• using analytic problem-solving

(Fredrickson, 2001; Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005).

Emotional states that can enhance emotional engagement

There are several emotions, both positive and negative, that can impact cognitive engagement and are conducive to learning. Positive emotions that can have an expansive impact on attention and learning are listed below. Negative emotions that can help to focus attention, as long as these emotions are not too strong or intense, are also listed. 

Positive emotions

• Motivation (intrinsic or extrinsic)
• Feeling connected
• Feeling acknowledged and validated
• Feeling supported
• Interest
• Curiosity
• Surprise
• Joy
• Pride
• Humour
• Wonderment or awe

 Negative emotions (all in mild form, too much can be detrimental)

• Confusion
• Anxiety, tension
• Sense of pressure

A little emotion goes a long way

It is important to clarify here that when we talk about the benefits of emotion on cognition and learning, we are talking about rather subtle shifts in emotion. In fact, when people are in a strong emotional state, positive or negative, then many of the benefits of emotion on cognition and learning are lost or even reversed. If negative emotions become too strong or persistent, they can lead to frustration, anger, depression, feelings of helplessness, or a state of stress, which can impair learning and memory (Vogel & Schwabe, 2016). Conversely, too much positive emotion can also be harmful, reducing creativity and leading to distraction, as a result of the way in which positive emotion orients us towards novelty (Davis, 2008). While the relationship between emotion and cognition can be complex, the take-away message here is that a little emotion can go a long way. It’s not as difficult as one may think to nudge students towards emotional states that are most conducive to engagement and learning. 

Behavioural engagement is essentially what students do. Behavioural engagement reflects observable and measurable actions, such as:

• the amount of time students invest in a course;
• the degree to which they persist when a concept is difficult;
• whether they reach out to an instructor, TA, or other students; and
• how students approach content and assessments.

It is often this behavioural investment of students that we observe (and evaluate) as instructors and TAs.

When we observe a student who has failed to engage in a course, activity, or assessment, it is typically their behavior that has led us to that conclusion. We might conclude that the student simply isn’t interested or motivated; however, engagement for the purpose of learning is not completely the responsibility of the student. If factors that impact cognitive or emotional engagement have not been considered in the design and/or delivery of a course, then we should expect only those students who have the highest intrinsic motivation to be engaged, leaving most students feeling detached rather than invested and not showing positive signs of behavioural engagement (e.g., not participating in discussions, not investing sufficient time to learn the concepts or skills, handing in assessments late or incomplete, etc.).

While we may not reach all students, and there are certainly limits to what we can do, an awareness of engagement can help guide our online teaching to be as successful as possible. In subsequent units we will explore some of the more practical dimensions of fostering engagement online.