Center for Teaching & Learning: Student Engagement

Engaged students are invested in their learning.

They are motivated, attentive, curious, and involved. Research demonstrates that engaged students achieve greater academic success. Engagement may include intellectual, emotional, behavioural, or social interactions. On a broader level, student engagement may include student involvement in university governance, program development, or civic activities. This guide focuses on the classroom teaching and learning environment.

Use Blackboard's tools to support a learning community,  improve teacher feedback, enhance communication, validate student opinions, increase instructor and learner presence, and develop authentic conversation.

Student Engagement Features

• Skills Engagement (Staying current with homework and making an effort )
• Emotional Engagement (Making the course personally interesting)
• Participation/Interaction Engagement (Having fun and actively participating in discussions)
• Performance Engagement (Doing well in the course—good grades)

Dixon, M.D. (2010, June). Creating effective student engagement in online courses: What do students find engaging? Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 10(2). 1-13.

Providing feedback is the backbone of teaching. Timely objective and authentic feedback should support student learning. It informs your students' personal assessment of their progress and helps them identify their strengths and their weaknesses.  Professors provide feedback in many forms, such as: written comments, audio or video recording, rubrics, in-class comments, or emails.

Use feedback to:

• Help students identify where they are now with respect to where they are going.
• Provide correction to current and future work.
• Prompt further learning.
• Maximize the chance that student achievement will increase.

from Georgia Department of Education

Using Blackboard's Retention Center for Student Feedback

The Blackboard Retention Center is an excellent tool for tracking students' progress and easily sending targeted feedback. Your proactive feedback can support changes in their learning and study habits and motivate self-directed learning. You can also use the Retention Center to track and recognize student success.

How do you translate the Retention Center's chart into valuable feedback?

Use the Notify option to customize the generic messages and quickly send your feedback.  Effective feedback should:

• Identify the reason for the notification.
• Make specific suggestions for improvement.
• Direct the student to resources if needed.
• Recommend strategies for change.
• Be timely.

Send Customized Notifications:

TIP: Consider developing your own standardized notifications that you can copy and paste. From the BITS presentation, Dr. Cigdem V. Sirin offers a good example. (For more ideas, watch the presentation!)

"Hi,

Performance and intervention e-mail - sent to those who received a D or an F from Exam 1:
I am writing to you regarding your exam score.  As you know, students need a final letter grade of at least a C or higher to successfully pass this course.  That said, I believe you have the potential to succeed in this course with adequate effort and willingness and I will be happy to help you.  Keep in mind that there are still opportunities... I suggest that you complete the assigned readings before each class meeting and attend class regularly.  Exams will cover material from the readings and the lectures, so doing just one or the other will leave you at a disadvantage...  "

Try These Rule Ideas:

• Create an activity rule to track which students haven't logged in two or more days. Use the Notify option to send feedback. Let them know that in online courses, students who log in to their courses more frequently and participate more often generally do better in the course.
• Create a grade rule to track students who have earned less than a C. Send a "good effort" notification to those students and a gentle reminder that there is still room for improvement. Offer a study tip or referral to the tutoring center for example. You should consider more in-depth feedback depending upon the grade (i.e., failing).
• Create a missed deadline rule for a specific assignment such as a first draft. Send a reminder that the deadline was missed, but that the draft will still be accepted because first drafts are part of the writing process. Explain the benefits of writing drafts. Offer guidance for example on organizing content, improving grammar, or developing a thesis.
• Create a class activity rule to monitor students whose activity over the last 10 days has been 50% greater than the course average AND create a grade rule to identify those who earned a B or greater in the last exam. Use the risk chart to identify the students who meet both of these criteria. Send congratulations on their hard work. Acknowledgment of successes demonstrates teaching presence - it shows that you noticed their effort.

Resources for Blackboard Retention Center

Blackboard Innovative Teaching Series (BITS): Blackboard Retention Center (recorded webinar)

Blackboard Innovative Teaching Series (BITS): Blackboard Retention Center (slide deck)

Good Designs for Written Feedback for Students (pdf)
Feedback: Negative, Positive or Both? from Faculty Focus

The Almond Joy of Providing Feedback to Students - Try a new and maybe more substantive approach to feedback. Consider the coconut "chewy goodness" of positives through out the assignment, the almond "hard things" the must be addressed, and the "chocolate coating" encouragement. It's a different approach from the "sandwich" method, which can lack dimension.

Chappell, K. (2019, March 11). The almond joy of providing feedback to students. Retrieved from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/educational-assessment/the-almond-joy-of-providing-feedback-to-students/

Nicol, D. (2010). Good designs for written feedback for students. In W.J. Mckeachie & M. Svinick (Eds.), McKeachie's teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers (109 - 123). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Mid-Semester feedback gives students to opportunity to share their concerns, and allows you time to make appropriate changes to the course. These surveys are not the same as the final course evaluations given by the school or department. They are for you to learn more about your students and their learning experience with you. The focus is on your teaching presence, the course delivery & design, and how engaged the students feel.  And, any instructor can easily use their Blackboard course to conduct an online survey, even for face-to-face courses.

Why Seek Student Feedback?

• Enhance students' learning experience
• Ensure the effectiveness of the course design and delivery
• Enable a dialog with students
• Help students reflect on their experiences
• Identify good teaching practices
• Measure student satisfaction
• Contribute to staff development

(Brennan & Williams, 2004, p.11)

What Should You Ask?

Just like writing an exam, it's important to ask the right questions. Instructors should think through their past teaching experiences and consider which areas they want to examine and which areas they would like to improve. Select two to three topics to keep the survey reasonably brief and encourage completion.

The surveys may include questions such as:

• Does the instructor treat students with respect?
• Does the instructor encourage class participation?
• What is working well for you in this class? What are you struggling with? 
• What could the instructor change to improve your learning experience in this class? 

Another well-known approach is the Stop, Start, Continue survey method. It's fast and easy to conduct. There are three open-ended questions, which often yield very rich information.

1. Stop: What would you like me to stop doing?
2. Start: What recommendations do you?
3. Continue: What is working well for you?

Resources

Gathering Feedback from Students article includes sample forms for the classroom from Vanderbilt University 

Large set of sample of mid-semester feedback surveys includes items from Princeton, Middle Tennessee State University, Otis College of Art, UC Berkeley, Brown, Carnegie Mellon, NYU, Washington University, and Humboldt State University.

Mid-Semester Feedback article from University of Texas, Austin's Faculty Innovation Center. This article discusses the "why" of collecting student feedback during the semester and the "how", which includes selecting the right survey, administering it, and analyzing the results.

Student questionnaire template and a list of question ideas from The McGraw Center for Teaching & Learning at Princeton University 

Student Assessment of Their Learning Gains
This free online tool is based on work supported by a  National Science Foundation grant. You can learn more about the validity, the privacy policy, and how to use the tool by visiting the website.

How to Get Better Feedback from Students article from Faculty Focus

Use of the 'Stop, Start, Continue' Method journal article in Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education

References

Brennan, J. and Williams, R. (2004), Collecting and using student feedback: A guide to good practice. Retrieved from https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/system/files/id352_collecting_and_using_student_feedback_a_guide_to_good_practice.pdf.