Theory

Engagement Theory

“Why do we have to learn this?,” “When am I ever going to need this?,” “Is this going to be on the test?” These are all questions heard in high school classrooms across the country.  Those that are good at math, like the material, are engaged and are intrinsically motivated to do well and be successful.  What about those that do not like mathematics? I work hard to keep my classroom fun and energetic.  I tell stories to help them remember the process we are working on.  I make up songs to engage them and create rhymes to help them recall the concepts.  If students were engaged through another avenue, they may not need me to be the cheerleader in front of the room.  They would be motivated on their own to complete their work, all while being actively engaged.

According to Kearsley and Shneiderman (1999), engagement theory’s fundamental idea is students must be “meaningfully engaged in learning activities through interaction with others and worthwhile tasks” (p. 1).  It is the belief with this theory that students can be engaged through opportunities using technology that may not be possible otherwise.  Engagement is successful when students’ activities are creative, require problem solving, reasoning, decision making, and evaluation.  The learning environment of the classroom allows students to be innately motivated.  The main idea of engagement theory is broken into three components:  relate, create, and donate (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999).

Interpersonal and collaborative skills are acquired during the relate stage.  When students collaborate with each other they are required to talk through the problems, and collectively come up with a solution.  According to Shneiderman, Alavi, Norman and Borkowski (1995), “verbalization of problems has often been demonstrated to be advantageous during learning and is an important job skill to acquire for modern team-oriented organizations and relationships” (p. 21).  The traditional format of many schools is to complete independent work, even though the workplace requires the opposite.

Collaboration has a variety of benefits and advantages.  Not only can students work with others in their own classroom, but through technology they now have the opportunity to connect with others from around the world and gain a different cultural perspective.  Instructors can use the engagement theory to incorporate blogs and class websites to achieve this type of collaboration.  Educators can use Google Sites and Weebly to provide a place to post assignments, class documents, and announcements. Edmodo can also be used to present assignments and associated materials, grade student work, and communicate with students.  It also offers them a place to upload work and communicate with peers (Walser, 2011).  According to Kearsley and Shneiderman (1999), collaboration also increases motivation in students and decreases drop-out rates.  Incorporating technology with collaboration can provide powerful results.

According to Poelzer (2014), an online book discussion was created using Moodle for a 7^th grade classroom.  Throughout the Moodle course, students shared their opinions, made personal connections with the stories, and discussed, compared and contrasted texts.  A mother of one of the boys in the class commented that her son, “would rather cut off his right arm than sit down with a book” (Poelzer, 2014, para. 12). Technology provided a learning environment where he felt motivated to read the assignments and involve himself with the online discussions because he did not want to miss out. 

Besides Moodle, blogs, and class websites, there are a variety of ways collaboration can be incorporated with technology to engage students.  Web conference boards, chat programs, and gaming are also avenues instructors can employ.  Gaming, specifically, “can help make learning more engaging and relevant in ways that static textbooks simply cannot” (Levine & Gershenfeld, 2011, p. 25).  However, regardless of the technology, students will need guidance with their time management skills, with their leadership ability, and consensus building.  These are all 21^st century skills that are needed and required in the current workplace. 

The second component of engagement theory is the create stage.  During this stage, students analyze a problem creatively and with purpose.  In other words, in the traditional classroom, students are basically robotic in their learning.  They regurgitate what the teacher has presented to them, or memorized what is expected.  However, in the create stage of engagement theory, students take control of their learning by creating their own projects, applying their ideas, and focus their efforts in order to problem solve.  Computers and the world-wide-web have opened up a whole new world of resources and projects.  No longer are teachers bound by their possible out of date textbooks.  With access to digital libraries and ebooks, students can create projects that were not possible before.  One example of how educators can use the create stage of engagement theory in the classroom is for students to create an encyclopedia or online textbook for their class.  This has been done at the graduate level where students have created an Encyclopedia of Virtual Environments. It was also accomplished in a 5^th grade class that produced a database on the animals of Africa for third graders (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999).

The final component of engagement theory is the donate stage.  The projects that are shaped during the create stage are intended to help a community organization, school, church, library, museum, government agency, local business, or needy individual.  The intent is to have students work on a project that has a practical focus (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999).  Some examples of authentic projects that have been completed are students have worked on campus related projects and developed scheduling systems for the bus service and television station.  They also kept records for the scuba club, organized carpools, and created an accounting system for a physics department (Shneiderman, 1998). 

In conclusion, the engagement theory through relate, create, and donate stages, is intended to produce successful collaborative groups which work on tasks that are significant to someone beyond the classroom.  Technologies such as websites, blogs, gaming, digital libraries, and ebooks are just a few mentioned that can engage students and provide a place for such collaboration and projects to exist.  Engaging students can be challenging, but with the use of these technologies, students can be motivated, connected, and ultimately allow success in our students!

Kearsley & Shneiderman, B. (1999). Engagement Theory:  A framework for technology-based teaching and learning.  Retrieved from http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm

Levine, M. H., & Gershenfeld, A. (2011).  The Video Game-Learning Link:  Isn’t It Time We Leveled Up?  Education Week, 31(11), 24-26.

Poelzer, T. (2014).  Using ICT to Engage Reluctant Male Learners in Literacy Activities.  Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol3/312-poelzer.aspx

Shneiderman, B. (1998).  Relate-Create-Donate: A teaching/learning philosophy for the cyber-generation. Computers & Education, 31(1), 25-39.

Shneiderman, B., Alavi, M., Norman, K., & Borkowski, E.Y. (1995). Windows of Opportunity in Electronic Classrooms. Communications of the AMC, 38(11), 19-24.

Walser, N. (2011).  Spotlight on Technology in Education.  Harvard Education Press Cambridge, MA.