engagement

This Thing Called Engagement

Like love, the subject of Cole Porter’s famous song, any whole-hearted attempt to understand learning engagement will accept a degree of mystery, its sometimes fleeting nature, and its needs for continual reinforcement, negotiation, frequent forgiveness, mutual responsibility, and constant imagination and faith. This presentation explores useful, prevailing conceptions of learning engagement and its related qualities, but expands the concept further to include the situational qualities that meet individual qualities in bringing about engagement experiences.

Abstract:

Instructional designers (IDs) face numerous formidable tasks, including working within content areas for which they typically lack expertise, understanding often obscured learner and organizational needs, defining performance and knowledge-oriented objectives will address those needs, determining which learning and instructional theories they should use as guidance for the given instructional situation. Add to these the competing needs, goals, and constraints presented by stakeholders and learners and the situation becomes even more complex. But if IDs are willing to stare even deeper into the lion’s mouth of their practice they will face the terrifying and wonderful challenge of stimulating learning engagement. This presentation will explore what is meant by engagement and offer general conclusions about achieving engagement with instructional designs.Engagement is often identified as a critical component of learning. Active engagement, as opposed to mere attention or mechanically going through the motions of instruction, is considered prerequisite to deep learning (Bransford, Brown, Cocking, Donovan, & Pellegrino, 2000). Beyond task persistence, which can merely indicate coercion or an expectation of extrinsic reward, true engagement might be indicated when learners exhibit a developing curiosity, anticipate questions and content gaps that need filling, genuinely attempt to work out instructional problems and ponder content until understanding is achieved, generate new ideas and questions about the content, and struggle for learning coherence. No deep learning will take place until a learner both submits to what the instructional situation has to offer and also genuinely confronts it to test new ideas or try out new skills. In fact, a developing engagement can be seen not only as the best indicator of the potential for deep learning, but as the medium in which learning takes place (Dewey, 1938/1997). Engagement means more than merely the addition of interactivity to otherwise static presentation of content. Educators have recognized engagement as a complex process composed of individual cognitive, affective, and metacognitive processes (Chen & McGrath, 2003; Yang, 2002), as well as socio-cultural processes within learning environments (Case, 2008; Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1998; Kuh, 2001). In the context of single learning experiences, cognitive and metacognitive engagement are the dimensions perhaps most frequently referenced (Bangert-Drowns & Pyke, 2002; Corno & Mandinach, 1983). From this perspective, engagement comes about when the learner brings to bear individual goals and intentions while personalizing the learning experience to achieve valued ends. In other words, cognitive engagement requires an active contribution the learner makes to the learning experience, and not merely passive reception of information. Engagement is sometimes conflated with interest, perhaps with interest seen as the psychological state behind engagement behaviors (Hidi & Renninger, 2006). Like Dewey (e.g., 1934/1989), Reed et al. (2002) see engagement as an “activity-related process” that subsumes the psychological states of involvement and interest. At times, engagement reaches levels in which experience is infused with meaning beyond what can be pointed to as utilitarian, where connection to the situation is immediate and immersive, and in which people might describe themselves as feeling “fully alive” (Berleant, 1991). This kind of engagement is most closely associated with intrinsic motivation and strong situational interest (Schraw & Lehman, 2001). While exploring and embracing these aspects of engagement, this presentation expands the concept further to include the situational qualities that meet individual qualities in bringing about engagement experiences. It offers a conception that views engagement as an ongoing transaction between learner and instruction rather than as a one-way commitment. This concept suggests that instructional providers should concern themselves equally with the qualities of the learning environment that stimulate cognitive and affective processes—qualities that create opportunities for interaction, commitment, and contribution; that allow room for learners to own the experience rather than merely participate; that attempt to find deep connections to learner’s experiences outside the learning environment; and that strive to create not just effective, but also compelling and meaningful learning experiences. In concluding the presentation, a model of situational and individual qualities of learning experiences with the potential for deep engagement is offered (Parrish & Wilson, 2009). Situational qualities discussed include immediacy, malleability, compellingness, resonance, and coherence. Individual qualities include intent, presence, openness, and trust. Within a learning experience, these qualities meet and reinforce one another to influence the level of engagement.Taking responsibility for learning engagement can be a terrifying prospect because it means having to attend to the experience of learning, not just learning outcomes as they are often narrowly defined in educational assessments. The complex, systemic nature of experience means that designers are never fully in control of experiential outcomes. On the other hand, they can’t just abdicate control and continue working in good faith. Taking responsibility for learning engagement is also a wonderful prospect for instructional designers. It can open their eyes to new ways of viewing their practice—using technology to invite imagination and engagement and to instill wonder rather than merely delivering content (Egan, 2007; Wilson & Al Tenaiji, 2008). With a focus on engagement, IDs are encouraged to exercise creativity and look more broadly for guiding sources for their practice, as well as to broaden their concerns for learning outcomes. Like the subject of the famous song by Cole Porter in which he asks, “What is this thing called love?...Just who can solve its mystery?,” any whole-hearted attempt to understand learning engagement needs to accept a degree of mystery, its sometimes fleeting nature, and its needs for continual reinforcement, negotiation, frequent forgiveness, mutual responsibility, and constant imagination and faith.