21ST CENTURY LEARNING: APPLICATION OF LEARNING THEORIES FOR STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Loh Khang Ling

Recently, researchers and educators start to feel the importance of engaged learning. They even formed strong consensus on the importance of engaged learning in school and classrooms. With the recognition of changing needs of the 21st century, this consensus has stimulated the development of specific indicators of engaged learning. 1994, a group of scholars, from the North Central Regional Education Laboratory (Jones, Valdez, Nowakowski, and Rasmussen) developed their own list of engaged learning indicators. The indicators are:

Vision of Engaged Learning Tasks for Engaged Learning Assessment of Engaged Learning Instructional Models & Strategies for Engaged

Learning Learning Context of Engaged Learning Grouping for Engaged Learning Teacher Roles for Engaged Learning and Student Roles for Engaged Learning

Educators start to groom student engagement as student engagement becomes the indicator of successful classroom instruction. Student engagement is valued as an outcome of school improvement activities. Engaged students are believed to have the below attributes:

Engaged students are attracted to their work

Engaged students are happy in accomplishing their work

Engaged students are willing, need, desire and compulsion to participate

Engaged students persist despite challenges and obstacles

Researchers believe that student engagement is overlaps with level of motivation among students but student engagement is more than motivation. Student engagement is accompanied by positive emotional (enthusiasm, optimism, curiosity and interest).

According to another study by Kenny G., Kenny D. and Dumont R. (1995), there are five indicators for student engagement in college: Level of academic challenge Active and collaborative learning Student-faculty interactions Enriching education experiences Supportive learning environment

RESEARCH 1

According to a South African survey of student engagement with topic “Focusing the Student Experience on Success through Student Engagement” by J. F. Strydom and M. Mentz (2010), student engagement is important for improving the quality and outcomes of the student experience. This research report showed the promising and disappointing aspects of student learning experience. The report also descript implications and applications of student engagement by implementation of four-year undergraduate degree; accessing the effectiveness of higher education; improving the quality of teaching and learning; and addressing social cohesion.

RESEARCH 2

There is another research by George D. Kuh, Ty M. Cruce, Rick Shoup and Jillian Kinzie (2008) with title “Unmasking the Effects of Student Engagement on First-Year College Grades and Persistence”. This study examines the relationships between student engagement, college GPA, and persistence for 11,000 students attending 18 baccalaure ategranting institutions. Two conclusions are made in this report. First, student engagement in educationally purposeful activities is positively related to academic outcomes as represented by first-year student grades and by persistence between the first and second year of college. Second, engagement has a compensatory effect on first-year grades and persistence to the second year of college at the same institution.

RESEARCH 3

Report by Coates H. (2005), Coates argues for the importance of factoring information about student engagement when come to determine the quality of University education. This report discussed about the concept of student engagement and critically review the approach used in Australia. According to the report, there are much value of measuring student engagement by mentioning that student engagement data can provides a picture of what and how students are actually doing.

RESEARCH 4In a research by Leah Taylor and Jim Parsons (2011),

curricular and pedagogical ideas are introduced to improve student engagement in learning. According to Taylor and Parsons, five aspects are suggested for successful student-engaging classrooms:

Relevant, real and interdisciplinary learning Learning environment rich with technology Open, challenging and open learning environment Respectful “peer-to-peer” collaboration relationship

between students and teachers Culture of learning where teachers are learning

together with students

This research also concluded that increased access to technology in classroom increases aspects of student engagement (Taylor & Parsons, 2011, p. 15).

RESEARCH 5

PROPOSAL 1

encourage students to use social network in order to encourage students and teachers social interaction. According to source from Browser Media, Socialnomics and MacWorld (2012), 56% of the people from all around the world use social networks. Teachers may start and join a group within social network that students are familiar with (Facebook, Twitter etc.). By doing this, we encourage constant communication between teachers and students. This also create environment to support student to continue learning outside of classroom. Through social network, students are able to have discussion among them. Involvement of teachers in the discussion will definitely benefits students. Indirectly, level of engagement in learning process will be increase with more communication between students and teachers. Here, we apply constructivism as our learning theory.

PROPOSAL 2Design the instruction that require students to look for

information using Web 2.0 tools. Class should include more discussion that pre-informs students in order for them to look for information. Teachers may suggest Web 2.0 tools that students can use to search for discussion detail such as Youtube, Wikis and search engines. We hope to increase involvement of students in class by applying two learning theories: constructivism and connectivism. Clarification should be done before the discussion in order to pass the message that participants of discussion should involve with open-minded. It is important to create an open discussion environment where students feel safe and confident to discuss. This will encourage students’ interaction by setting some base rules for discussion such as:

Every student will need to elaborate her/ his findings (what and from where)

Every student will need to raise question for her/ his course mate’s elaboration

PROPOSAL 3Cognitivism emphasis on how an instruction can easily and

effectively learn by students’ brain. To apply cognitivism, lecture in class should be as interesting as possible. Teachers should include some multimedia in the lecture. One of the multimedia is lecture presentation. Presentation shows should include lecture notes and related graphics, charts or tables. There are some tools that can help the teacher to prepare the presentation slides:

Prezi.com Prezi.com allows us to create maps of texts, images, videos,

PDFs, drawings and allow the user to present in a nonlinear way. The flow of data can be present beyond the slide

Teachers can do presentation through prezi.com using web browser without installing any software in the computer.

Presentation created through prezi.com can be shared and students are able to go through the presentation any time that suite them for the purpose of revision

Slideshare.net Slideshare.net can support majority of presentation format.

For example Microsoft Powerpoint and OpenOffice ODP Teacher can share with students her/ his presentation

PROPOSAL 4

Teacher may use movie clips to help them as part of the lecture. Lecture with video clips stimulates a love of learning and groom attitude of inquiry. With a help from group discussion among the students, lecture with video clips enhance analytical thinking, mature student behavior and positive school climates. The most important point is, video clips are more interesting and able to engage student in learning.

PROPOSAL 5

Tablet device or smart phones for the purpose to improve students’ engagement in learning. Learning using mobile device or M-learning is more learner-centric as opposed to classroom lecture-form learning which is teacher-centric. Learner-centric learning will definitely help to engage student in learning. The advantages of M-learning are obvious as traditional forms of learning requires students to be present in one fixed location but M-learning students can be anywhere as long as there is internet connectivity. Mobility of learning is the result of mobility of both the technology and learners (El-Hussein & Cronje, 2010).

PROPOSAL 6

Student Response Systems (SRS) or Clicker System will be introduced to the faculty and university. This will help to enhance interactive communication between individual students in a class and the teacher. With availability of mobile device, implementation of SRS education is easier.

We will use SRS or Clicker for the following purpose:

Course related quizzes Feedback collections Attendance taking

PROPOSAL 7

introduce open educational resources to the students. Students can access material from some of the best universities in the world. This will keep them up-to-date with other students around the world in terms of source of information. Again, these learning materials can be accessed by the students anytime, anywhere with their laptops, mobile devices or smart phones. For this, we apply Connectivism as learning theory.

PROPOSAL 8

Introduce cloud applications to the students. Some of the famous cloud applications available are Microsoft OfficeLive, DropBox, Google Docs etc. Students are able to access to all of their data, all the time as long as the internet connection is available. Centralize of data helps the student to look for references when needed. Students learn better if they have more organized data. Cloud application like Google Docs makes sharing, viewing and real-time collaborative editing of media not only possible but engaging. Students now able to do their discussion with editing of discussion notes immediately even they are at different location. The learning theory that we apply will be Constructivism.

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Jones, B., Valdez, G., Nowakowski, J., & Rasmussen, C. (1994). Designing Learning and Technology for Educational Reform. Oak Brook, IL: North Central Regional Educational Laboratory.

Kenny, G., Kenny, D. and Dumont, R. (1995). Mission and place : strengthening Learning and Community Campus Design. Oryx/Greenwood, 37

Srydom, J.F. & Mentz, M. (2010). Focusing the Student Experience on Success through Student Engagement. Pretoria: Council for Higher Education/South African Survey of Student Engagement.

Kuh G.D., Cruce T.M., Shoup R., Kinzie J. & Gonyea R.M.(2008) Unmasking the effects of student engagement on First-year college grades and persistence. Journal of Higher Education, 79, 540–563

Coates, H. (2005). The Value of Student Engagement for Higher Education Quality

Assurance. Quality in Higher Education, 11(1), 25-36. Taylor, L. & Parsons, J. (2011). Improving Student Engagement. Current

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