The Great Entertainer or Nanny McPhee - striving after student engagement in the HE classroom

This reflection takes a bottom up approach and stems from my personal experience. It takes a vertical perspective in the sense it is trying to tentatively probe into reasons behind phenomena. It is not meant to be a critique of existing approaches towards student engagement but rather an attempt to look into a possible reason for a changing student profile and some educators' response to that phenomenon. 

A year ago I volunteered to participate in a peer observation initiative in my institution and attended a colleague's foundation year class. These are students fresh from high school and need more support to adapt to the UK HE academic culture and learning and teaching style. My colleague's approach was very much EFL one involving many CELTA-type activities. This worked well for the profile of students and kept them engaged and participating in the activities throughout. None of them was browsing on their mobile device as usually happens in such classes. In my post-obs reflection I pondered on this - to what extent do we need to pamper and babysit students to keep them engaged? Or do we need to resort to a more academic HE kind of classroom where more independent and individual work happens? Is a mixture of both the best approach - starting with more high-school EFL communicative approach and gradually shifting towards more "serious" type of learning?

On another ocassion in term 2 of this academic year I was discussing Chinese pre-master students expectations as to the figure of the HE teacher/ lecturer. I was surprised to find out a great number said they expected the teacher to be fun/ entertaining. These are mature students and I expected them to prefer a more "dry" and straightforward approach similar to what they have described is the situation in their country where the instruction is mostly unidirectional and students are rarely engaged in interaction with the tutor or each other. This made me think there is a general shift in later generations of students as to their preferences and expectations and wonder what the reason might be. As an educator with 20 years experience and a mother of two I dare claim that using technology has to a great extent contributed to that shift. The different mode of engaging with texts and visuals has brought to a change in students learning habits and behaviour in class. This on its turn necessitates more engaging materials and/or teacher presence in the classroom.

The fact that approaches like playful pedagogies, active learning, student-centered teaching appear might be a strong indication of a shift in perceptions and expectations of what L&T should be in HE or indeed the presence of a new type of student profile to be pleased, shaped by their extensive use and reliance on technology - characterised by short attention span, fear of reading long texts and thus relying on other medIa and forms. The latter are helpfully produced for them by educators and learning technologists - short videos, interactive presentations with activities to click, drag and drop - all sorts of lower cognitive load tasks as if students have become less intelligent than previous generations.

All of the above further begs the questions - is technological progress good at the end of the day and does it lead to improvement and growth for the learner? It seems technology is the culprit in dumbing students down (or if you prefer the more euphemistic - changing student profile) and now educators have to rely on it to make them engaged and motivated because they are already used to it. Does it not look like a vicious circle? Teachers cannot afford to impose a cold turkey period on students as they will completely lose them as audience (and, potentially, as customers). So they have to go along with what the student offers and wants. Institutional policy and more broadly industry standards corroborate largely in this respect. 

The above may well seem a very old-fashioned and conservative stance in view of the fact that technology is progressing fast and already an integral part of the educational process whether we approve of it or not. For my part, I am not a supporter of using technology extensively in the classroom (if I could, I would scrap it altogether), but in terms of engagement, I am all for a more serious learning, especially in HE. I do not feel I need to be an entertainer in my classroom just because the students are used to this or expecting it. After all, they have reached my classroom to prepare for academic study at university and I consider it to be more serious than games, competitions and role plays. That said, I do feel some variety and a breath a fresh air is needed and I am not a stranger to using the above avitivies from time to time in my classes too.

At the end I would like ot offer two resources on student engagement I came upon whilst writing this. The first one is a Cmapus + webinar - The art of bringing creativity and fun in the classroom. Educators from three universities discuss how they use their own creativity to engage students - appealing to empathy, using technology - virtual reality, and gamifying delivery of the materIal:

https://youtu.be/tduPlpeOTEc

Another resource which can be useful for those who feel the need to engage their learners in the HE education classroom is this book:

Playful Pedagogy in Higher Education - a book exploring approaches across disciplines

Baecher, L. H., & Portnoy, L. (Eds.). (2024). Playful Pedagogy in Higher Education. Cham: Springer.