Student engagement exists at the intersection of instructional design and student motivation. To maximize achievement, teachers must first understand what motivates students to learn. You can see this blog post as a separate document here.
1. Evaluate
Use the Student Engagement Inventory to gather data on the level of student engagement in your classroom. You can gather information three ways:
Answer the inventory yourself, using your best judgment to respond as a typical student in your classroom.
Give the inventory to each of your students and tabulate the responses manually.
Use this Google Form and send it to your students electronically. If desired, you may also add data visualization for your responses.
2. Analyze
Tabulate the results, looking for trends and outliers. Are there any surprises? Did one response stand out from the others?
3. Target
Identify which of the five facets to commit to improving first (most likely the lowest one).
4. Learn
Grow your knowledge about the target facet from my resources.
5. Plan
Choose 1 - 3 instructional strategies from the resources to try out. Decide on the date, time, and frequency of the strategies over the next 3 weeks. Plan them out.
6. Implement
Do it! Put your plan into action. If obstacles get in the way, don’t abandon the plan. Instead, adapt and adjust.
7. Reflect
As you implement your strategies, reflect on them. What’s working? What’s not working? How can you improve it?
8. Reevaluate
Using the same method as step 1, reevaluate the level of student engagement 3-4 weeks after the initial evaluation. Allow enough time between surveys to provide for ample implementation of the plan in step 5. If you gave a Google Form the first time, give a new one this time.
9. Reanalyze
Tabulate the results and compare them to the first data set. Are they similar? Different?
10. Move
Look at the data from step 9 and the goal you set in your plan from step 5. Based on whether or not you met your goal, move forward from one of the options below.
I met my goal
Keep going! You had one objective and you met it, so take the victory and continue applying what you’ve learned.
Set a new goal. Using the results from step 9, target a new facet of student motivation and begin the process again.
I did not meet my goal
Extend the timeline. You believe the strategies you chose are working but you just need more time. Give it another few weeks and reevaluate.
Try different strategies. The goal is reachable but the strategies you chose didn’t work for your students. Go back to step 5 and make a new plan.
Work with a coach. Sometimes other factors are getting in the way and you need a thought partner to help you push through them.
THANK YOU for committing to grow in your craft and increase student engagement and achievement. Additional learning options are listed below.
Professional development
Books
