student engagement

Author: Joseph Ferrantelli, Ph. D., Wagner College I spent 26 years working in one of the largest school systems in the world. Near the latter part of that time, there was a push to use technology in the classroom. So, the school system spent millions on installing interactive boards in every classroom. The Early Resistance But, the teacher training was lacking. This four-thousand-dollar board was essentially used by many as a very expensive chalkboard. Millions more were spent on class sets of computers, but there weren’t enough to go around—and the computers we had often didn’t work. The computers that Read More…

As an instructor, you want your students to gain the skills needed to think and act like successful managers. Unfortunately, it’s easy for new managers to fall for the many myths about what good managers do. Check out these nine management myths, plus discover ways to help your students navigate the management world. MANAGEMENT MYTH #1: There’s only one right way to lead or manage. THE TRUTH: Leadership can be customized for different employees. Hersey and Blanchard argue employees have different levels of readiness for handling different jobs, responsibilities and work assignments. Accordingly, Hersey and Blanchard’s situational theory states that leaders need Read More…

  Want to capture the attention of your Introduction to Business students? Check out the following five tips to engage your students and increase success in class — and beyond. Tip 1: Make Content Applicable to Students’ Daily Lives Incorporating hot topics in business from Amazon, to AI, to the #MeToo movement, helps students relate course concepts to their everyday lives.  The Cengage Higher Ed Faculty Community provides articles related to discipline content that you can bring in for classroom discussion.  From reviewing new branding strategies in Marketing Dunkin’ to learning about the Worst Read More…

Author:  Dr. Stephanie Thomas, Cornell University How do you engage a class of more than 450 students with varying academic backgrounds and vastly different interests in the subject? This is the challenge I face every fall semester when I offer Introductory Microeconomics. I approach this question from the following perspective: students come to class on the first day because they have to come. They come to class the rest of the semester because they want to come. It’s hard for us to imagine why a student wouldn’t want to come to class! As instructors, most of us enjoyed going to Read More…

By: Shawn Orr, Director of the Center for Innovation and Teaching Excellence, Faculty in Communication Studies at Ashland University – Ohio Icebreakers often come with a dreaded connotation that implies frivolous activities done on the first day of class with limited benefits to student learning. Consider that one icebreaker—”introduce yourself and tell us one interesting thing about yourself”—that is used over and over while yielding little enthusiasm or class engagement. Yet, semester after semester, we pull that icebreaker out and use it again. Why? Because we want to start the semester off by fostering student connection and community. This Read More…

Essie Childers, Instuctor at Blinn College in Texas, shares insight into how MindTap for Student Success helped her organize and manage a blended class while improving student engagement and performance. When professor Essie Childers went in search of a new online platform to help motivate students in her Learning Frameworks course, she knew she needed a program designed to increase her efficiency as well as create a safe place for students to contemplate and reflect. She found what she was looking for in MindTap, with its journaling feature and its automatic grading and feedback. Challenge Essie’s search for an engaging online program Read More…

Could achievement badges be the motivation your students need? One of the common causes of learners’ lack of motivation and failure to complete is a failure to understand why the learning activities are valuable. Are learners in your courses asking themselves:

Why am I doing this?
When will I be done?
Why does this matter?

If they are, they might also be coming to conclusions like:

I’d rather spend my time on something else.
I’m not going to make it to the end—I can’t even see where the end is.
This doesn’t matter to me.

Badges Boost Student Motivation

One way of addressing these problematic perspectives is to Read More…

“My class went from a 50% pass rate with a competing product to an 85%, 90%, and 92% pass rate for my 3 sections with MindTap Math Foundations.” –Jea Joseph, Instructor, Oakwood University Last Fall, students and instructors from around the country used MindTap Math Foundations in their developmental math classes. They noticed a difference.

63% of students felt that they would earn a grade of B or better

Built with students, for students in Developmental Math from the ground up, MindTap Math Foundations (MTMF) instills confidence in students and motivates them to succeed. Helpful tools, such as step-by-step tutorials, learning Read More…

One of the biggest challenges in e-learning is keeping up motivation throughout the course. For many college students, enthusiasm for classes may wane mid-semester; online students, who lack the face to face feedback to reinforce their motivation, may experience this even more strongly than their on-campus peers. To re-energize your online discussion, think about the kinds of discussion questions that will not only engage your students in the course material, but also help them relate and apply the material beyond the classroom.

Motivation and instructors

“Your instructors will typically be an excellent source of motivation,” Ryan Watkins and Michael Corry advised Read More…

Guest Contributor: Carlos Diaz, The American School, Vietnam It is the cold truth: a video game will catch your students’ attention more than the elaborate, cool plan you stayed up all night preparing for. For some instructors, this may be a sad truth. For others, this is simply the way society is evolving. But hopefully, you can see this as an opportunity. You can use games in your classrooms to boost engagement, confidence and learning. More and more students are responding positively to what is known as Game Based Learning (GBL): teaching strategies using games or gamification to find a better Read More…