Have you ever wondered… Why don’t students do their assigned readings? How can I increase learners’ engagement with eTextbooks?
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How to increase student engagement with eTextbooks
A 2015 study looked at how an instructor’s use of eText affects student reading and learning. It found that 70% of students preferred eTexts over paper textbooks because of instructor highlights and annotations.
Technology alone doesn’t improve learning. Teachers like you, play the most important role in encouraging students to read.
When instructors actively use the eText with highlights and annotations students actually read more, highlighted more, and made more notes. In other words, when instructors engage with the eText so do their students.
With eText, you have new opportunities to connect with students, and guide their learning. When you use it to its full potential, you can inspire students to engage meaningfully with the text.
We would like to share with you a short video on how you can use eTextbooks to encourage students to engage with their reading.
Tips on creating hybrid classrooms
Katherine McEldoon and Emily Schneider
The hybrid model of teaching and learning combines online and in-person learning into one cohesive experience. Although the model has been around for many years, interest has been on the rise because it gives instructors the flexibility to design their courses in a way to reduce the risk of exposure to COVID-19 and give students ownership over their learning.
Another advantage of the hybrid classroom model is that it can be the “best of both worlds” by giving students and teachers the in-person and social interactions they crave while also taking advantage of the benefits of technology.
This article serves as a primer for those who are ready to try hybrid teaching and learning. Drawing on the research literature, it covers where to start, a model for integrating technology, how to plan hybrid interactions with students, what a learner-centered approach is and how to support it, advice for online assessments, as well as an example of a hybrid implementation.
Where to start
Successful hybrid courses fully integrate online and face-to-face instruction, planning interactions in a pedagogically valuable manner. Build around what you want students to learn:
- Don’t: think of your hybrid class as a direct translation of your face-to-face course. Common pitfalls are to directly translate the online or to add online components onto a face-to-face class.
- Do: build your course by starting with the learning objectives in your syllabus. Then, as you’re building your course, select and align the delivery method, technology, and assignments that will best help students learn the objectives and content.
Consider three things during this process:
- What needs to be done in-person versus online
- What needs to be in real-time versus giving students flexibility
- What needs to be instructor-facilitated versus facilitated by the learning resources
Integrate the experiences
Melding in-person and online classes doesn’t need to be disjointed. You can incorporate them in such a way that they support each other. For example, assign challenging and engaging online learning activities and then discuss them in-person, inviting questions. If you’re encouraging online discussion, reference these discussions in class to confirm their value.
Choose the right technology for you
Technology also has benefits that can improve learning, such as immediate feedback and monitoring progress. Rather than starting by shopping for educational technology, start by understanding the problems you experience. Then evaluate whether educational technology can help solve those problems. We have provided examples in the complete guide, available for download.
Plan effective interactions
After you’ve identified the learning objectives, think about the interactions you’ll use to facilitate learning and which mode you’ll use. Hybrid learning enables a lot of flexibility in how the students interact with each other, with you, and with the learning materials. Interactions can be categorised into three types.
- Instructor-Learner: Instructor interaction is a major driver of successful learning. Examples include emails and discussions.
- Learner-Learner: These interactions can either happen online, with learners interacting but not necessarily in real-time, or in person. Examples include discussions, collaborative group work, and peer-review activities
- Learner-Content: The SAMR Model is one way of thinking to make the most of student interactions using technology. Examples include lecturing via Zoom instead
of in the front of a classroom or instead of studying a static diagram of a physics concept, students watch a video and predict what happens next.
Craft a learner-centered approach to learning
In a hybrid model, encourage students to take control of their learning. Start by enabling students to choose how they engage with the materials. Hybrid models allow students to chose in when, how, and what they engage with. Although there are real-time aspects of a hybrid course (either face-to-face or online), much of the learning occurs on the students’ own time.
Their own independence should be encouraged and they’ll need support to take ownership of their work. Importantly, prompt them to monitor and reflect on their learning, and then act on their new understanding.
Take your assessment online
If your preference is to use a traditional summative exam, these research-based tips can make the online experience better for you and your students. Here are guidelines for taking your assessments online.
- Create clear and specific rules and instructions so students know exactly what to do.
- Reduce the opportunities for cheating.
- Make sure students can reasonably complete the exam within the time allotted.
- Align your exam questions to learning outcomes.
- Base scoring and point values on the complexity and difficulty of the questions.
Methods and tips on each of these points can be found in the complete guide available for download.
Continuously improve
Keep your approach simple at first and aim for continuous improvement, not perfection. We encourage you to try something, get feedback from your students, and keep improving your course. And, you’re not alone. Your colleagues may also have advice too. You can build an informal or formal learning network. This is a learning experience for everyone.
About the authors
Katherine McEldoon, PhD
Katherine is a Senior Research Scientist at Pearson. Trained in cognitive science research labs across the country, she has worked to connect insights from the science of learning to educational practice throughout her career. Katherine earned her PhD in Cognitive Development and was an Institute of Education Sciences’ Experimental Education Research Fellow at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education. Her postdoctoral work at Arizona State University centered on a research partnership between The Learning Sciences Institute and ASU Preparatory Academies, incorporating a theory of active learning into middle & high school teacher pedagogy. Since then, she has continued to bridge research and practice outside of academia, working with educational technology start-up companies, state governments, and more. Katherine firmly believes in the power of enabling educators with insights from research and incorporates this mindset into her work at Pearson.
Emily Schneider, PhD
Emily has spent more than a decade researching and designing learning experiences for higher education. As a Senior Learning Designer at Pearson, she helps product teams create effective and engaging digital learning experiences at scale. Emily believes that we should take advantage of technology for what it offers but never forget the power of the embodied human experience. She holds a PhD in Learning Sciences and Technology Design from Stanford University.
How to motivate your students
Dan Belenky
We know that motivation is an important tool in helping students to achieve more. When combined with other self-management abilities (like planning and organising work), motivation is a bigger predictor of grades than IQ. So how can we encourage this in our students?
Frequently, people think of motivation as something either present or absent. “Jo is a motivated student, but Ali isn’t.” However, academic research on motivation has revealed that a more productive question to focus on is, “What factors are motivating this person’s behaviors right now?” With this lens, we don’t focus as much on whether or not a person is motivated, we focus on whether the motivation a person is experiencing is appropriate for goals they are pursuing, and the environment.
As learning is increasingly happening in online environments, independently driven, and over the course of the lifetime, this kind of lens becomes even more critical. As we move from thinking of motivation as “the fuel” of behavior to considering it as a tool to effectively “steer and accelerate” towards your goals, this guide will give you ideas on how to better support different aspects of motivation to lead to improved learning outcomes.
A growth mindset will help students if they hit a bump in the road.
We all hit bumps in the road—it’s inevitable. But what happens next? Some people may feel demotivated, taking the difficulties as a sign that they don’t have what it takes to succeed. Others may see these difficulties as important parts of the journey—they feel driven to overcome these challenges, as a way to improve and develop one’s abilities and skills.
Academic research has explored these two different perspectives people may hold, labeling the idea that you have a set amount of ability which can’t be increased a fixed mindset and the belief that your abilities can develop as a growth mindset. For example, a student with a fixed mindset will say, “I give up, I can’t do this!” But a student with a growth mindset will say, “I can improve if I keep trying.”
How can you help students develop a growth mindset?
“Direct” Approaches: How to talk to your students about growth mindset
- Help students develop a growth mindset by talking about what it is and how to adopt it.
- After introducing growth mindset, ask your students to write a brief letter to a student in another school, or a student who will take the same course in the future. The goal of the letter is to explain what growth mindset is, why they should adopt one, and some strategies to do so. Having students do this exercise can help them internalise those ideas.
“Indirect” Approaches: How to create a “growth-oriented” context in your class
- Pay attention to how you structure your class and the signals it sends to your learners. Are you structuring assignments in ways that reward incremental progress (e.g. letting students rework problems for more credit)?
- Consider the language you use with students, and make sure to highlight both the effort as well as approaches that are likely to lead to success. Pair messages like, “Keep trying, I know you can get it!” with actionable steps they can take (e.g., “Before your next attempt, why don’t you talk this problem over with one of your classmates and see if you can figure out what part is giving you the most trouble.”)
How do they determine their progress?
A student’s motivation is more likely to increase if they gauge their progress by looking at their own improvements, rather than by comparing themselves to others.
Some goals are self-focused—they use self-referenced improvement as their barometer (e.g. “How have I developed from when I started?”)—which some researchers refer to as “mastery goals.”
Others may use their peers as a way to gauge their own achievement (e.g. “How am I doing compared to everyone else?”), often labeled as “performance goals.”
You should encourage mastery goals as a general approach and think strategically about places where performance goals can be used effectively. It is important to have a classroom-oriented more around progress than markers of performance (like scores). Here are three ways you can achieve that:
- Structure lessons and assignments so they continuously build off one another.
- Demonstrate individual students’ progress compared to their own benchmarks.
- Allow and encourage revision of work (where possible, such as submitting multiple drafts of writing or reworking of incorrect homework problems).
Help students see that it’s worth the effort.
We all do this—either subconsciously or explicitly. We ask ourselves, “How hard is it going to be?” and, “What do I get out of it?” before deciding to do a task. If students believe they have the knowledge and skills to succeed and understand the value of what they’re doing, they are more likely to be motivated.
Balance external rewards with activities that increase internal motivation.
Another way of increasing motivation relies on extrinsic (external) factors—rewards of various kinds, or the avoidance of punishment—rather than internal factors. While it would not be a good idea to have people rely solely on extrinsic motivation, it can have a place in the suite of tools available. You will find a table in the full report that will help you decide when it is appropriate to use it.
The different aspects of motivation discussed in this guide provide potentially useful ways of increasing students’ engagement and perseverance in their learning journey. In the full report, you can read how two educators improved their students’ motivation.
About the author
Dan Belenky is Director of Learning Science Research at Pearson. Prior to joining Pearson in 2014, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Dan earned his PhD in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied how student motivation interacts with (and is impacted by) innovative instructional methods. His current research projects explore how insights from cognitive psychology and behavioral science can be used to improve learner outcomes, at scale.