Transcript
00:00:00 Camie
Welcome to the pedagogy toolkit. In this episode online, Cami continue our myth busting series with fun and engaging are not the same thing. Stay tuned.
00:00:25 Camie
One myth we see in education is that a fun lesson is an engaging one and.
00:00:32 Camie
We know that engagement increases student success, which is important, but often in classrooms or online courses we see fun activities dressed up as engagement in hopes of entertainment.
00:00:51 Camie
Entertaining is not the same thing as engaging.
00:00:56 Camie
What would you say if I asked you about entertainment? How does that you know, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Only.
00:01:04 Amalie
The first thing that comes to my mind I think are are like the movies. I think entertainment. I think it's passive. It's a thing that happens to me or in front of me that I.
00:01:17 Amalie
Gaze upon.
00:01:18 Camie
Yes, I know this is terrible, but the first thing I think of is like being Crosby and you know, like just really those old movies where in the movies.
00:01:28 Camie
People would go to a show and be entertained like they would have a singer in front of them. They or they would do little things act, you know.
00:01:35 Camie
That is what I think of immediately when people entertainment.
00:01:39 Camie
But you're right, it's it's really passive. There's not something that's happening there in your brain. You are just there for joy.
00:01:48 Amalie
Yeah, and that's.
00:01:50 Amalie
There's a lot to be said.
00:01:51 Amalie
For that and it doesn't also mean that.
00:01:55 Amalie
So whereas in in where that is passive and those things are happening to US, engagement is more interactive.
00:02:04 Camie
Great.
00:02:04 Amalie
It's something that pulls us in and asks us to participate.
00:02:08 Camie
Right. And entertainment in the classroom.
00:02:11 Camie
Can be kind of a mimicry or pseudo form of engagement. It looks like engagement because students are involved and they're paying attention, but it's not authentic because they're not actually engaging their brain in something and learning something from it. They're just passively having joy at what's happening in the moment.
00:02:28 Amalie
So I keep thinking about my high school French class.
00:02:32 Amalie
Which I loved. My high school French teacher. She was, and still is, a wonderful, wonderful lady. And I took three years of AP French. Do you think I can fluently speak French? No, no, ma'am.
00:02:43
Oh.
00:02:48
No, I cannot.
00:02:52 Amalie
The class was really fun though, right? We cooked a lot of foods.
00:02:59 Camie
Food is a huge thing in cult.
00:03:00 Amalie
We had it is no and it is. And that's The thing is, it's cooked. We had cook ambush and we had cooked cheer and we would have different candies from so like, that's the thing that sticks in my head of French class being super fun because we did.
00:03:19 Camie
You got to eat.
00:03:20 Amalie
You got to do fun stuff. I will admit that. When I did eventually go to France, I remembered more than I thought I knew, but it.
00:03:31 Amalie
I would like to think.
00:03:32 Amalie
I would have learned more in three years than I did.
00:03:36 Amalie
And that's not. That's not her fault.
00:03:39 Camie
No, I mean and I will say language classes in general aren't set up just for language acquisition, which sounds tough in a foreign language class. You would think that's what you're learning, but but it's really a whole picture of that culture and.
00:03:51 Amalie
But I do see that happening.
00:03:53 Amalie
In.
00:03:53 Amalie
Those those classes where there's.
00:03:56 Amalie
There's like a.
00:03:58 Amalie
Desperation isn't the right word, but there's like a a need to hook the students. And so the fun hooks them, and then it it never quite.
00:04:10 Amalie
Passes into engagement in in a really good language class. That hook is then translated into an engagement that that builds learning, but it often it just sort of gets once the body is in the door, it's sort of dropped, you know.
00:04:28 Camie
Well, it to be fair.
00:04:30 Camie
Engagement is not always entertaining. It's not always fun. Sometimes it could be downright boring. But but it it's building that foundation that you need.
00:04:45 Camie
You know, to to learn the next thing to do. The next thing you know, it's.
00:04:50 Camie
If you're cooking a a French dish or eating a French candy.
00:04:56 Camie
OK, then how do we make that an authentic experience, you know, and what are students going to walk away from with this? I think that's the big thing is sometimes we're so caught up in.
00:05:08 Camie
Putting fun things in so that students will be interested in what we're saying, because let's be honest, sometimes that's a battle, and sometimes it's a battle that we will not win because not everyone wants to be in comp one or American National government or college algebra. And these are things that were required now you know.
00:05:27 Camie
And so it's.
00:05:30 Camie
It's hard because we want students to be interested. We want them to do well, we want them to connect with the.
00:05:35 Camie
Material.
00:05:36 Camie
And instructors are willing to do so much for that to happen for their students to succeed.
00:05:43 Camie
But.
00:05:45 Camie
If we don't, if we're not careful, it's very easy to cross the line to where those fun things are really just distractions, and they're not actually contributing to learning or success.
00:05:55 Amalie
That's the entertainment.
00:05:57 Amalie
Part yes. I mean I think that's really common for a lot of instructors to feel like we have to dance for the students.
00:05:59 Amalie
The.
00:06:06
We have to.
00:06:07 Amalie
We have to put on a show and I will say when I'm teaching it feels very much like a performance.
00:06:14 Amalie
When when you're lecturing and you're doing.
00:06:14 Camie
Right it is.
00:06:16 Amalie
The because it's.
00:06:17 Amalie
It's work. You're concern. You're on stage. You have to be on. You're responding to your audience. Yeah. I mean, you're doing all those things. And so in, in a way, it it is. But it has to be.
00:06:27 Camie
As with the.
00:06:28 Amalie
Purpose, yes, and it has to bring them into.
00:06:32 Amalie
Into the fold for a purpose.
00:06:34 Camie
Right, fun can be engaging. I will not say that.
00:06:38 Amalie
And engaging can be fun, yes.
00:06:40 Camie
However.
00:06:42 Amalie
It can also be actively not fun.
00:06:44 Camie
Not fun. It can be, but it it can be a distraction. So fun in classroom can show up in the forms of games or demonstrations or even present or even presentations. Because sometimes.
00:07:01 Camie
We go overboard with animations and our PowerPoints or you know, gifts or funny comics or things like.
00:07:09 Camie
That.
00:07:10 Camie
Like this is not to say that instructors should not infuse their personality or humor. Uh, give a little levity to what you're talking about, surely.
00:07:20 Camie
But.
00:07:22 Camie
There's a point of overboard with it. There's a point where.
00:07:26 Camie
You're no longer getting the content to students. You're they're only getting the humor.
00:07:32 Camie
And so looking at your course to make sure that you can maintain a balance of, yes, this is who I am. And yes, you know there are things that are funny about learning in general about life and about the lessons we learn in, in courses even.
00:07:51 Camie
But that's not the only thing students should walk away from in the class or walk.
00:07:57 Camie
That's not the only thing that students should walk.
00:07:59 Camie
Away from your class with.
00:08:00 Amalie
I think one of the the tricks to to sort of bridging that gap between something being fun and entertaining and being engaging is to be able to use that fun and use that fun piece to bring them and use your personality, your humor, levity, bring, bring all that and get them to take a step.
00:08:21 Amalie
Towards you and then make it about the student.
00:08:25 Amalie
So then show them why this is relevant for them, not why I'm funny with it, right?
00:08:33 Amalie
But why is it relevant for that? What is the purpose of this? I think about my my high school students that that were trying to get internships.
00:08:45 Amalie
Let me tell you, trying to get a 14 year old.
00:08:48 Amalie
15 year old to make a phone call to someone they have never spoken to.
00:08:54 Amalie
Yeah. And ask them if they can interview them about their careers, to ask if they can come job shadow to do. And we made the students do this themselves. And that is a painful process for them. But I'll tell you, they were absolutely engaged.
00:09:12 Amalie
I don't think a single one would tell you that process was fun, but they were engaged because it mattered to them. They were choosing something that.
00:09:20 Amalie
That mattered.
00:09:23 Amalie
For themselves, and that they could see a purpose at the end.
00:09:28 Camie
Yeah. If I mean if you can introduce it and connect it, whether it's to the students personal life to.
00:09:36 Camie
Trending things in the news they've heard about to something that happened to their uncle in fifth grade. You know, whatever that is, it's something that they can connect to and they will remember. And even if that thing is painful or embarrassing, that you're asking them to do. Because I'm sure you, the 14 and 15 year olds making those.
00:09:57 Camie
Phone calls did feel embarrassed.
00:10:00 Camie
Then.
00:10:02 Camie
It.
00:10:04 Camie
It's something that they remember and can fall back on when they have to use that skill again. This is kind of a funny one for me, and it does go all the way back to 5th grade, of course.
00:10:14 Camie
But my school implemented the Shirley method when I was in fifth grade. We did not use it before then, and the Shirley method is for English language arts. It is themes as songs which they call jingles and and labeling techniques or certain labeling techniques.
00:10:34 Camie
Weird sentence diagramming, so grammar was a huge push on this.
00:10:40 Camie
It was fun.
00:10:42 Camie
But I can tell you I remember the content.
00:10:45 Camie
And those skills better.
00:10:49 Camie
Than I.
00:10:49 Camie
Do.
00:10:51 Camie
Like one of the other things I learned in fifth grade, the only other things I remember from 5th grade, and I'm sorry, Miss Melbourne, you did a great job, but the only other thing I remember from 5th grade are the science videos, because they've also just come out with the technology to, like, do the speed up of like showing how a Caterpillar.
00:11:11 Camie
Becomes a butterfly and all the you know, like in one video and like.
00:11:15 Camie
To 30 seconds to maybe maybe wait in one minute long little.
00:11:21 Camie
You know little.
00:11:21 Camie
Yeah. Clip there. And it was so fascinating. Me. Fascinating to me to watch that. And so yes, I remember preposition preposition starting with Benny aboard about above, across, after, against.
00:11:35 Camie
Along among, around, at and yes, it goes through the entire alphabet. That does group some letters together, so.
00:11:44 Camie
Of course I remember that. And now where? Where does that get me? Why do I need to know? You know the prepositions now.
00:11:54 Camie
I could still help my emails but but but that's the stuff I remember. And I remember because it was fun, but also because I was engaging with content. I remember sentence diagramming, I can probably still diagram a sentence using the Shirley method because we used to have to go to the overhead projector. And yes, I know.
00:11:57
You know.
00:12:14 Camie
Age right here. And do it in front of the entire class. And that was not a.
00:12:14 Amalie
Yeah, no, me too.
00:12:20 Camie
Comfortable thing for me was not an info on the.
00:12:22 Camie
Class kind of.
00:12:23 Camie
You know, 5th grader. I was very shy back then.
00:12:27 Camie
I still am. I just pretend.
00:12:28 Camie
I'm not. Well, that's what I was gonna.
00:12:29 Amalie
Say is if the teacher was singing that song to you right, that might have been entertaining.
00:12:35 Amalie
But it's not engaging.
00:12:37 Amalie
But having you participating in it.
00:12:41 Camie
And then having you tested on it like that was super embarrassing to have to do that in front of the class, whether sentence diagramming or seeing those little.
00:12:43
Yep.
00:12:49 Amalie
Singles. But I can tell you I remember the awful poems I had to recite in front of the classroom because the teacher made.
00:12:56 Camie
Us also remember those poems, but I will tell you mine went off and I still love.
00:12:57 Camie
I.
00:13:00 Camie
Them, and they're my favorite ones.
00:13:01 Amalie
Well, no, that's to say they were not awful, but when I did discover that any Emily Dickinson poem can be sung to the yellow rose of.
00:13:07 Camie
Texas, my gosh, Dickinson is one of.
00:13:09 Amalie
I recited every.
00:13:10 Camie
Mine. I really love it.
00:13:14 Amalie
Emily Dickinson poem that we were assigned, I sang them to the.
00:13:17 Amalie
Class.
00:13:18 Amalie
To the yellow rose of Texas, and I sure can.
00:13:21 Amalie
Still reside because I did not stop for death.
00:13:22 Camie
That.
00:13:26 Camie
My hearts, if I can stop one heart from breaking and.
00:13:29 Amalie
Oh yeah.
00:13:32 Camie
I loved that one. I still love it, but also my favorite though was if vibrated. Kipling. Yeah, and I didn't have to recite the whole thing because we did it as a group. And so I had, like, a stanza, you know? Yeah, myself. But I can almost recite the whole thing now. Just because it became my fave.
00:13:48 Camie
One and still is, even though I've seen a ton of others. And I'm like, I should probably grow up and move on from a I don't know, but I can't because I love it so much. But yeah, it's those things were engaging because we were interacting with the content. I know that's elementary.
00:13:56 Amalie
That's 10.
00:14:09 Camie
But the same thing applies in higher education.
00:14:11 Amalie
And it becomes, I think, even that much more important in an online class because it is that much harder to when you have students right in front of you in a face to face class you can entertain.
00:14:24 Amalie
Yeah, you can do the dance. You can. You can literally dance for them.
00:14:26 Camie
I'm sorry or sometimes.
00:14:30 Camie
Right when you have the energy, you can do those things.
00:14:33 Amalie
But when you don't have that, thinking about how to bring them in.
00:14:39 Camie
In an asynchronous environment.
00:14:40 Amalie
Where they can just walk away.
00:14:44 Amalie
It's a lot harder to just get up and leave the.
00:14:46 Camie
Classroom, they don't have to play your video.
00:14:49 Amalie
No, they can start it, and if they aren't, if if that if that hook isn't giving them more than just entertainment, they can get just entertainment from Hulu, they can get just entertainment from YouTube, they don't need.
00:15:04 Amalie
They don't need your entertainment.
00:15:08 Camie
So how do you get them engaged? And to me, it's just like kind of what?
00:15:13 Camie
You said earlier is.
00:15:15 Camie
Getting connecting that content, relating that content to their lives or events, or you know, with your 9th graders, they're learning your skill.
00:15:26 Camie
That is impacting their lives.
00:15:29 Camie
And.
00:15:30 Camie
And how do you do that? How do you, you know what? What does that look like in?
00:15:33 Amalie
History. What does that look like in math? Some of those things are asking the students to find those connections themselves, right? That is part of the assignment to them is.
00:15:40 Camie
Right.
00:15:42 Amalie
Is to connect this content that I am delivering to you, connect that to something.
00:15:48 Amalie
That you experience.
00:15:50 Camie
And you know.
00:15:51 Camie
We've talked about this before in other episodes, but.
00:15:54 Camie
When you give students those open-ended assignments where they have flexibility in how they're presenting the material, I think that really helps and of course.
00:16:08 Camie
Any good flexible assignment has a really great rubric to go with it. We can't fill them into that, but, but having an open-ended, you know where one kid maybe writing a song, but another maybe, you know, putting together their PowerPoint on the whatever they're doing or showing you a video of their apprenticeship.
00:16:29 Camie
And a day in the life of their apprenticeship and what they do and how they use those.
00:16:33 Camie
So you know history. You can even get students, even online students in history. For example, if you have local historic sites that.
00:16:47 Camie
You know kind of overlap with a certain era or theme that you're studying in history. Of course, you can take students to those sites and do a video for them there, but even better have them get out in their own areas, wherever they are and find those sites themselves.
00:17:04 Amalie
And that's I have a a an instructor that assigns the students to.
00:17:11 Amalie
Identify a piece of art that's within like a 15 minute drive.
00:17:16 Amalie
And engage with the.
00:17:18 Amalie
And discuss it and present it and you know.
00:17:20 Amalie
So that it is this.
00:17:22 Amalie
You don't have to go all the way to a giant metropolis to see.
00:17:27 Camie
A museum full of my.
00:17:27 Amalie
But no you can.
00:17:29 Amalie
Probably walk down the street or something there.
00:17:31 Camie
Exactly.
00:17:34 Camie
You know you can.
00:17:36 Camie
Use real life examples of mathematical concepts through whether it's the Stock Exchange or future predictions of things coming up, or even.
00:17:48 Camie
Something as mundane as playing pool or baseball, you know, and by mundane. I just being common guys not boring, but.
00:17:53 Amalie
One of my favorite ones.
00:17:56 Amalie
One of my favorite ones for math was a student that we had who loved football and for his geometry. We asked him to take.
00:18:06 Amalie
Different plays and map out the the geometry of those plays to sort of freeze, frame them and map out the different angles that were happening within those. Those place you can you just have to you.
00:18:13 Camie
Yeah, the angle.
00:18:19 Camie
Right.
00:18:23 Camie
Have to apply the skills somewhere, right?
00:18:25 Amalie
And and.
00:18:25 Amalie
It's comes back to that and we've talked about this before of thinking about what you're teaching. We often think of it.
00:18:31 Amalie
As.
00:18:31 Amalie
As content.
00:18:33 Amalie
But if we think of it as skills.
00:18:36 Amalie
And the content I was going to say and the content is the the mode.
00:18:41 Amalie
By which we learn these skills you you find a lot more ways to apply it in various areas.
00:18:49 Camie
I think you think differently and every discipline has a certain set of skills that kind of go with it and you know that are used commonly by people in those.
00:19:00 Camie
It's pretty easy to get a list of those if, but more than likely you're familiar with them. If you're there, you know visiting the City Council meeting, having them visit a City Council meeting and see things in action. Even you know, if you don't feel comfortable with something like that hosting a mock trial now.
00:19:19 Camie
It's hard to do that asynchronously, but it's possible.
00:19:26 Camie
Or even writing a speech for a certain reason to give to a certain person writing a letter, writing a, you know, authoring a class book where each student has a chapter in that there are a lot of different ways to showcase.
00:19:42 Camie
Student abilities and I think that sometimes we don't give them enough credit or we don't give the class enough credit because we say, oh this.
00:19:48 Camie
Is just for class.
00:19:50 Camie
But OK, but what can we do with it?
00:19:52 Amalie
Well, I've taken students too, where I paired them up with and it was students who didn't know each other well. And I think this would actually work really well in an online class where.
00:20:02 Amalie
They had to interview each other.
00:20:05 Amalie
In order to help them identify.
00:20:09 Amalie
Topics and directions for their research projects.
00:20:12 Amalie
OK. Where they had to interview about who they are, what they like, what their career plans are, where the kind of where they're headed, and then they can give suggestions too so that you've got this sort of outside perspective. It gets the students thinking about what it is that matters to.
00:20:32 Amalie
Them to help them build those connections between the material and their own relevance. Self reflection.
00:20:41 Camie
Is a skill.
00:20:41 Camie
That you still have to build within your students, it's not always.
00:20:46 Amalie
It doesn't have to be so.
00:20:47 Camie
Low. Yeah, it doesn't always come easily. And so I think that if you can.
00:20:54 Camie
Have students work together and again a skill that they are building right there, and so there are a lot of ways that we can make things fun. They're even more that we can make them. Engaging and engaging is so much more important because fun.
00:21:10 Camie
Does not have those long term retention and success rates for our students, but engaging.
00:21:15 Camie
Does.
00:21:16 Camie
So Entertainment Tonight is off.
00:21:23 Amalie
I keep thinking of the song. That's entertainment. Come on Apple merman for you.
00:21:30 Amalie
Oh God, I started thinking about my civics class in high school too, where we had to do a presentation, a video, a presentation about one of the one amendment to the Constitution.
00:21:46
M.
00:21:48 Amalie
I ended up with with. I guess it was the Bill of Rights, so I ended up with the with illegal search and seizure and my friends and I did a whole video where I was caught on tape buying drugs.
00:22:05 Amalie
So so we had to.
00:22:07 Camie
Hello, the 90s.
00:22:08 Amalie
Oh my God for real. So we had to make so I had these like Ziploc bags with, like, basil in them. And my little sister was she was probably three or four because we're.
00:22:24 Amalie
We're eleven years apart, so she was.
00:22:27 Camie
Younger, yeah.
00:22:27 Amalie
Little. And she was like part of my, my decoy. And so she had to walk to the corner with me to make the make the hand off.
00:22:38 Camie
Printers and children.
00:22:39 Amalie
The whole scene is great because she keeps looking at the camera and making these faces the the camera.
00:22:47 Amalie
And then, my friends that were in the group with me.
00:22:50 Amalie
Were then the.
00:22:51 Amalie
Cops and they busted into my house.
00:22:54
And.
00:22:54 Amalie
And the drugs?
00:22:57 Amalie
Fine. Thanks and.
00:22:59 Amalie
Held it up in my face.
00:23:00 Amalie
You're going to.
00:23:00 Amalie
Jail. But then we had to do like a little. And So what? You know, which amendment are we talking about? What is the, you know what was violated here? What was?
00:23:11
All right.
00:23:11 Amalie
That but I.
00:23:13 Amalie
Will never forget that.
00:23:16 Camie
I don't think I want to say.
00:23:18 Camie
Umm.
00:23:19 Camie
There are lots of ways to engage students, and it definitely can be fun, but the point is to deliver the content to students in a way that they will remember. That's not always fun or even interesting in the moment. Sometimes it can even be embarrassing.
00:23:34 Camie
But it becomes a foundation students can build from. Thanks for joining us on the Pedagogy toolkit. Don't forget to subscribe.