ICT Enabled Student Engagement and Expansive Education ... · PDF fileICT Enabled Student Engagement and Expansive ... 2 International Capacity Building Conference 2017 July 25-27,

Prof. SB Junaidu

Director, Institute of Computing & ICT

Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria

July 27, 2017

ICT Enabled Student Engagement and Expansive Education: Scenarios and Strategies

Outline

1. Student Engagement

2. Expansive Education

3. Student Engagement & Expansive Education

4. Role of ICT: Strategies & Scenarios

5. Strategies & Scenarios: Lessons Learnt

6. Remarks: Requirements for Success

7. Summary

International Capacity Building Conference 2017 July 25-27, 2017@ICC, Abuja2

Student Engagement

Educational paradigm in which learners make investment of physical and mental energy towards learning and development

Participation in educationally effective practices, both inside and outside the classroom, which leads to a range of measurable outcomes (Kuh et al., 2007),

The extent to which students are engaging in activities that higher education research has shown to be linked with high-quality learning outcomes (Krause and Coates, 2008)


… Student Engagement

Concerned with the interaction between the time, effort and other relevant resources invested by both students and their institutions intended to optimize the student experience and enhance the learning outcomes and development of students and the performance, and reputation of the institution (Trowler, 2010)


Why Student Engagement?

To improve learning

– There is consensus that an engaged student is a good learner (Sharma, 2013).

– Amount of learning and development is proportional to the quantity and quality of the involvement (Astin, 1985, 1993)

To improve throughput rates and retention

– positively related to academic outcomes as represented by first-year student grades and by persistence between first and second year of college


… Why Student Engagement?

For curricular relevance– As perceived by students when engaged in learning

design

– Considered one of the most important factors of curriculum implementation (Huebner, 1996).

For institutional benefit– an engaging university is a quality university

– benefit from student engagement can be both reputational and financial


Engagement with What?

Specific student learning aspects/processes

Extra-curricular activities– Diversity experiences teach students valuable things

about themselves and others

Institutional governance– For the benefit of the university, student and society


Critical Success Factors for Engagement

Student engagement does not happen by magic; has pre-requisites

Pre-requisites exist for the major players– Students

– Staff

– Institutions

– Local context

– Educational ideology

– National policy


… Critical Success Factors

Students

– must invest time and effort into academic activities and practices that correlate with positive educational outcomes

– must challenge themselves to learn, to interact with new ideas and to practice communication, organizational and reflective skills



Staff

– Student engagement requires staff engagement

– By making themselves available for consultation outside class time

– By encouraging interaction in large and small classes

– By using feedback and stimulating students to master material



Institutions

– must provide engagement opportunities

– curricula and assessment that compel certain standards of performance or activities

– Institute policies and practices, like commitment to diversity and pluralism, that increase engagement


Measuring Student Engagement

According to (Coates, 2009), student engagement can be measured along six scales:

a. academic challenge

b. active learning

c. student and staff interactions

d. enriching educational experiences

e. supportive learning environment

f. work-integrated learning


Expansive Education

Focuses on the development of useful, transferable competencies throughout mainstream education (Lucas, et al., 2013)

Education must be centrally about expanding young people’s capacity

– to deal with real-world complexity and uncertainty and

– to want to explore ways in which this vision can be turned into a practical reality


Pillars of Expansive Education

Expanding goal of education to developing capabilities alongside subject knowledge

Expanding mindsets so learners not limited by fixed intelligence– Learners to understand capacity for

intelligence grows with practiceInternational Capacity Building Conference 2017 July 25-27, 2017@ICC, Abuja

14

… Pillars of Expansive Education

Expanding teacher professional identity as co-learner, not always an imparter of knowledge

Expanding places where learning happens, not just at school


Outcomes for Expansive Pedagogy

Routine capability– the disposition and expertise to be ready, willing

and able to use what has been learned, often non-consciously, for specific situations

Non-routine capability – the resourcefulness to be able to apply

learnt subject knowledge in new or difficult situations or where there is a lack of support


… Outcomes for Expansive Pedagogy

An ethic of excellence – self-belief, a determination to learn from others

and pride in learning activities well done

Wider dispositions for lifelong learning – a transferable set of learning tactics, heuristics

and attitudes


Expansive Learners & Teachers

Relationship between teachers and learners different in expansive setting from the traditional setting

Expansive learners do more and learn differently– students’ needs and voices of central importance

Expansive teachers seem, on the surface, to be doing less and do things differently


… Expansive Learners & Teachers

Some constant concerns of expansive teachers – How learners develop growth mindsets– How to make activities authentic and engaging

as to expand the horizons of learners– How best to blend theory and practice in

learning– How to develop patterns of collaborative

learning to equip learners to learn, play and work together in a variety of contexts?


Expansive Learning Environment

Two abiding characteristics of successful expansive learning environments:

– Stretching– Feedback rich

A stretching environment is designed to stretch all who learn there

– E.g., learners challenged to transform a solved problem into a harder instance

A feedback-rich environment encourages critical reflection on progress


… Expansive Learning Environment

An expansive classroom can be viewed as a ‘mind gym’– subjects, topics and activities are

the exercise machines– the fitness coaches help learners

exercise mental ‘muscles’


Student Engagement & Expansive Education

Engagement generates motivation

Motivation leads to persistence

Persistence leads to learning & satisfaction

Learning leads to exploration & graduation

Graduation leads to expansive learning


ICT for Engaged & Expansive Education

How to engage students to invest time and effort in academic activities?

– Ensure they do more and learn differently

How to make learning authentic and engaging?

How to challenge students to interact collaboratively?

How teachers remain available, provide prompt feedback?


ICT Enabled Education: An Experience

Difficulty and high failure rates in introductory programming well known (Bennedsen, 2007)

Project goal: employ technology to mitigate this problem

Use ICT to teach foundation courses in computing

– First programming course– Second programming course– A Data Structures course


ICT Enabled Education: Strategies

Employed blended delivery

For on-campus learners

Used WebCT for Learning Management

Capacity building on online facilitation

Use of technology for instructional delivery incentivized


… ICT Enabled Education: Strategies

Use of multimedia-rich courseware

Courseware developed through funded projects

Students involved in instructional design

Assigned students work included extra credit components

Bonus for active participation– Online allowance (ePocket money)


Multimedia-Rich Courseware

Contains text, audio, video and animations

Presented in bit-size chunks, rather than monolithic hour-long lectures

Provide flexibility to tailor instruction to individual students

Punctuated with carefully crafted exercises to evaluate and assess


Sample Scenarios: Recursion

Activation records creation and management

Call tree creation


StreamedAnimations/fibonachifunction.htm

… Scenarios: Open Addressing Hashes

Collision resolution with open addressing


ics202CD/INDEX.HTM

… Scenarios: Dijkstra's Algorithm

Dijkstra's shortest path determination


ics202CD/INDEX.HTM

… Scenarios: Parameterized Examples

Parameterized examples more susceptible to expansive learning:– Towers of Hanoi– Online examples


Lessons from the Experience

Analyzed exam grades and CGPAs over five semester pairs (Junaidu, 2004)

Outcome– Questions on concepts considered difficult turned into

bonus for students– GPAs (and corresponding CGPAs) of the online

students higher in four of the five semester pairs

Contributed to increase in online courses in the university

Some of our universities are taking initiative now!


Remarks: Requirements for Success

Necessary conditions for successful ICT enabled engagement and expansive education;

Learners:– Must be ICT competent

– Must be comfortable communicating with technology

– Must be independent as to take responsibility of their learning


… Remarks: Requirements for Success

Teachers:– Must be Technology-savvy

– Must be comfortable communicating with technology

– Must have first-class digital citizenry

– Must be skillful in pedagogy, andragogy and heutagogy


… Remarks: Requirements for Success

Courseware– Must be multimedia-rich

Environment– Must deploy requisite infrastructure– Must be ICT enabled

– Must provide training & support

– Must incentivize education


Summary

Student Engagement

Expansive Education

Student Engagement & Expansive Education

Role of ICT: Strategies & Scenarios

Strategies & Scenarios: Lessons Learnt

Remarks: Requirements for Success


The End

Thank You


References

1. Astin, A. W. (1985). Achieving educational excellence: A critical assessment of priorities and practices in higher education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

2. Astin, A. W. (1993). What matters in college? Four critical years revisited. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

3. Bennedsen , J, A and Caspersen, ME… (2007), Failure Rates in Introductory Programming, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.39 n.2, June 2007 [doi>10.1145/1272848.1272879]

4. Coates, H . (2005) The Value of Student Engagement for Higher Education Quality Assurance . Quality in Higher Education . 11 (1), pp . 25–36 .

5. Coates, H . (2009) Engaging Students for Success - 2008 Australasian Survey of Student Engagement. Victoria, Australia: Australian Council for Educational Research .

6. Greeno, J. G., & Engeström, Y. (2014). Learning in activity. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (2nd ed., pp. 128–147). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

7. Junaidu, S. and Al-Ghamdi, J. (2004a). Comparative Analysis of F2F and Online Course Offerings: KFUPM Experience. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Disance Learning (IJITDL), April 2004.


http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1272879&CFID=790376114&CFTOKEN=18179145

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1272848.1272879

… References

8. Krause, K. and Coates, H. (2008) Students’ Engagement in First-Year

University. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. 33 (5), pp. 493–

505.

9. Kuh, G.D., Kinzie, J., Buckley, J.A., Bridges, B.K. and Hayek, J.C. (2007)

Piecing Together the Student Success Puzzle: Research, Propositions, and

Recommendations. ASHE Higher Education Report, Vol 32, No 5. San

Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

10. Lucas, G, Claxton, G and Spencer, E, (2013), Expansive Education: Teaching

learners for the real world, Open University Press, UK.

11. Sharma, B.R and Bhaumik, P.K. (2013). Student Engagement and Its

Predictors: An Exploratory Study in an Indian Business School. Retrieved on

March 22, 2013 from: http://gbr.sagepub.com/content/14/1/25.full.pdf+html

12. Trowler, V. (2010). Student engagement literature review. Department of

Educational Research Lancaster University.


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ICT Enabled Student Engagement and Expansive Education ... · PDF fileICT Enabled Student Engagement and Expansive ... 2 International Capacity Building Conference 2017 July 25-27,