In this episode, Amalie and Camie discuss how fun does not always equal student engagement.

Transcript

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.

One myth we see in education is that a fun lesson is an engaging one and.

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.

Entertaining is not the same thing as engaging.

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.

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.

Gaze upon.

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.

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.

That is what I think of immediately when people entertainment.

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.

Yeah, and that's.

There's a lot to be said.

For that and it doesn't also mean that.

So whereas in in where that is passive and those things are happening to US, engagement is more interactive.

Great.

It's something that pulls us in and asks us to participate.

Right. And entertainment in the classroom.

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.

So I keep thinking about my high school French class.

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.

Oh.

No, I cannot.

The class was really fun though, right? We cooked a lot of foods.

Food is a huge thing in cult.

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.

You got to eat.

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.

I would like to think.

I would have learned more in three years than I did.

And that's not. That's not her fault.

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.

But I do see that happening.

In.

Those those classes where there's.

There's like a.

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.

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.

Well, it to be fair.

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.

You know, to to learn the next thing to do. The next thing you know, it's.

If you're cooking a a French dish or eating a French candy.

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.

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.

And so it's.

It's hard because we want students to be interested. We want them to do well, we want them to connect with the.

Material.

And instructors are willing to do so much for that to happen for their students to succeed.

But.

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.

That's the entertainment.

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.

The.

We have to.

We have to put on a show and I will say when I'm teaching it feels very much like a performance.

When when you're lecturing and you're doing.

Right it is.

The because it's.

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.

As with the.

Purpose, yes, and it has to bring them into.

Into the fold for a purpose.

Right, fun can be engaging. I will not say that.

And engaging can be fun, yes.

However.

It can also be actively not fun.

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.

We go overboard with animations and our PowerPoints or you know, gifts or funny comics or things like.

That.

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.

But.

There's a point of overboard with it. There's a point where.

You're no longer getting the content to students. You're they're only getting the humor.

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.

But that's not the only thing students should walk away from in the class or walk.

That's not the only thing that students should walk.

Away from your class with.

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.

Towards you and then make it about the student.

So then show them why this is relevant for them, not why I'm funny with it, right?

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.

Let me tell you, trying to get a 14 year old.

15 year old to make a phone call to someone they have never spoken to.

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.

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.

That mattered.

For themselves, and that they could see a purpose at the end.

Yeah. If I mean if you can introduce it and connect it, whether it's to the students personal life to.

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.

Phone calls did feel embarrassed.

Then.

It.

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.

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.

Weird sentence diagramming, so grammar was a huge push on this.

It was fun.

But I can tell you I remember the content.

And those skills better.

Than I.

Do.

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.

Becomes a butterfly and all the you know, like in one video and like.

To 30 seconds to maybe maybe wait in one minute long little.

You know little.

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.

Along among, around, at and yes, it goes through the entire alphabet. That does group some letters together, so.

Of course I remember that. And now where? Where does that get me? Why do I need to know? You know the prepositions now.

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.

You know.

Age right here. And do it in front of the entire class. And that was not a.

Yeah, no, me too.

Comfortable thing for me was not an info on the.

Class kind of.

You know, 5th grader. I was very shy back then.

I still am. I just pretend.

I'm not. Well, that's what I was gonna.

Say is if the teacher was singing that song to you right, that might have been entertaining.

But it's not engaging.

But having you participating in it.

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.

Yep.

Singles. But I can tell you I remember the awful poems I had to recite in front of the classroom because the teacher made.

Us also remember those poems, but I will tell you mine went off and I still love.

I.

Them, and they're my favorite ones.

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.

Texas, my gosh, Dickinson is one of.

I recited every.

Mine. I really love it.

Emily Dickinson poem that we were assigned, I sang them to the.

Class.

To the yellow rose of Texas, and I sure can.

Still reside because I did not stop for death.

That.

My hearts, if I can stop one heart from breaking and.

Oh yeah.

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.

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.

That's 10.

But the same thing applies in higher education.

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.

Yeah, you can do the dance. You can. You can literally dance for them.

I'm sorry or sometimes.

Right when you have the energy, you can do those things.

But when you don't have that, thinking about how to bring them in.

In an asynchronous environment.

Where they can just walk away.

It's a lot harder to just get up and leave the.

Classroom, they don't have to play your video.

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.

They don't need your entertainment.

So how do you get them engaged? And to me, it's just like kind of what?

You said earlier is.

Getting connecting that content, relating that content to their lives or events, or you know, with your 9th graders, they're learning your skill.

That is impacting their lives.

And.

And how do you do that? How do you, you know what? What does that look like in?

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.

Right.

Is to connect this content that I am delivering to you, connect that to something.

That you experience.

And you know.

We've talked about this before in other episodes, but.

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.

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.

And a day in the life of their apprenticeship and what they do and how they use those.

So you know history. You can even get students, even online students in history. For example, if you have local historic sites that.

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.

And that's I have a a an instructor that assigns the students to.

Identify a piece of art that's within like a 15 minute drive.

And engage with the.

And discuss it and present it and you know.

So that it is this.

You don't have to go all the way to a giant metropolis to see.

A museum full of my.

But no you can.

Probably walk down the street or something there.

Exactly.

You know you can.

Use real life examples of mathematical concepts through whether it's the Stock Exchange or future predictions of things coming up, or even.

Something as mundane as playing pool or baseball, you know, and by mundane. I just being common guys not boring, but.

One of my favorite ones.

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.

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.

Yeah, the angle.

Right.

Have to apply the skills somewhere, right?

And and.

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.

As.

As content.

But if we think of it as skills.

And the content I was going to say and the content is the the mode.

By which we learn these skills you you find a lot more ways to apply it in various areas.

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.

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.

It's hard to do that asynchronously, but it's possible.

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.

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.

Is just for class.

But OK, but what can we do with it?

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.

They had to interview each other.

In order to help them identify.

Topics and directions for their research projects.

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.

Them to help them build those connections between the material and their own relevance. Self reflection.

Is a skill.

That you still have to build within your students, it's not always.

It doesn't have to be so.

Low. Yeah, it doesn't always come easily. And so I think that if you can.

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.

Does not have those long term retention and success rates for our students, but engaging.

Does.

So Entertainment Tonight is off.

I keep thinking of the song. That's entertainment. Come on Apple merman for you.

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.

M.

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.

So so we had to.

Hello, the 90s.

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.

We're eleven years apart, so she was.

Younger, yeah.

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.

Printers and children.

The whole scene is great because she keeps looking at the camera and making these faces the the camera.

And then, my friends that were in the group with me.

Were then the.

Cops and they busted into my house.

And.

And the drugs?

Fine. Thanks and.

Held it up in my face.

You're going to.

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?

All right.

That but I.

Will never forget that.

I don't think I want to say.

Umm.

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.

But it becomes a foundation students can build from. Thanks for joining us on the Pedagogy toolkit. Don't forget to subscribe.