Yours, Mine, and Ours: Student Engagement is a Three-way Street

Concurrent Session 8

Session Materials

Brief Abstract

“Yours, Mine, and Ours: Student Engagement is a Three-way Street” is an interactive presentation that examines definitions of engagement, explores what it means to use engagement, and investigates how we engage with students.  This presentation covers student engagement for online, blended and face-to-face classrooms as an interactive, engaging session.

Sponsored By

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Cathryn Brooks-Williams, New Mexico Highlands University

Cathryn Brooks-Williams earned her masters in Social Work but was drawn to the research side of the profession. She worked as a researcher and data analyst before entering education as an adjunct professor, teaching statistics, research methods, and introduction to social welfare for eight years. During her time as an instructor, she started investigating better methods and strategies to teach her classes--both asynchronous and synchronous as well as face-to-face. She discovered instructional design and within a few years, applied for the position at New Mexico Highlands University. She has been working for nearly three years as an instructional design specialist for the Title V UNIDOS Grant. In that time, she's also been the lead designer for the UNIDOS Tri-Institutional Collaborative Team developing and delivering professional development seminars to three institutions; and she's the chief editor of the Title V UNIDOS Newsletter with both print and email distribution for Adams State University, University of New Mexico at Taos, and New Mexico Highlands University. Her interests are course design, student engagement strategies, active learning, and still conducting data analysis.

Co-presenter: Peter Snyder, University of New Mexico-Taos Education Center

Co-presenter: Alfonso Velasquez, Adams State University

Co-presenter: Erin Duddy, UNM Taos

Extended Abstract

“Yours, Mine, and Ours: Student Engagement is a Three-way Street” is an interactive slide presentation that examines definitions of engagement, explores what it means to use engagement, and investigates how we engage with students.  This presentation covers student engagement for online synchronous and asynchronous classes; furthermore, it supports engagement for blended and face-to-face classrooms. The audience will review the research about student engagement, investigate best practices of engagement, and analyze ideas for creating engagement in the classroom and online. Furthermore, it discusses strategies of engagement before, during, and after class.

Our goals include:

  • To have the audience participate in constructing a definition of engagement
  • To have the audience share their ideas of what engagement means
  • To identify best and researched practices
  • To have the audience leave with three practices to initiate in their next class.

Faculty, instructional designers, instructional support, and technologists in higher education. Participants of all levels of experience will benefit from this interactive presentation by understanding what the research represents and strategies to embark or improve student engagement.  K12 instructional support staff and faculty will experience the value of this presentation.  The audience will participate by using interactive Q&A as well as collaborative exercises.  There are embedded web-links to fliphtml5.com and polleverywhere.com  in the slide presentation, along with screenshots of courses built in Bright Space and Blackboard. Attendees will receive a handout with the presentation outline that includes URLs to the links and the references so they may replicate engagement strategies or research further at their institutions.

The Title V UNIDOS Grant Collaboration Team developed this workshop as part of their professional development series that they offer simultaneously to all three partnership institutions through the web-teleconferencing tool ZOOM. The Collaboration Team consists of Alfonso Velasquez, Instructional Designer and Trainer for Adams State University; Peter Snyder, Instructional Media Specialist for University of New Mexico-Taos; Erin Duddy, Distance Education Coordinator for University of New Mexico-Taos; and Cathryn Brooks-Williams, Instructional Design Specialist for New Mexico Highlands University.  The grant is a Title V Cooperative Arrangement Project, “UNIDOS: Building Pathways to Access and Opportunity for the Upper Rio Grande Region.” The focus of the grant is to eliminate gaps in an area where geography, distance to education, and under-funding of K-16 education make it difficult for residents to obtain a college education. By hosting the professional development seminars on ZOOM, as well as live at each campus, the UNIDOS Collaborators demonstrate and model to faculty how to use the tools for online and distance education.