I think the biggest takeaway was the reality of inactive learning. Many times, if a student becomes disengaged, it is due to personal situations beyond the instructor's control. In my program, most of our students are returning students. Our average age is in the mid-30s. So, life can take over for a student. However, it is critical that we (as instructors) assess any disengagement carefully to determine if we can make a modification to re-engage the student.
Another important point that was made included that not all class groupings are the same. We all know not all students are the same, but oftentimes a different section of the same class in the same semester may have different needs and/or personalities.
I think overall, it's about keeping the teaching diverse to meet individual students where they are, but also remembering to re-asses on a regular basis.
Adapt, adapt, adapt to your audience.
All students are different so instructors must stay flexible and adapt to varying student needs.
To prevent student's from becoming disengaged, there is a need to make sure each topic's real-world relevance is connected.
"Stay engaged, stay observant, and stay connected – then be ready to respond and adapt. "
Instructors must pay attention to the signs that a student is not engaged.
Making sure that content is covered is not as scary as some teachers make it out to be. Content coverage doesn't have to be linear.
Pay attention to student engagement and adapt in real time to re-engage them.
Providing students the opportunity to engage with and manipulate the content helps them to understand the "why" of the learning as well as providing them a sense of competency that can be motivating. However, the same schemas will not work for all students, so instructors and designers must be flexible enough to switch schemas mid-stream when they see students disengaging.
While it is true that instructors cannot know the schema of every student, for completely asynchronous programs or ones that have a synchronous lecture with hands-on labs later, assumptions have to be made. Since the instruction is prerecorded and the materials are prepared, how would an instructor be able to connect, observe, respond and adjust? The material talked about the need for this in online and in-person classes as well as synchronous and asynchronous learning, but it did not give many examples for the latter.
It is important to stay fully engaged in order to monitor the flow of the classroom.
