Enhancing Student Engagement: Ed-Tech, Anti-Racism and Other Issues

By Zainab Cheema 

How do we enhance student engagement in post-pandemic teaching? On Tuesday, September 21, 2021, the Chronicle of Higher Education sponsored an online panel featuring some notable heavy hitters in Ed Tech and Higher Ed. They included Flower Darby, educator and author; Jenae Cohn, Director of Academic Technology, Information Resources, and Technology at California State University, Fullerton; Mike Truong, Director of Digital Learning and Associate Professor at Azusa Pacific University; and Josh Eyler, the director of Faculty Development at the University of Mississippi.

Antiracism Design in Classroom Design

All speakers were in consensus that social connections are integral to learning. Successful learning communities are those in which traditional hierarchies get broken down to enable inclusive and communication and collaboration. In certain times and cases, distance learning facilitated social connections in ways that were more powerful and revolutionary that the ones encouraged by the F2F classroom. Eyler pointed out a plus point of the Zoom classroom—it broke down hierarchies of the physical classroom and equalized students within the Zoom panorama. As we move back into a F2F classroom, [there is a danger] that the [physical] architecture and the environment [could] starts to reinforce old hierarchies that were broken down,” observed Eyler.

While Eyler was primarily referring to friendship groups and students sitting in the front of the classroom versus students at the back of the classroom, I believe that his observation also addresses some classroom situations where hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality class, and ability are reinforced. In one of the composition courses that I am teaching this semester, I am trying to manage a class environment that has molded itself around toxic racial and gender-based hierarchies. Students may be academically transitioning from high school senior year to college freshman year but socially, many of them are transitioning from being high sophomores (when they last had a F2F class) to college students. This gap is especially disadvantageous for college students fresh out of high school, as they have missed some of the formative experiences helping students grow out of those hierarchies.  

SEL and Instructional Design

By default, the pandemic has transformed every educator into an instructional designer. In other words, teachers have to plan and build creative ways to help students make up their gaps in academic, social, and emotional learning. Mike Truong observed that that SEL has become critical to Higher Ed—the social development gap of high school students means that SEL is no longer just relevant to elementary school levels but also to Higher Ed.  As Truong noted, what “has been reinforced by the pandemic is that social interaction and emotional engagement are not just great ideas, they’re actually necessary for maximizing learning” in every educational setting after the pandemic. “I think students were socially, emotionally, and mentally traumatized [by COVID and distance learning] and there is now “a sort of the palpable presence of being back on campus, and you can feel the energy.”

SEL and wellness are now part of learning design. Truong stressed that enhancing student engagement in classes will necessarily involve the teacher checking in with their mental health and providing opportunities to reinforce SEL. Truong added that this doesn’t involve faculty members trying to take on tasks that they may not have the training or skill sets for. However, it does involve “a moment of checking in, acknowledging, and recognizing,” how students are feeling, perhaps at the beginning of class before the lesson. This enables “students [to] see the teacher’s care and compassion and thus respond better in the classroom,” rather than if “the teacher were to just pretends nothing has happened and proceeds to start class.” Truong emphasized integrating SEL into the Universal Design for Learning to facilitate as many pathways for student engagement as possible.

Space and Architecture in Higher Ed and Corporate Sectors

The transformations occurring right now in Higher Ed are not happening in a silo. Flower Darby stressed the porous boundaries between Higher Ed and the business worlds right now, noting that their common focus on design also involves architecture. Darby, author of the best-selling book Small Teaching Online, observed that the excitement of tech can be at times misplaced—what’s important is focusing upon what works, not about the modality per se. Nevertheless, it is impossible to deny that technology is facilitated overlapping conversations between the corporate world and Higher Ed on how to bring learners, collaborators and workers together. Using architecture and spatial design to create stimulating and safe spaces for interaction is one of the more revolutionary uses of technology in post-COVID transformations of these sectors.

These conversations have the potential to transform the way we plan spaces in both Higher Ed and the corporate world. “Google is creating these hybrid workspaces that come with bubble balls that that expand to make a private space in an otherwise open plan area,” described Darby. “Google is also creating these camp fire meeting areas featuring a center table and then around almost in a semi-circle, alternating physical seats and Zoom screens.” This creative redesign of space is acknowledging post-COVID conversations on the importance “of physically including and welcoming” F2F and remote participants in the same time space. As Darby noted, translating this to Higher Ed campuses “pick[s] up on that idea of thinking creatively and pushing that paradigm forward” to where “college looks different now than it did when these buildings and spaces were [originally] built.” In other words, Higher Ed will have to think like an instructional designer on a structural as well as individual level.

It’s All About Social Connection 

Ultimately, it comes down to social interaction. Jenae Cohn also stressed how transformed models of education must facilitate social engagement between students, teachers and other stakeholders. The places where “we’re bridging those online and F2F [learning] experiences are by using tools that really enhance our opportunities to connect. Zoom breakout rooms, interactive mind mapping tools, brainstorming tools, and backchannel chat tools opened “spaces where people could authentically contribute and feel like they’re part of a shared learning experience,” Cohn observed. EdTech’s role in student engagement is to continue to facilitate new ways of connecting and interacting with one another.