Katerina Jordan, PharmD
PGY1 Pharmacy Resident
Frederick Memorial Hospital
This article speaks to how engagement is consistently an issue that instructors struggle with when teaching. It is hard to tell when students are engaged and to see if they really understand the material that we are teaching them. There are several ways that student engagement can be improved that are spoken about in this article. They address these ways using 4 questions: how the student feels, whether the student is interested, whether the material is important and whether the student can complete the task.
To assess how the student feels they recommend using effective pacing strategies and incorporate personal stories within lectures. The effective pacing strategies allow for students to absorb the information being taught and not fall asleep if the pace is too slow or get lost if the pace is too quick. By incorporating personal stories within the lecture it allows for students to feel more comfortable and relate better to the material being taught.
The second question that is assessed is if the student is interested. There are multiple different ways to see if students are engaged which compose of games, friendly controversy, add in unusual facts and use Socratic questioning. Games such as, kahoot and jeopardy can increase student’s engagement in the classroom especially when it is a larger class size and students don’t feel as comfortable asking questions or participating. These games can create friendly controversy as well as debates amongst students with differing opinions. Adding in unusual facts can create a curiosity within students that also increase engagement. The Socratic questioning method can also be used which is when teachers show ignorance in a topic area in order for students to engage and say what they know. This allows for the differing points of view to be shown from the students.
The third question can be accomplished by identifying with the student personally. For example, when teaching in a certain topic area make references to personal experiences and experiences that the students might have when they are on clinical rotations.
The fourth and final question can be answered and achieved if teachers develop tasks that are appropriately challenging, consider subjective grading or conceptual agreements and using the flip classroom method. Many times students are just memorizing material to get the grade, but If the teacher can help students make goals to help them understand the material and not just memorize and regurgitate for exams the students will be more likely to do better both in their grades and careers.
Another method that can help with engagement is using the flipped classroom method in which the students become the teachers and the teachers are more of mediators or observers. This ensures that students need to know and truly understand the material in order to teach it to everyone else. If teachers can accomplish some of these tasks they will have a higher chance of engaging their students in a classroom however large it may be.
This article relates in many ways to our course. Throughout our presentations in this course we have had to incorporate many of these engagement techniques for the students and other teachers in the class. The flipped classroom method was incorporated in the teaching certificate course where the students taught through presentations and debates were used. The debates worked well to have the students learn the material and discuss the ideas with other students as well as see different viewpoints. Personal stories were also a huge part of this course both in discussion based participation and presentations. Almost all of these engagement methods were used and incorporated into the course.
1) Oyler, Douglas R et al. “Practical Insights for the Pharmacist Educator on Student Engagement” American journal of pharmaceutical education vol. 80,8 (2016): 143. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5116795/
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