Enhancing Student Engagement in a Blended Resident and Online Course Using Clickers and Embedded Questions

Abstract

Abstract- Keywords -This paper describes the use of Clickers (small, mobile phone like electronic devices) and embedded questions in streaming videos for the purpose of student engagement in a course that was taught with a blended delivery model in a live resident classroom and also delivered to distance education students online. In order to provide the ability for instructors to engage students in a rich interactive environment, a creative use of Clickers and embedded questions was developed for a course in Mechanical Engineering -ME 201: Introduction to Thermal Sciences at Penn State. Details of how Clicker devices and specially designed Clicker questions are used to receive feedback of students in a resident classroom are first presented, followed by details of using similar questions embedded in streaming videos for online delivery. The student feedback collection and its analysis for both resident and online courses is discussed. The study shows that such an approach makes creative use of the modern instructional technologies to enhance the teaching-learning process and improve the understanding of students.

An examination of teachers’ strategies to foster student engagement in blended learning in higher education

“…Nevertheless, these authors and other recent literature reviews indicated that there were few studies focusing specifically on student engagement in BL (Halverson et al, 2014;Martin et al, 2017;Pima et al, 2018;Raes et al, 2019). Most existing publications also investigated single courses (e.g., Binnewies & Wang, 2019;Cundell & Sheepy, 2018;Raes et al, 2020), specific activities (e.g., Foogooa & Ferdinand-James, 2017;Kulkarni & Iwinski, 2016;Tan & Hew, 2016), or aspects of student engagement (e.g., Berry, 2019;Truhlar et al, 2018). Consequently, given the potential for enhanced student engagement in BL, numerous authors have called for pursuing research on student engagement in BL (Drysdale et al, 2013;Graham, 2019;Halverson et al, 2014;Henrie et al, 2015;Manwaring et al, 2017).…”

Examining effects of instructional strategies on student engagement in blended online courses

“…More generally, few studies have specifically addressed student engagement in blended learning in their research questions and almost none were situated in blended online courses (Halverson et al, 2014; Martin et al, 2017; Pima et al, 2018; Raes et al, 2019). Most studies also investigated single courses (e.g., Binnewies & Wang, 2019; Cundell & Sheepy, 2018; Raes et al, 2020) and/or specific activities within a course (e.g., Foogooa & Ferdinand‐James, 2017; Kulkarni & Iwinski, 2016; Tan & Hew, 2016). Notably, although student engagement is recognized as malleable through instructional strategies (Christenson & Reschly, 2012; Kahu, 2013; Lawson & Lawson, 2013), how these actually influence student engagement in blended learning, and particularly in blended online courses, is still unclear (Graham, 2019; Manwaring et al, 2017).…”

“…More generally, few studies have specifically addressed student engagement in blended learning in their research questions and almost none were situated in blended online courses (Halverson et al, 2014;Martin et al, 2017;Pima et al, 2018;Raes et al, 2019). Most studies also investigated single courses (e.g., Binnewies & Wang, 2019;Cundell & Sheepy, 2018;Raes et al, 2020) and/or specific activities within a course (e.g., Foogooa & Ferdinand-James, 2017;Kulkarni & Iwinski, 2016;Tan & Hew, 2016).…”

Use of Interactive Online Textbook for Teaching Online Engineering Course – A Case Study

“…Video lectures as well as assignments are assigned to the students on a weekly basis. Owing to the highly technical nature of the course, we also increase student engagement by using clicker and embedded questions [8,9]. We also assign what are known as virtual laboratory experiments to further deepen students' understanding of the subject matter.…”