-- posted by Charmain L. Carter

One of the greatest challenges for teachers is how to consistently engage all learners, whether in an online blended learning environment or a traditional classroom setting. Teachers have to constantly find strategies and incentives to ensure students stay motivated at all times. Within the Academy learning environment of AdvancePath Academics, we utilized three proven strategies to keep student engagement high:

• Set ALL expectations high at the start of the class.
Expectations should be established early and often for all learners. Although the Academy setting is a self-paced environment, learners should understand that the expectation is for them to work at their highest capacity at all times while in the Academy and when working at home. Setting course completion due dates and going over those dates with students assists in creating a pacing guide for work completion. Once the due date is set, the Student Progress Report will automatically populate assignment and assessment due dates. We want students to understand that we want them to work ahead of the dates set, not behind those dates. We also want to establish the expectation that while in the Academy, learners are to spend their time working toward their daily goals for assignment and assessment completion. We understand that occasionally something may happen that causes a learner to get off task, but we want establish a clear culture of “No excuses”!
• Collaborate with learners regarding their academic goals.
Set goals with the learner and his/her needs in mind. Our ultimate goal is graduation, but we want to establish incremental goals with learners in order for them to experience success and develop an intrinsic motivation for learning. As the saying goes, “We want to build locally, but scale globally.” We want students to connect their learning and goals to the bigger goal of graduation. Some students grasp concepts and information very quickly, while others do not. So, when setting course completion goals and assignment completion goals, know your learner. This can be facilitated through completing the Individual Learning Plan for each student. The information included in the Plan will include academic and social/emotional information that should guide the conversation with each learner when setting academic goals. Also, remember, building relationships with and getting to know the learner will help to establish realistic academic expectations and aide in helping to right-track them when they are not engaged or do not feel they can complete assignments and assessments at the pace established.
• Follow-up constantly.
Follow-up and feedback are critical to student engagement and overall academic success. Using both quantitative (Student Progress Reports) and qualitative (observations and conversations with the learner while in the Academy) data is vital to ensuring learners are engaged at all times. For instance, if you notice that a student has fallen considerably behind the pace on the Student Progress Report, spend time with the student to find out what factors are causing him/her to work below the established goals. We must remember that we want to ensure that all learners are working at a brisk and consistent pace, but we also want to be realistic and may have to adjust ourgoals. If we find that it is not an issue of intellectual capacity, but more an issue of time on task that is causing the student to not meet their goals, then we may need to set behavior goals, as well. Although we do not want to lower the bar, we want to ensure we are setting an appropriate pace for each learner. Students want to experience success, so our continued data review and observations will help us find ways to set appropriate pacing and provide feedback to ensure continued engagement.