In addition to his role as digital innovator at the Basingstoke College of Technology (BCoT), Scott Hayden trains schools and colleges around the country as part of the government’s ‘EdTech Demonstrator’ programme. That means helping other teachers - and students - use meaningful and relevant digital teaching, learning, and assessment tools to enhance their practice.
Hayden is a big believer in the value of edtech, though never for its own sake, describing it as “a tool and never a panacea”.
He considers digital tools a great way to engage students, and that can take many forms, from answering questions posted on the Wooclap platform during a live lesson, to creating vlogs and websites that enable learners to promote themselves to future employers.
Why is this so important? Hayden gives four reasons why every teacher should work on optimising student engagement:
1. It’s good practice
Hayden believes it is “just good practice” for a teacher to include a starting activity or a check on learning in a lesson. Speaking to students for half an hour without interaction or interruption simply isn’t as effective as inviting them to participate. Unlike traditional teaching methods - the “sage on a stage”, as he calls it - Hayden sees lessons as a collaboration.
Yet with many courses in higher and further education currently taking place online, Hayden fears many students are logging in without actually engaging - or learning. According to him, having students passively listening and watching - whether in-class or online - is not good teaching. Hayden has found Wooclap useful in allowing students to show they are present. He said,
“At any time, you can throw in a poll or a “true-or-false” and get a snapshot of where the students are. That’s really powerful. When I’m explaining a difficult concept or idea, I can quickly check whether the students have got it. It’s fun, it’s interesting, and that’s engagement.”
2. It prepares students for the workplace
When he first started using the cloud and collaborative platforms to teach media production, sharing files with his students through dropbox and wetransfer, it hadn’t occurred to Hayden that he was doing something out of the ordinary.
"In real life, people use blended and flipped approaches,”
he reflects.
“You’re expected to be independent, to engage a client, to interact and show good communication skills, and to think critically. It’s my job to infuse that into the curriculum and ultimately prepare learners for jobs. Particularly in lockdown, we’ve noticed that interactivity has become crucial.”
Taylor Ellis, one of Hayden’s students, agrees, saying:
“Wooclap allows students to engage as a team and helps with using creative features in coursework”.
3. It’s how people learn
Hayden and his team are always looking for new tools and interactive methods of engaging, because:
“That’s the nature of the world, and that’s how young people learn. If lessons aren’t as interesting or engaging as a great podcast or YouTube video, then shame on us as teachers.”
To that end, he emphasises the need to listen to the students and learn from them, finding out what they are interested in and how they like to learn.
Once the pandemic ends, Hayden wants to focus on hands-on, activity-focused learning that benefits from being in a physical classroom – and he will complement these in-person sessions with independent, self-paced tasks.
Hayden says Wooclap can:
“Give teachers the evidence of engagement we need when facilitating groups through project-based learning tasks as well as in-class and outside of class learning”.
Ellis agrees:
“Wooclap helps to engage students and keep their minds focused.”
4. It gives teachers feedback on their own practice
Student engagement is not only beneficial to learners. Teachers can also improve their practice by interacting with their students, listening to their preferences, discovering what works and what doesn’t, and even learning from them.
Hayden observes:
“Every lesson has its objectives and milestones, and Wooclap allows teachers to stop and ask themselves if they are explaining things clearly. It gets the students to reflect and check whether they understand the lesson, and helps consolidate that learning.”
This gives Hayden confidence as a teacher.
“It helps me to be secure that what I’m teaching is being understood.”
This post is sponsored by Wooclap.
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