How Online Learning Impacts Student Engagement and Supports Personalized Learning
Jade Ballek – Sun West School Division
21st National Congress on Rural Education in Canada
Monday, March 21, 2016
9:50 am – 10:50 am
@jadeballek
We Wondered
o What is student engagement?
o How it is defined in the context of online learning? o What strategies might teachers use to improve engagement in an online environment?
o In what ways can engagement be measured?
o How might we positively impact graduation rates?
An Engaged Student …
• Asks questions
• Participates in forums, field trips
• Communicates with teacher
• Submits work in timely manner
• Uses feedback to improve
• Logs into Moodle regularly
• Submits quality work
A Team Approach
• Set Student Engagement School Wide Goal – A3
• Developed PLTs
• Elementary, Math, Science, Psychology, Business, PAA, History, English Language Arts
• Set Individual PLT Goals
• Implemented Strategies
• Collected Data
Choose one of the following improvement targets for your 2015‐2016 PLT Goal
Getting to Know Students/Building Relationships
Course Consistency
Interactivity
Other
Some Ideas: Some Ideas: Some Ideas: Some Ideas:  Introduction Survey
 Integrating Student Video or Photo Submissions
 Field Trip – f2f or live stream
 Asynch visits
 Course Organization
 Common Assessment Tools (e.g. Moodle quizzing, portfolios)
 DLC Template for Student Handouts
 Online tools (e.g. Thinglink)
 Animations
 Choose Your Own Adventure (student path)
 Discussion Boards
 Record Conversations with Guest Speakers
 Diagnostic Math Pre‐
Assessment
 Common Instructional Videos (e.g. writing a persuasive essay, explaining Historical Thinking Concepts; how to write a lab report)
We Implemented Strategies
• Getting to Know Our Students
• Interactivity – levelling up
• Virtual Field Trips
• Building Rapport
And Even More Engagement Strategies
• Offering Choice in Learning – Interest
• Offering Flexibility – Following Passions
• Creating Strong Human Connections
• Preparation for Post‐Secondary Personalizing Education
• Online education gives students voice through choice.
• Online opportunities give students access to:
• Personalized learning pathways
• Explore interests, career pathways
• Flexible learning environments
• When used to support face to face classrooms (blended learning), online learning can open the doors for many students.
Thank You!
Contact Me
Jade.ballek@sunwestsd.ca
www.sunwestdlc.ca
@jadeballek