Innovative learning spaces for improving student engagement

Each year, we are witnessing student disengagement from learning and education. Students are very often experiencing difficulties in their studies, and this process is usually not directly connected to the study process, but to its context instead. Education, just like most things on our planet, requires a lot more: proper treatment, care, investment, and a lot of efforts and time. If you want to Keep your students engaged in education in the long run, you would most probably opt for creating new learning spaces and a wide-range of community centred activities.

 

 

To redefine the trivial pedagogy structure, requires an extending of the learning process beyond common practices. The simplest way to transform the classroom setting is to apply experimental learning strategies. Experimental learning strategies are structured and designed to give students the chance to learn by acting on a certain content in a specific way. Experiments prove that students learn much better when they engage it actively, than approaching it passively.

The experimental learning is characterised by the following:

 

Community Engagement 

 

Traditional models of teaching could also be substituted with community engagement pedagogy methods, which requires a reconstruction of educational beliefs settled in the educational system with centuries. Engaging students to work in communities gives the opportunity for a variety of real-life experiences. This way, a work within a community is a constant learning of different subjects: history, science, healthcare, law, math. Historically speaking, a major goal of Community engagement is to increase undergraduate student success and retention. However, in the past few years, Community engagement is a well-known strategy for improving graduate student retention.

 

Engaged Learning

 

Engaged learning happens when students are behaviourally and emotionally engaged in a given activity without actually applying any mental effort to understand and master the new knowledge, skill or craft that the activity promotes. If you are starting to think how to implement Engaged learning in your education strategy, here are a few elements that will help you design the activities that will definitely help to enhance student engagement both behaviourally and emotionally.   

• Make it meaningful. In aiming for full engagement, it is essential that students perceive activities as being meaningful. 
• Create a sense of competence.  Researchers have found that effectively performing an activity can positively impact subsequent engagement. 
• Let go of control, without losing power. Be open to hear student’s opinions and ideas, give them the time they need and use an informational, non-controlling language with students.
• Establish positive teacher-student relationships. Care about their emotions and invest in some one-to-one time with students.

Experiential learning, Community engagement, and Engaged learning provide students with many new learning opportunities in and outside of schools. These types of learning spaces invites students into a real-world environment where they can acquire real skills  that they will be using later on in life and in their education. Engaged learning may be hard for some practitioners at first, however, connecting experiential learning designs to traditional learning may provide the possibility to build and facilitate student engagement.