This, my second post, chronicles my consent form collection process, analyzes student engagement, and explores recommendations for student engagement. The progress on my project over the past two weeks has been spent presenting my project to students and collecting consent forms from parents. Initially, I sent out a class newsletter using Mailchimp that included the parent informed consent form. Based on the Mailchimp data, as of September 4th, fifty-three newsletters were successfully delivered while nineteen were opened by recipients. Of those nineteen, only six responded to the Google Form. Based on that result, I sent a follow-up email using Word mail merge with Outlook to those parents I had not heard from yet on Friday, September 11th.
Following the second emailing, I had six more responses for a total of twelve. Also of note, this is a Senior class. Twelve of my students are eighteen and do not necessarily need parental consent. Of those twelve, six have completed the student consent form. This student completion is part of an assignment for the week of September 7th that was sent to all three of my Problems of Democracy classes. Additionally, I announced to all students to remind their parents to check their email for a message from me. To date, a total of twenty-nine students have given consent, including those six that are eighteen. A few students did decline, which was not unexpected. While I only need fifteen participants for my research plan, I need to have enough from each section to have a control group and a test group. I am still looking at numbers and how to determine which classes will be which group. I plan to have total numbers and groups determined by Friday, September 18th.
The main challenge that I see for this project is student engagement during distance learning. Based on my data, an average of 50% of my students have engaged in the remote classes held twice weekly. I received 63% engagement on the consent form, compared to an overall engagement rate of 92% on Google Classroom assignments the first week of class. This number has tapered a little week two of this school year. My data compares to engagement data in an article by Shawna De La Rosa. “A survey of participating San Antonio schools, for example, showed 54% of high school students said they were less engaged during distance learning than they were during in-person classes” (2020.)
This led me to seek some recommendations for student engagement. I need to keep my students’ engagement throughout the entire project timeline. One key recommendation from 3rd grade teacher Jessie Welcomer is to continue contact with parents. Another point to remember is to offer open social time at the beginning of each remote class. I call this time 'Check & Connect' and have it on our remote class agenda. Last Spring, it was noticeable that students lost interest more quickly online. Keeping lessons dynamic such as offering choice boards can lead to higher engagement. Lastly, the inclusion of tutorial videos that explain assignments is important for asynchronous learning (Welcomer 2020.) I have been using Screencastify for these instruction guides. The incorporation of these techniques should lead to the necessary engagement level for my research project’s successful completion.
Sources:
De La Rosa, Shawna (28 Aug. 2020.). Student engagement remains a challenge in distance learning. Education Dive. Retrieved from https://www.educationdive.com/news/student-engagement-remains-a-challenge-in-distance-learning/584793/
Welcomer, Jessie (22 June 2020.). Getting to 100% student engagement in distance learning. EdSource. Retrieved from https://edsource.org/2020/getting-to-100-student-engagement-in-distance-learning/634282