Blog Assignment 4-Engagement

Weekly Summary

This week we are deciding on the best engagement activities that students can get the most out of.  I think learner engagement is a very critical aspect in courses that are designed for distant learning.  I find that if I can get engaged in the assignment, I learn a lot more and am able to retain the information much longer.  I also feel like engagement means interacting with other students in the class, along with the instructor.  Most students I have worked with are more engaged if they are completing hand-on activities that allow them to see first hand how and what is going on.

Item of Interest

Since my class consists of art, several of my projects and assignments are hands-on, which allows students to get experience through doing it.  My item of interest is the radial and tessellation art modules in my course.  For these two activities, students are required to watch a video that describes how to do it and what is needed to complete it.  And then they are to make their own artwork and submit it for a grade.  They are also required to relate these two types of art to mathematics, since they go hand in hand.  I have used this activity with my art classes and also in a math class, when I was subbing.

Problem or Concern

The only concern I have is that students may not understand the concept of the artwork in the video or some may think it is very easy.  I feel like sometimes students just complete the project without understanding how it fits into the lesson.  Another problem I see a lot is that some students have no interest in art, which makes it hard to teach them and give them an interest in it.  I feel like the only way to help with that is to make it fun for them and try to relate it to something that interests them.