Much has been written and researched about student engagement in the classroom. In some of the early research on engagement, Berliner and Rosenshine (1976) looked at what they termed, “academic engaged time.” Later on, Finn (1989) introduced his Participation-Identification model, which focused on students’ bonding with the school. My focus more closely aligns with Fredricks et al. (2004) who categorize engagement into the three parts of behavioural, emotional, and cognitive engagement.
This section follows the three parts described by Fredricks et al., and for the purposes of having a comparison and contrast, looks at whether those activities that teachers do every day in the classroom to increase student engagement, can transfer into the synchronous video setting. The simple answer is, “Yes.” The more complicated answer is, “With adaptations.” Think of classroom engagement and synchronous video engagement on two sides of a Venn diagram. In the middle are the many activities that can be done with adaptations in both environments, and on either side, those activities that are only possible in the one environment.