Forget Fun and Learn Better

Introducing the Factors of Engagement – It\’s as easy as Six C\’s!

In my last post, I said I wanted to introduce what I call the “Factors of Engagement”. Engagement is the learning aspect that I try to base my teaching around, because “disengagement” is a major learning barrier in the classroom that is often overlooked. Disengagement can happen when a student’s “affective filter” is high, but still remain even when the filter is lowered. Thus, even if a student is physically and emotionally comfortable in a class, if they’re not engaged, learning won’t happen.

Engagement is one of those terms that leads dual lives as generalized “concept word” in our everyday lexicon, and as jargon in the field of education. The most common misconception I see, especially amongst K-12 teachers, is that engagement is a synonym for fun. Thus you get a bunch of well-intentioned teachers attempting to inject their idea of “fun” into all of their classroom activities: using “viral” videos to introduce topics to their students, masterminding complex group projects, or writing curricula based around game frameworks. The last one seems to be experiencing its heyday right now, especially in the classrooms of Gen X or Millennial teachers who have grown up playing DnD or other roleplaying games, or those who envy the success of gamified learning apps such as Duolingo.

I feel at odds with these starry-eyed believers in gamification when I assert that engagement does NOT always equal fun; engagement itself is a process, while fun is a common outcome of certain types of engagement. People become engaged with activities for many different reasons. Some people play chess for fun, and if all participants are enjoying themselves, fun is the natural byproduct of such an activity. However, a great number of people also play chess as a competitive sport. Not to say that chess is never fun for them, but those who devote thousands of hours of their lives to improving themselves are usually driven by different motivators. Many points of their careers are marked by slumps, grueling training, and self-doubt, which can produce incredible amounts of grief and frustration. It’s enough to make many competitive-minded players give up, and yet some of them carry on regardless. Here we can plainly see the existence of engagement that is effectively divorced from the concept of fun. This engagement has other sources: the drive to improve oneself, to compete against other strong opponents, to learn more complex strategies, or to gain renown as a skilled player. These sources of engagement will drive players onward long after the allure of fun has run dry.

As we can see, the full range of engagement is not easily comprehended; its various classifications cross the disciplines of education, psychology, sociology and even anthropology and neurology. Rank-and-file teachers can’t be realistically expected to master this essential component of learning in any short span of time. But it doesn’t mean we can’t try. Thus, I want to introduce my descriptive system of engagement, which may be one small step forward in that endeavor.

These are my Factors of Engagement: The 6 C’s.

Choice – The act of choosing between two or more options based on pre-established requirements. We make hundreds of choices every day, big and small (choosing what clothes to wear, what words to use when speaking, who to pass or fail, etc). Many small choices, choices we make over and over again every day, are relegated to the passive processes of our brains, so that sometimes we don’t even realize we’re making them. We do this to save our processing power for active choices, which require some amount of engagement. Which partner do you work with? Right hand or left? Red or blue? What are the advantages and disadvantages of your choice? One can’t help but think. And when one actively thinks about a decision that personally affects them, whose result they care about, engagement arises.

Chance – Human beings have a strange relationship with the concept of randomness, mostly because we only understand probability on a logical level. We can do the math for it, we can comprehend the concept of small and large odds, and yet there’s nothing like games of chance that draw us in. If humans could fully conceptualize the true enormity of some odds, casinos would be out of business, lotteries would remain unplayed and far fewer people would ever risk driving a vehicle. Winning rewards increases willingness to bet on chance, but sometimes that’s not even needed; there’s an itch deep in our brains that can be scratched by the thrill of putting oneself in the hands of fate. This kind of engagement can even go too far, into addiction.  

Competition – Another natural human inclination is the expression of power or skill, especially when it’s legitimized by the triumph over others. You can make a competition out of literally anything with some people, whether it be arm wrestling, trivia, good grades, bad grades, being tall, being short, and so on. Employing the factor of competition effectively is not always easy, and requires a good understanding of one’s students and their proclivities in a classroom setting. Games are often used as a framing element for the lesson, but teachers need to be sure the game is tightly synergized with the content they want to teach, or else the engagement of winning the game will overpower the engagement of the material.

Cooperation – On the flip side of competition you have cooperation. When two or more humans are given a task that requires their mutual participation to complete, there is immediate engagement in establishing social roles and rules. Who’s the leader? How do you interact with your teammate? How do you contribute or not contribute based on the current relationship between all the team members? Like competition, this is another factor that requires careful monitoring and implementation, less it backfire and end up raising the affective filter for a bunch of students who can’t work together well.

ACComplishment – Everyone likes succeeding. It validates our skill and increases our sense of self-worth. When implemented correctly, having a framework of challenges that allows the student to feel a reliable (yet well-earned) sense of accomplishment is almost addictive in nature. Most recently, a whole genre of mobile games has utilized this factor to tremendous effect, resulting in people spending hundreds of hours glued to their devices, running on a digital treadmill without realizing it. Teachers can take advantage of this factor in less nefarious ways by designing activities with adaptive levels of difficulty, allowing students with different levels of skill to derive success from their efforts.

This Factors of Engagement model is in its first iteration right now, and will likely be modified and rewritten in the future as I gather more perspectives and experience on the matter. The big question now is, how do you apply these Factors to learning activities? I intend to give each Factor its own dedicated post, which will allow me to explore each one in greater detail and offer up some solid examples to use in a real classroom.

Thanks for reading!