The fundamental idea underlying engagement theory is that students must be meaningfully engaged in learning activities through interaction with others and worthwhile tasks.

As it turned out, this was one of the best courses, online or onsite, I have ever taught. Not only did I witness enormous engagement among almost all of the students, but the level of learning was much higher than in previous years.

The feedback from the students on the course was very positive, better than I had received for the onsite course in previous years. One of my favorite written student comments was, "… I don't know how this course could be taught as effectively in the classroom."

The ability for teachers to understand and add value to the comment ‘back channel’ is a key skill for the ‘connected teacher’. Anyone can swap an writing pad for a blog, there is no value in that. The back channel is the conversation, and is the heartbeat of thought.

I can’t think of another way in which teachers can get such immediate access to the ‘thinking’ process that is playing out in front of them.

The 90-9-1 theory explains the percentage of a wiki's participation, breaking it down as readers being the highest percent, with minor contributors composing the 9 percent and enthusiastic and active contributors composing 1 percent of the total participants in a wiki.

While it is impossible to overcome this type of human behaviour, it is possible to change the participation distribution (i.e 80-16-4 where 80% are lurkers, 16% contribute a little and 4% contribute the most).

"What the animation does is it assists the children in visualizing the action," explains Mitchell, who teaches <a class="external-link" href="http://www.nuuanu.k12.hi.us/G-1/public_html/index.html" target="_blank">language arts enrichment classes</a>. "The animation is a way of them developing the picture so they relate that to the writing, to what they hear, what they see, what they feel." Technology, she adds, "gives you one more way of teaching something."

"Looking for real-world relevance has to do with students being interested in what they do, knowing that it's useful outside of school," says Kaninau. "The experiences are not contrived or in isolation, but they're a part of a larger learning activity. Without those connections, it won't be meaningful, and it'll be forgotten tomorrow."

"They love it," says sixth-grade teacher Geraldine Kajitani. "If you start with ... hands-on activities and things that are fun, their attention is focused." And once that happens, she says, it's a snap to get them to study some of the drier material because they'll relate to it and remember it.

<p>At a recent class, the students — nearly 100 of them — are in small groups discussing a question. Three possible answers to the question are projected on a screen. Before the students start talking with one another, they use a mobile device to vote for their answer. Only 29 percent got it right. After talking for a few minutes, Mazur tells them to answer the question again.</p> <p>This time, 62 percent of the students get the question right. Next, Mazur leads a discussion about the reasoning behind the answer. The process then begins again with a new question. This is a method Mazur calls "peer Instruction." He now teaches all of his classes this way.</p> <p>"What we found over now close to 20 years of using this approach is that the learning gains at the end of the semester nearly triple," he says.</p>

<p>Mazur says the key is to get them to do the assigned reading — what he calls the "information-gathering" part of education — before they come to class.</p> <p>"In class, we work on trying to make sense of the information," Mazur says. "Because if you stop to think about it, that second part is actually the hardest part. And the information transfer, especially now that we live in an information age, is the easiest part."</p>

The optimal video length is 6 minutes or shorter -- students watched most of the way through these short videos. In fact, the average engagement time of any video maxes out at 6 minutes, regardless of its length. And engagement times decrease as videos lengthen: For instance, on average students spent around 3 minutes on videos that are longer than 12 minutes, which means that they engaged with less than a quarter of the content.

To “get” from a PLN you need to “give.”

I think that we are getting the idea of more interactivity, of more engaging real stuff, not just making it spin and zoom and move. And I think the authoring tools that have made that easier have certainly helped people understand that learners need to actually get their hands on the content in some way.

<p>You do not blame the hammer because the house fell down. It’s the person using the tool. It’s really about effective design. You can do fabulous stuff with PowerPoint. You can do dreadful stuff with PowerPoint. You can do dreadful stuff no matter the tool.</p> <p>In PowerPoint you can actually build nice little branching scenarios and reveals. You can make choices. You can do interactivity. There’s a lot of stuff that I think people just don’t take the time to learn.</p>

Instead of only typical multiple choice questions, try mini-scenarios. Write a few sentences to set a scenario with a problem. A customer voices an objection, software displays an error message, or an employee asks a manager for help. Next, ask learners which action or response they would choose. Now you have a one-question decision-making scenario rather than just an abstract comprehension question. You can do this with any tool, and it creates a more interesting practice or assessment to engage learners.

But the real value of interactivity doesn't lie in the number of physical interactions. It's about the depth of cognitive engagement these interactions can ignite.