Over my 16 years in the training room, I have taught many skills that drive learner engagement. In this blog, I want to share three foundational skills I teach educators, that:
- promote learner engagement.
- can be learnt, practised and applied by any willing and motivated educator.
- underpin and support all other techniques an educator might use to engage their learners.
If you are familiar with the work I do, you’ll know I’m a big advocate of trainers, educators and teachers getting good at the foundations that lead to great education.
In my career, working to master the foundations has yielded me greater improvements than any other approach. I see the same in my learners. When they focus on getting the foundations right, regardless of their discipline, their performance improves dramatically.
So, what are those foundational skills that promote learner engagement in any classroom setting, online or face to face?
The answer I came up with was “Y.E.S.” -an acronym that embodies three key foundational skills. Y.E.S. stands for:
- You
- Environment
- Storytelling
You
You are the most important factor in promoting learner engagement in your classroom. If you communicate in an engaging way, if you are being clear, if you are being understood, everything else you do, gets better.
Now, there are lots of communication models which promote foundational principles, some better than others. Here, I want to give you seven key skills that will give you the most impact.
Firstly, I divide ‘You’ into two parts:
- Your Visuals, and
- Your Vocals
Visuals
Sometimes referred to as ‘Visual Image’, a term I heard body language expert Mark Bowden use many years ago. In short, your visual image is made up of what your learners see (of you) when you teach.
For me, your visual image is divided into mastering three key aspects:
- Body Language, including facial expressions and posture.
- Gesture
- Movement
Now, all of the above fall into the categories of ‘nonverbal communication’ and in fact, gesture, falls into body language. But, for me, gesture is such an important part of effective communication that it needs to be separated.
Within the education literature, Visual Image is typically referred to as ‘teacher immediacy behaviour’. Not a very compelling term, hence ‘Visual Image’. Visual Image (teacher immediacy behaviours) have, for a long time, been correlated with increased student motivation, teacher and course ratings1,2.
Vocals
Vocals or ‘Vocal Image’, a term used by communication expert Vinh Giang, is comprised on how you use your voice when you teach. Namely, how you use (or play) with various vocal variations.
Again, for me, the most important features are:
- Rate of speech (the speed in which you speak).
- Volume
- Pitch and rhythm
- Pausing
Effective use of each of the above foundations promotes engagement and understanding, regardless of the topic you are teaching. Like with most skills, understanding how to leverage these effectively makes all the difference. For example, knowing when to slow down and speed up helps learners interpret what you are saying.
Environment
‘E’ is for Environment and like ‘You’, ‘Environment’ is divided into two parts, the:
- Physical environment, and
- Interpersonal environment
Physical environment
What your learners see, hear, feel when they first walk or log in to your classroom makes a big difference on engagement. Not to mention as the course progresses.
Most educators appreciate that the initial impressions your learners form, in those first few moments can make or break engagement. But it’s also about the physical environment that you curate throughout duration the course.
To promote engagement, educators should get purposeful about the physical environment, curating the impressions they want their learners to form.
Think about:
- What do learners see when they first arrive and throughout the day? Are those visual cues likely to spark interest and engagement?
- What do learners hear when they arrive in your course and throughout the course? Do you have music playing before the course, at breaks or at the end of activities? If you have music, what kind of music?
While less relevant online, with in person training we should consider the thermal comfort of our learners when they arrive and throughout the course. Often overlooked and sometimes out of our control, temperature is an important part of learner engagement. Sometimes this means getting into a room early and setting the air conditioner to the desired temperature.
Interpersonal environment
The other side of Environment is the Interpersonal Environment. Interpersonal Environment is all about learner relationships. Learner relationships with you, and other learners. In essence this boils down to trust, or psychological safety, a term coined by Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School, Amy Edmunson.
Do your learners feel comfortable enough, trust you and other learners enough, to take the interpersonal risks associated with participating in your course?
For example, if I was in your course, would I feel comfortable to share a comment knowing that I won’t be laughed at, or at worse, put down, for making that comment?
Thankfully there are many techniques we can use to build psychological safety quickly and increase it progressively throughout our course.
Storytelling
Lastly, the ‘S’, stands for Storytelling. Again, I break this into two parts. Firstly, storytelling, as you would typically understand it. Telling a great story can not only promote learner engagement but drive a point home much more effectively than a simple explanation.
However, I often encounter people who believe they are not good story tellers, or they believe they don’t have any good stories to tell. Invariably, when we dig a little, the latter is almost never true.
We all have stories, however, many of us have simply not curated them into something that could be told in a compelling way.
I use a particular formula to craft my stories before they are used in a training session. I complete a template which outlines the formula, and it works every time.
The second part of Storytelling is less obvious, and that is your use of analogies and metaphors to explain concepts, particularly complex ones. While the use analogy and metaphor is not storytelling in the traditional sense, these techniques use a similar principle embedded within a good story – they make something relatable.
In essence, that is what good storytelling does, making a topic relatable and as a consequence, memorable.
Naturally a good story should evoke a particular emotional state, and that is where the ‘You’ in YES comes in.
So, there you have it, Y.E.S. – an acronym that, for me, draws on the key foundations of promoting learner engagement in any classroom.
Say “Yes”! to building your (or your team’s) foundations of learner engagement and get in touch. Because everything is better with YES!
Cheers,
Tony
Get in touch via the contact page, or send me a message on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tkirton/
References:
- The relationships among teacher immediacy behaviors, student motivation, and learning. Diane M. Christophel, October 1990, Communication Education.
- College teacher immediacy and student ratings of instruction. A. Moore, J T. Masterson, D M. C & K A. Shea. 1996, Communication Education.
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