Publication details
It takes two to tango : How to get international relations students engaged in their learning
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | A lack of sufficient levels of student’s attention and active class engagement are considered to be the biggest challenges in teaching in higher education in the last few years. This chapter describes the results of a teaching innovation to remedy this challenge at Masaryk University during the Autumn 2017 semester. The innovation started out from the observation that in the past students had neither been focused nor motivated in class and that they were passive observers rather than active learners. In order to elevate student participation in the classroom, to heighten their interest in the subject matter, and to assist in their learning, I replaced the traditional ninety-minute frontal lecture format with several shorter interactive activities. These consisted of Skype calls, pair/group work, and interactive mini-lectures. My chapter investigates whether these activities met their expectations by being as motivating for students to take part in as expected and whether their heightened interest manifested in the form of improved learning outcomes. The three activities that I have introduced were found to be interactive and students not only participated but also showed genuine interest in these activities. As a result, the level of student interest in an activity corresponded with the amount of learning students attributed to that activity. Nevertheless, my expectation that the activity I estimated to be the most interactive would also be the most interesting for students was not met. However, these findings suggest that the students’ motivation to engage and learn has improved so that it can be concluded that the innovation has reached its main objectives. |