Agreements

• This is a six week course on student engagement in the classroom. Participants are expected to examine their own ideas about engagement, as well as to freely share with other participants about their experiences with engagement and the context of where, who, and how they instruct.
   
• We need to agree. How much, and in what ways will we engage with each other as we go through this course? What are our protocols for engagement? What are our expectations for the course? What do we need to do and how do we need to behave in order for all of us to benefit from this learning experience and environment?

• As the course instructor/facilitator, I have some ideas about protocols that may help us to remain “engaged” with each other and our learning. I am open to hearing your agreement or disagreement with any of these ideas. Online “engagement” while not new to me personally, is certainly new to me in a group context.  Let’s learn together about what works to engage and what causes “disengagement” with an online course while we learn together about engagement as a whole.

Protocol for Online Course

Can we agree...?

1.  Each of us will complete a portion (or more) of the given assignments by the sharing dates within the syllabus. In this way participants will grow some shared vocabulary of ideas that can be explored together.

2.  We will learn from each other and together draw up guidelines on what works when learning together, and what does not.

3.  We will remain focused on the idea of “Student Engagement” and remind each other that this is the learning focus whenever we are tempted to stray into the vast arena of learning as a whole (without making a connection to the idea of "engagement").

4. We will share openly, with candor, happily disagreeing without putting down the ideas of others.

5.  We will comfortably question the ideas of others to better understand what they mean and to deepen our own thinking in regards to engagement and the nature of engagement.

6.  We will try out ideas in our own classroom contexts, and bring back our experiences to share with the group.

7.   We will build a bibliography of videos, articles, books, people, and other resources so that our learning can be continuous within and beyond the course (not limited by instructor/facilitator choices).

8.  We will self and group reflect on our learning process and share ideas to make it better.

9.  We will be forgiving and assume the best of others  since online “texting” can be a messy method of communication and so easy to misinterpret.


If you agree, add a comment and state that you agree with this protocol.  If you do not agree, use the comments feature to discuss what you would add, delete, or adjust in this protocol and share your reasons with the group. You may also return to this section at any time during the course to add or further discuss these ideas and agreements.