Engagement
Student engagement with learning is now an accepted expectation of school learning environments. The Australian Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MEECTYA, 2004) expects one key return on online curriculum content for economic sustainability to be students who are engaged and motivated. To achieve this teachers are expected (MCEETYA, 2005) to select learning activities, tools and resources that motivate and engage students, and expected to integrate information and communication technology (ICT) to engage students in a variety of new dimensions such as thinking and working creatively, and creating new knowledge.
The further expectation that teachers will provide evidence of ‘return’ on the investment in ICT for learning, leads to the necessity for teachers to be able to report on student engagement.
A school-university partnership was formed in regional New South Wales to facilitate the innovative use of ICT to support learning and to promote student engagement in learning. A joint project was designed to determine what student engagement looks like when ICT is used to support learning. Teamed as co-researchers, teachers from the school teamed with lecturers and pre-service teachers from the university to co-plan and implement ICT supported learning sequences and to research student engagement during the implementation.
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