What's going to work?

Here’s how to increase classroom engagement

Author

The PEN Weekly
May 01, 2024

What to expect this week:

5 min read

This week, we dive into classroom engagement strategies - buckle up, we’re going to be here for a few weeks. Here’s what this issue covers:

  • Tech Talk: Students can now talk to (any) historical figure using AI

  • Surplus Scoop: Cell phones are officially banned

  • Brainy Bits: Why group work might lead to disengaged students

Tech Talk

Going back in time

We start the classroom management ride by looking at an app that uses a teacher’s most powerful tool - engagement. When students are not engaged, there is a higher chance for them to act out, lose focus, and ultimately make learning difficult. One of the best ways we can combat this is by having multiple modalities of engagement (more on this in the coming weeks, but for now just trust us).

Enter Humy. This neat little app leverages AI (specifically ChatGPT models) to allow your students to have full conversations with historical figures. Cool, right? Of course, these are not real people. What’s happening is your students are conversing with an AI bot that has been set up to mimic one of over 400 real historical people - and it does a scary good job at it. Besides the wow factor though, why would this increase engagement over a traditional lesson?

One word - ownership. By steering the conversation themselves students now have some skin in the game. Their success with the lesson does not depend only on you or their school, but on their ability to do something they already know how to do - text. Now, we know what you’re thinking - isn’t this a bit scary? Especially for younger learners? The answer is of course yes. Humy has thought of this too.

Not only is the teacher portal of the app very organized and easy to learn, but the content integrates seamlessly with any learning platform. Essentially all it does is produce a shareable link that opens up to a chat with the selected historical figure. In terms of lowering the scary level, Humy allows teachers to customize each of their historical figures to a large degree. For example, let’s say you’re dealing with a younger audience. You can set Humy up with parameters that the historical bot will fit into; no coding experience necessary. You can simply type in ‘Speak at a third grade level; keep your answers rated G; etc’. If you have an online textbook or lesson notes to upload,  it can also reference them directly. This way, the bots' answers won’t just be age appropriate, but can also instruct students to specific pages in their textbook to help them find out more. Imagine having a past world leader as your teaching assistant - that’s really what’s going on here.

You're not limited to just history lessons either. Their characters cover a wide range of topics and curriculums, and you can also design your own bots based on whatever information you’d like - all within seconds. And if your lesson involves multiple historical figures at once, Humy’s got your back with assignments and quizzes too.

Let’s talk about the downsides. Price is always a factor. The free version allows students to only chat for 30 messages/month. Whereas the paid teacher version (as low as $100/year USD) bumps this up to 2000 messages/month, plus access to everything else Humy has to offer. Not a terrible deal since students do not require an account for this one, only their teachers do. Keep in mind, depending on your learners you may be opening up a big can of worms. Humy does not let you fully monitor your students’ chats. The fear is not what the bot will say, but more so what your students will say to the bot. Should students push the envelope, chats are not readily saved, and so proceed with caution.

Humy’s available on both major app stores, but we think the web version works best. Have a better chatbot than this one? Hit reply on this email and let us know!

Surplus Scoop

Here’s our weekly roundup of interesting education stories from around the world. Click each link to learn more:

❝

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.

Brainy Bits

You can’t spell ‘team’ without an ‘m’ and an ‘e’

Over the past few years students are not responding to group work the same way they used to, especially in our older grades. Are they simply disengaged with the idea? This week’s study by Telling (2024) comes out of the UK and tackles this exact question. 

There is a rise in individualism across our schools (worldwide) where students are preferring to be assessed on their own work and not on the work of their peers. As the paper’s author points out, this is something we can see not just within our schools, but also within many workplaces. Add the remote-work option of the pandemic into the mix, and it’s easy to see how many careers have gotten comfortable with preferring an individual environment. Even as teachers, how many times have we sat through department meetings that were better served as just an email? Our students have been reacting the same way. So why is this?

To find out, this paper used a unique approach of interview data across a variety of student ages all the way up to post-secondary. What makes this study different is that the interviews were conducted via video and so there’s an emotional aspect here as well. To really use this, the interviewer avoided direct questions about group work, and instead collected data from their reactions to similar questions. This led to a more honest answer from each student. And trust us, honesty definitely worked here.

Here are the takeaways from their responses about engagement and group work:

  • 🗯️There’s no hate here: students expressed a strong dislike for group assignments, but none expressed the need to outright ban it. 

  • 🤑They see the value: although few want group work, almost all (older) students acknowledged that group work provides skills needed for almost every job.

  • 🤝 Lack of trust: the most repeated response given was a lack of trust. Many students don’t trust the work ethic of their peers; they want to be evaluated for their work, and their work only. 

  • 😏 We’re not falling for it: Students feel that group work is used for quick marking and can make education feel like a product (this one came out the most with post-secondary students).

Going back to our classrooms then, how can we use group work, knowing it might be an uphill battle? Well, this may be a case of a bad-tasting medicine. Students may not like it, but the research is clear that teamwork is an essential skill. Think of every major tech product; each of these was the result of many teams and minds coming together and working with one another. 

As teachers, we have to encourage group work, but not ignore the individual success of each learner. If students are worried that their peers will bring down their grade, then we should assess each group member individually. For larger group assignments, consider incorporating an anonymous survey at the end where students can evaluate each other to add more incentive to work together. And if you do have students who absolutely refuse to work with their peers or have an IEP stating something similar, leave an option open for them to work by themselves but gently encourage them to engage in class discussion when appropriate. 

Maybe we as teachers are guilty sometimes for using group assignments as a way to ease up our marking - at least we here at The PEN definitely are. Students want their individual voices heard, so let’s assess accordingly. But let’s also never forget the value of teamwork and how important that is to foster at a young age. Do your students dislike group assignments? Hit reply and let us know!

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References

This week’s issue adapts information from the following sources:

Tech Talk:

Humy. (2024). Make your social studies & history classes unforgettable with AI.  Retrieved from https://www.humy.ai/

Brainy Bits:

Telling, K. (2024). Why do students resist assessment by group-work? Hearing critique in the complaint. European Educational Research Journal 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/14749041241249223

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