Engagement Activities

To promote student engagement in course materials in a mostly-asynchronous course, I developed a framework of “Weekly Engagement Activities” that provide multiple flexible opportunities for students to demonstrate their engagement. This is the language used to describe the framework:

Each week, students have multiple ways to demonstrate their engagement with the course. Most of these are asynchronous or synchronous activities that provide opportunities for students to discuss course material with peers & Professor Mittell. Some are specific activities assigned for that week’s content. Students can earn up to five points each week based on satisfactory completion of these activities; points will be tallied based on that week’s activities as accomplished between Sunday to Saturday. There are no late or make-up options for engagement activities unless students run into significant issues warranting a Dean’s excuse.

Specific activities include:

• Attending weekly Zoom and/or in-person discussion sections
• Writing a formal response (300+ words) to that week’s material
• Participating in a Canvas discussion forum in response to a specific prompt
• Participating in a Slack conversation about course content
• Completing a specific task tied to that week’s material. Such activities included annotating a video, collaborating to generate a “pitch” for an idea to share with the class, responding to a guest lecture, and completing a specific exercise.

All activities are assessed on a Satisfactory / Unsatisfactory basis, with no revisions or makeup – they do it effectively, or they don’t. Importantly, each week a student can choose which activities to complete to earn their points, providing flexibility and agency, as there are always at least 6 possible ways to earn a point. Additionally, students who average 4.5 points per week would qualify for an A grade – again, providing flexibility to students.

Example for "Engagement Activities":
https://courses.middlebury.edu/hub/mcug/202090/fmmc/0104a/syllabus/1612307