2 Arrival Activities: Sparking Student Engagement & Fostering Community

Arrival activities spark student engagement and can help to build a sense of community in the classroom. When we say student engagement, we mean “students’ willingness and desire to contribute and be successful in a learning process that leads them to higher-level thinking and long-term understanding.”^[1] A student’s willingness can have several facets: “engagement requires a psychological investment on the part of the learner as well as persistence in undertaking the learning task…Additionally, several interconnected factors such as motivation, attention, involvement, and intellectual effort can support engagement.”^[2] It’s important to note that both cognitive and emotional engagement are involved in fostering engaged student behaviour, and that instructors play a role in facilitating this engagement.

Cognitive Engagement:

Students tend to be aware of the importance of being cognitively engaged with course material. Blakey and Major^[3] carried out an open-ended online survey about engagement with a group of forty students, most of whom were enrolled full-time in a graduate education program. In this study, students indicated that they felt learner engagement must be active; students pointed to the importance of their own involvement in their learning, as well as to the concept of intellectual effort more generally. As one student explained, learners “must be involved in the learning process,” and another student commented that, as opposed to “passively sitting in a classroom”, engagement involves students’ participation in thoughtful discussion, as well as “[going] above and beyond on assignments in order to learn.”^[4] Students also suggested that engagement involves being “fully invested in the learning process, whether by participating in classroom discussions with faculty and classmates, completing reading assignments or other projects outside of class time, or by generally committing to the class.”^[5] Active learning, participation in activities and discussion, and applying effort to learning can all be significant components in students’ cognitive engagement (bearing in mind that engaged investment in course activities or discussions may appear differently or take different forms for different learners, including neurodiverse students).

Emotional Engagement: 

Student engagement also involves feeling connected with a course (and with the learning material) on an emotional level. Students have recognized the need for learners to have “a positive view of the course and of the importance of learning,” to believe that they can succeed, and to want to learn.^[6] The emotional aspect of engagement, considered in addition to the cognitive aspect, indicates that engagement overall is “the level of involvement of students personally, emotionally, and academically pertaining to a course both in and out of the classroom.”^[7]

“During my BSc, I was the most emotionally invested in a class that was taught by a professor I was working with for my thesis. I realized that I was so invested in the class because I had a working relationship with the instructor, and it made me appreciate his jokes, humour, added activities, and bonus work. If we can give students that type of connection to their professor, they will likely be more engaged.” Former BSc student

Community refers to the sense of belonging and membership within a group.^[8] A course community is centered around the collaborative learning that will take place, which can be seen in how students, instructor(s), and teaching assistants interact, work, and support each other in pursuit of the course learning goals.^[9] Implementing strategies to cultivate a sense of community in your course can not only increase classroom participation and deepen learning,^[10] it also contributes to a student’s well-being, which ultimately promotes learning.^[11]

Arrival activities are one example of teaching strategies that can foster both engagement and community. Thoughtfully and intentionally planning activities that welcome students to each class can help set and keep the tone for the type of collaborative and supportive atmosphere instructors want to provide to their learners.