Widening Student Engagement
Jody Ondich
Strategic Brainstorming
One of the ongoing challenges in teaching is effectively engaging students with a wide range of needs, backgrounds, and learning styles. Designing inclusive activities that support all students in achieving success is essential to fostering equitable and meaningful learning experiences. When thoughtfully integrated, AI can serve as a powerful tool to personalize learning, reduce barriers, and enhance access to content and support for diverse student populations.
Example: Six Thinking Hats Request
Goal
One effective approach to generating high-quality ideas during brainstorming is the Six Thinking Hats technique. This method encourages participants to explore a topic from six distinct perspectives, each represented by a different “hat,” in order to stimulate a diverse range of responses and insights.
In this example, the Six Hats approach was used to prompt Copilot to generate strategies for supporting PSEO students—high school learners concurrently enrolled in college courses—in achieving success in their college-level studies.
Below are the Six Thinking Hats and their related perspectives:
- White hat: Facts and data
- Red hat: Feelings and hunches
- Black hat: Risks and disadvantages
- Yellow hat: Benefits and opportunities
- Green hat: Creativity and possibilities
- Blue hat: Planning and summarizing
How It Was Done
In this case, the initial brainstorming prompt was this:
“At our college we have PSEO (post–secondary education opportunity) students who are juniors and seniors in high school taking online and classroom courses at our college. A fair number of them are surprisingly and woefully unprepared for some of the basics of college–following due dates, showing up on time (or at all) for class, being prepared with equipment or materials and so on, preparing (reading, watching, creating) for class, communicating with the professor, etc. (some of this may still be post covid, but still, it is alarming). It is causing a great deal of concern and frustration for faculty in figuring out how to help and deal with these students. What we want to do: Help students understand and practice good, professional student behaviors in order to more smoothly progress in college classes. I am looking for suggestions on activities to help them learn more appropriate student behaviors for college.”
The emphasis in this first prompt was on emotional/red hat words, such as “concerned”, “frustrated”, “alarmed” in order to approach this topic. A good general list of possible ways to address this problem was created by AI, mostly for things that we were already doing. It was a good list, just not what I needed.
For the second prompt, I used a creative/green hat approach instead, hoping for more “out of the box” suggestions.
“This first list is helpful in suggesting things that, for the most part, we are doing or attempting to do. I would like to find some more creative ways to engage these students so that they are more committed to timely, involved, thorough classwork and interactions. Might there be some unusual things that we could try as a college?”
The next list generated by Copilot was much more interesting, had a number of creative ways that would increase student engagement, such as gamification, multi-media creation, escape room approaches, and more. These were ways to connect with students, asking their creativity to emerge, having them assist in the learning and teaching process, and assisting students in connecting with one another.
The content of the assignments would be based on the faculty’s knowledge and the course needs, but the structure here for interesting teaching and learning is now set up and useful.
Results
Potential issues
- These prompts were asking for help in motivating PSEO students. The current high school students taking college courses are not always college ready, so finding ways to assist them in achieving success is an issue for many colleges these days. This brainstorming approach offers a valuable framework for generating innovative assignments that thoughtfully address accessibility challenges, neurodiverse needs, cultural sensitivity, and related considerations.
Diverse options for school work will assist faculty in creatively meeting the needs of many students while still providing rigorous engagement with the course materials.
Best Tools for the Job
Copilot worked well for brainstorming and creating creative suggestions. It is one of the tasks that Copilot does well.
About the author
name: Jody Ondich
institution: Lake Superior College
Jody teaches philosophy at Lake Superior College in Duluth, and is part of a faculty development team there. Her focus areas are OER development, digital accessibility, AI use, and online course review programs. She has written 3 OER texts, housed at the University of Minnesota Open Textbook network.
