As educators, we face an impossible task: scaling instruction while meeting individual learner needs. Can spurring achievement for students and educators be simplified? It’s possible, but only with the right guide! Introducing PMERG, a performance-driving guide that drives student success — and, most importantly, drives retention for students and for educators.
As educators, we face a seemingly impossible task: scaling instruction to ensure student achievement, while at the same time meeting diverse learner needs. Throw in the unique challenges of online, hybrid, or blended teaching modalities, and the goal of closing the achievement gap continues to be out of reach. So the question is, how can we simplify the process of closing achievement gaps across diverse learner audiences in an environment that increasingly relies on online technologies? We believe a new framework is needed to help learners and instructors navigate the challenges of an ever more complex educational landscape. To meet the challenges that face higher education today requires a framework that not only recognizes the barriers to student and instructor engagement, but reimagines the connections between participation, motivation, and engagement that can lead to effective strategies for teaching and learning.
The Participation-Motivation-Engagement-Retention Guide (PMERG) suggests a research-based, performance-driven approach to teaching and learning that synthesizes these four elements of successful educational experiences into a teaching and learning model that facilitates student success. Regardless of level of education or diverse backgrounds, leveraging the components of PMERG has the potential to alleviate apathy and disengagement for students in order to promote retention — both for students and educators — in online and blended learning environments. Following the tenets of PMERG promotes effective technology integration as a means to improve student outcomes and create positive learning experiences.
During this session, we will illustrate effective use of the PMERG model by exploring the model through the lenses of three personae: a first-generation college student, a student with a social-emotional learning deficit, and an instructor experiencing difficulties in meeting the challenges of an online or blended learning scenario. Session participants will be invited to engage with this model in real time as we work together to build out a fourth personae of the participants’ choosing. We’ll brainstorm how these four core components might be connected and tracked, and think through activities to drive participation, motivation, engagement, in order to improve student outcomes and increase student retention.
After this session, all participants will be able to:
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Define the four core components of the PMERG model and explain how they are related to student and educator retention in online and blended learning environments
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Recognize how participation, motivation, and engagement interact to drive achievement.
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Learn how to use the PMERG model to streamline development of effective learning experiences for all students and educators.