Enhancing Learners' Engagement
PIDP 3250 - Instructional Strategies
Assignment 1: Reflective Writing - Part 1
Chapters 1 & 2: Student Engagement Techniques
Submitted by : Deepa Bhatia Dhingra
Student ID: 000507596
Vancouver Community College
Submitted to: Chris Carroll
June 11, 2026
This reflection is based on the Quote : "Engagement may be better described as a double helix in which active learning and motivation are spirals working together synergistically, building in intensity, and creating a fluid and dynamic phenomenon that is greater than the sum of their individual effects" (Barkley & Major, 2020, p. 11)
Objective : What is this quote or idea about? What caught your attention?
Across Chapters 1 and 2 of Student Engagement Techniques, Barkley and Major (2020) explain that engagement is not a fixed quality that some students naturally possess and others lack. It is something that emerges, and can be deliberately shaped.
Chapter 1 introduces the foundational model - Student engagement is "a process and a product that is experienced on a continuum and results from the synergistic interaction between motivation and active learning" (Barkley & Major, 2020, p. 12). This is described not as a
Venn diagram where there is a static overlap but as a “double helix”- two spirals rising together. Each time motivation grows, it deepens the student's engagement with learning. Each time active learning goes well, it strengthens motivation further. The two keep feeding each other. The chapter also introduced the idea that deeper learning can happen when students become highly engaged and begin to question their assumptions and perspectives.
Chapter 2 deepens this model by digging into “what drives the motivational spiral.” According to Barkley and Major (2020), building on Brophy (2004), a student's effort is the product of two beliefs - Can I do this? (expectancy) and Is this worth doing? (value). Hence emerges the expectancy × value model. As with the double helix, both must be present - one without the other produces nothing. Deci and Ryan (1985, 2002, as cited in Barkley & Major, 2020) add that students are most naturally motivated when three basic human needs are met - how they learn (autonomy), feeling genuinely capable (competence), and feeling connected to others (relatedness/sense of belonging). This Self-Determination Theory is the structural condition for intrinsic motivation. Together, these chapters state that engagement is not accidental. It is the predictable result of specific, identifiable conditions and those conditions are ones an instructor can deliberately create.
Reflective : Why did you choose this quote or idea? How do you identify with it?
As I read these chapters, I found myself thinking about my own experiences in the media and entertainment industry over the last 36 years and how the double helix metaphor felt immediately familiar. Whenever the client pitches gave me something personally compelling to argue for (value) and whenever I had enough confidence to believe I could do it (expectancy), the wins were mine. The two spirals had found each other. This same pattern showed up repeatedly across my career - in print advertising, TV sponsorship sales, and
training junior sales teams. The people who struggled most were rarely the ones who lacked skill. They were the ones who had lost belief, either in themselves or in what they were selling. I watched talented salespeople go quiet after too many rejected proposals or cancelled deals. They stopped bringing their best to new pitches. They stopped expecting things to go well. Covington's (Covington, 1993, as cited in Barkley & Major, 2020, p. 25) description of failure-accepting students - “so worn down by repeated failure that they have stopped caring either way” reminded me exactly of those salespeople. The disengagement works the same way in both settings.
This made me reflect on teaching. Before reading these chapters, I often thought that disengaged students simply lacked interest. Now I realize that there may be many reasons behind their behavior like, not seeing the value of the learning or doubting their ability to succeed or having some negative learning experiences in the past.
What stayed with me most is that the remedy is also the same. A carefully designed experience of success in a classroom giving someone a real win, even though small is often all it takes to restart the belief that success is still possible for them.
Interpretive : What does it mean to you? What insights did you get from the quote or idea? How has your thinking changed by reflecting on this quote or idea?
The double helix to me now, is a practical guide for how to design a lesson incorporating both motivation and active learning. The expectancy × value model (Barkley & Major, 2020) tells me that before I introduce any media sales related concepts, I need to answer two questions for my students : Can I actually do this? and Why should I care? Deci and Ryan (1985, 2002, as cited in Barkley & Major, 2020) mention that students are more naturally motivated when three
basic needs are met – autonomy, competence and relatedness. In a sales management class, this means that students often learn best when they work on real-world problems, case studies, campaigns, or industry projects and where people share real stories from their professional lives. When all this is set in motion, students won’t need a grade or a prize to stay engaged. Once they understand why the learning is important, how it connects to their goals, then “the learning becomes meaningful and students experience what Csikszentmihalyi (1990, as cited in Barkley & Major, 2020) describes as flow- a state of deep absorption where the work itself becomes the reward."
Barkley and Major (2020) explain that students often push back when learning asks them to question what they already believe. Experienced salespeople have built their sales approach through years of real life pitches. When a new idea challenges that, the natural response is to defend it. Covington (1993, as cited in Barkley & Major, 2020) describes the same instinct in students who protect their self-worth by avoiding risk altogether. The answer is not to back off from the challenge but finding a way where its safe enough for students to try and still creating the genuine discomfort that Cranton (2006) identifies as the entry point for transformative learning.
Decisional : How can this new or enhanced interpretation be applied to your professional practice?
How I teach sales management going forward, will be backed by the double helix model and the expectancy × value framework. I would also make three self-commitments before starting teaching any course :
I will open a session with a question from a real life sales situation that connects what students already know to what they are about to learn.
I will make expectancy-building a structural feature of every course. As Weiner (1986, as cited in Barkley & Major, 2020) reminds us that students explain their own success and failure matters enormously. So every piece of feedback for feedforward that I give will focus on what the learner did and what they could try differently. I will design activities where success is very likely, and then name clearly what the student did to make that happen. Small wins when made visible will rebuild belief and confidence.
When a student seems disengaged, I will stop and ask myself which spiral has stalled - confidence, or their sense of nothing really matters? Depending on the answer I will decide the type of intervention needed (building confidence step by step, creating meaningful discussions, or taking time to build trust and relationships first). Using the diagnostic framework described by Barkley and Major (2020), I will attempt to make these distinctions and move my teaching from competent to transformative. I will attempt to make these distinctions and move teaching from competent to transformative.
In a nutshell, I will take responsibility not only for covering the course material but also for nurturing motivation and active learning - the two spirals of Barkley's "double helix"- to foster meaningful student engagement.
References
Barkley, E. F., & Major, C. H. (2020). Student engagement techniques: A handbook for college faculty (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Brophy, J. E. (2004). Motivating students to learn (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Covington, M. V. (1993). Making the grade: A self-worth perspective on motivation and school reform. Cambridge University Press.
Cranton, P. (2006). Understanding and promoting transformative learning: A guide for educators of adults (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. Plenum Press.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2002). Handbook of self-determination research. University of Rochester Press.
Weiner, B. (1986). An attributional theory of motivation and emotion. Springer-Verlag.
