How important are extracurricular activities for college? Engagement in a college setting may be a valuable tool in helping students get more out of their college experience. Finding ways to keep students involved in various activities may help to improve their day-to-day quality of life and help them feel like an important part of the community. Colleges may find it challenging to do this, though, since not everyone enjoys or responds to activities in the same way.
Why Is Engagement Important in a College Setting?
Engagement is often a big part of the college experience. Having access to safe and positive opportunities may help students in many potential ways:
- It may create opportunities to build friendships with other people.
- Engagement may create life skills and learning lessons.
- It may help build leadership skills.
- Students may have more fun when they have ways to engage in their community.
- It could help establish inclusive practices.
- Engagement often encourages the development of interpersonal skills.
Engagement may help students engage in critical thinking more often and helps to promote meaningful learning experiences. It may boost attention and focus, too.
Students who are engaged more fully may also be more likely to stay motivated in their college education. They may develop a more positive view of the school, the college experience, and themselves due to having activities to participate in and enjoy and these are how important are extracurricular activities for college. Overall, good involvement and engagement translate into a better educational experience for many students.
What Types of Student Engagement Exist?
Getting the attention of, building curiosity, tapping optimism, and building passion are some of the goals of engagement. It may refer to ways that school educators and leaders may engage decision-making processes in students.
There are three types of engagement, all of which may be an important focus for improving college experiences. They include:
- Behavioral engagement: The focus here is often on the participation in social, academic, and co-curricular activities at or through the college.
- Emotional engagement: This typically revolves around positive and negative reactions to people on campus, including teachers, academics, classmates, and the school in general.
- Cognitive engagement: This type of engagement often focuses on improving the level of investment students make in the learning process.
Incorporating all of these methods into a college may seem difficult, but it doesn’t have to be.
How to Encourage Student Engagement More Fully
Colleges and universities may have a special ability to offer programs and tools to help foster more involvement. To do so, it’s often important to choose a wide range of ways to help encourage individuals to get involved. Here are some ways to potentially do so.
Promote active learning methods
Engagement starts in the classroom. When students sit and listen, they are usually less likely to take in the information presented or engage in the learning process. However, when active learning methods are in place, students are more likely to take in that content and better understand it.
Active learning strategies may require students to participate in discussions in the classroom. That may include offering question and answer sessions. It may involve discussions that apply the concepts being taught to daily life. Impromptu writing assignments in the classroom may offer this type of opportunity. Another route may be to offer more hands-on activities when possible.
Create experiential opportunities when possible. That may include moving out of the traditional classroom or offering insightful conversation that doesn’t come just from a textbook.
Create community activities
Step aside from just a focus on the education process to create opportunities for connection. That may include hosting a concert on the school’s lawn or creating scavenger hunts that students may wish to engage in to earn a prize. The goal here is often not to just keep people busy but to provide opportunities for students to interact with each other, work in teams, or just come together for fun.
The promotion of group activities may provide a way for students to learn new things, such as learn about a new sport or get involved in a political discussion. As many are young adults, this is often their time to communicate their beliefs and aspirations. Provide opportunities for this type of engagement to take place.
Create meaningful opportunities and work
Since we already know how important are extracurricular activities for college students, one of the ways that both teachers and school leaders may build engagement is by creating activities, classroom studies, or assignments that are meaningful. Writing a paper about an obscure topic may not help a student dive into it. When work is stimulating, students may learn more from it – and they may remember it more so. There may be a few ways to do this:
- Connect a student’s assignment or work today with some type of previous or personal experience.
- Make conversations personal to the point where it is appropriate, helping students relate to what’s being taught.
- Create assignments or tasks that benefit the community in some way – giving back, providing support, or learning more about it.
Finding ways to make any learning topic more engaging is valuable to all involved. The key here is to make it valuable to the student and, in some cases, to others as well./p>
Create dynamic discussions
When it comes to building engagement, sometimes just having a good conversation is enough. There are plenty of opportunities for students to learn something new, but are you providing them with ways to discuss what they are learning?
Dynamic discussions do not often happen without some planning. They are not often spontaneous but may be carefully crafted with enough focus. Work to prepare such discussions in advance so you may avoid steering too far off the desired topic. Create a series of questions to help move the conversation in a meaningful way.
When creating this type of conversation, you may be creating opportunities for your students to look at topics from multiple perspectives. You may be able to help them see topics through another person’s eyes and spur their curiosity enough that they may dive into the topic more fully on their own and this is how important are extracurricular activities for college students.
Creating engagement is a valuable tool for many organizations. While creating contests and having food events brings people together, what is done during that time may make a big difference on what the student gets out of the process – and out of their college education.