THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY‑ENHANCED LEARNING ON STUDENT ENGAGEMENT IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Abstract

This paper examines the role of Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) in increasing student engagement in secondary school settings across behavioural, emotional, and cognitive dimensions. As electronic tools and teaching technology are gradually becoming part and parcel of the new classroom setting, it is necessary to be aware of how these methods affect the student engagement, motivation, and profound learning. Based on the mixed-methods design, the survey, classroom observations, and semi-structured interview were used to collect data among 300 students and 30 teachers in six secondary schools. The results show that TEL is very effective in terms of engagement, and its effectiveness is manifested by the fact that students were better engaged in terms of behavior, as demonstrated by their active voices in the digital discussion and collaborative projects; better engaged in terms of emotion, as demonstrated by the interactive content and the feedback in real-time; and better engaged in terms of the mind, as demonstrated by the adaptive learning tools that facilitated problem-solving and self-regulated learning. The qualitative data indicates that collaborative platforms and real-time feedback were the most important factors, and issues that impeded the effectiveness of TEL were the disparity in access to devices, the lack of teacher expertise, and off-task distraction. The research notes the importance of technologically integrated teaching that should be pedagogically oriented, stable infrastructure, and teacher training, and advising the development of student-digital literacy. In future studies, longitudinal impact of TEL on academic performance and activity among various demographic and socio-economic backgrounds should be explored.