5 Tech Strategies to Enhance Student-Led Learning

Over the years, I have learned that engagement doesn’t happen simply by adding technology. It increases when we give students more ownership by designing experiences that allow them to build, collaborate, reflect, and teach one another. Depending on how we use it, technology can either amplify engagement or distract from it. Technology can help build students’ confidence in learning, but it can also lead to passivity. When technology is used to amplify students’ voice, choice, and ownership in learning, their engagement will naturally increase.

Here are five strategies and some digital tools that can be used across grade levels and content areas to boost student engagement, build confidence, foster collaboration, and support meaningful learning experiences.

5 ways to Guide Students to Greater Agency in learning

You don’t have to be an expert to try out different ideas to help students be more engaged. I’ve tried a variety of strategies in my classroom, and many times it meant taking a risk and trying something I didn’t have much experience with or knowledge about. It also means admitting to my students when I am taking a chance and things might not go as I had planned. But the risk-taking is well worth it because of the impact on student learning and the student feedback I receive after trying new ideas.

1. Game-based learning. Students are naturally competitive and curious. Game-based learning is a great way to foster the development of skills in critical thinking, problem-solving, resilience, and teamwork, while building content knowledge. Students love earning points and seeing their names on a leaderboard during a game of Blooket, Gimkit, or Kahoot.

I’ve been playing Kahoot with my Spanish classes for more than 10 years, and it makes a big difference helping my students practice vocabulary dealing with school, giving directions, talking about hobbies or foods, and learning how to narrate in different verb tenses.

Other fun activities to boost student engagement include digital escape rooms or scavenger hunts, which allow students to work independently or in teams and build many essential skills in the process. To make an even bigger impact, we can shift students from consumers to creators, having them design their own games to share with classmates. After finishing one of my digital escape rooms, several students created their own for their classmates to try. Other groups created board games with characters and images, and then came up with question cards to practice.

2. Collaborative digital spaces. Using collaborative platforms like FigJam, Padlet, or Markify allows students to share ideas and learn together, whether in the classroom or out. Using Padlet, my students have interacted with students from Spanish-speaking countries, exchanging ideas and cultural information, which helps them build their language skills in a more authentic and personalized way.

I’ve used Padlet to create scavenger hunts and enjoyed seeing students’ posts and their excitement about the challenges. For example, I will make a list of items written in Spanish and posted on the Padlet. Students need to find those items, post an image, and write a sentence. Platforms like Padlet promote participation, especially for quieter students, and foster community-building as students contribute to a shared space. FigJam is great for classroom discussions, brainstorming spaces, and project work for student groups.

3. Collaborative storytelling and lessons. Years ago, I created a Google Slides presentation for students to write about their summers, as a way to review their Spanish vocabulary, foster relationships, and encourage more conversations in class. Today, I’ve transformed that assignment into one where students create a collaborative storybook. At the beginning of the school year, students in Spanish I collaborate on a class yearbook using Book Creator. Each student adds a few pages to the book to share information about themselves. It is a great way for students to get to know one another and build relationships, and I enjoy learning about students and building a classroom community.

4. Creating lessons for classmates. Over the years, I have enjoyed seeing students take on the role of teacher. Whether they take turns teaching in class or leveraging technology to record a lesson to share with classmates, it is a great experience for them and for me. Years ago, some of my students started using tools like Edpuzzle and Nearpod after we used them in class to create tutorials or mini-lessons to share with classmates.

There is nothing quite like seeing a student clearly explain a concept they once struggled with. Students who had difficulty remembering which tense to use when narrating in the past, or even the concept of verb conjugation, were able to build their skills by creating their own self-taught lessons. Once I saw them doing this, I decided to offer it as an option for other projects, and students really enjoy creating with these tools.

Video tutorials and podcasts have become powerful options for teaching and learning. My students have created short videos and podcast episodes to explain grammar structures, discuss cultural topics, or have conversations focused on the vocabulary unit. For other classes, some ideas include creating videos to model how to conduct an experiment, explain how to solve math problems, or something related to the content area. In STEAM, I’ve had students make short videos of how to use a coding program or put a robot together. In Spanish, students have used podcasting to practice their speaking skills and have created a cooking show, an interview with an artist, and a narration of a children’s story, all of which can be used as teaching materials for other students.

When they know their video or podcast will help classmates or even future students, they take more ownership and pride in what they are creating, and it boosts their learning in the process.

5. Collaborative exam review. I also have students create collaborative class resources for exams. To do this, I create a list of grammar concepts and vocabulary units we covered during the year, and have students choose two topics to focus on to create a shared study resource, typically in Google Slides. They need to include text to review the topic, find a video to embed, create a game, and add additional content that would be helpful for them and their classmates.

As they work, I continue to review what they are adding, and if there are any errors, we spend time talking through them. I loved seeing what they came up with and hearing how the opportunity helped them understand the content better and increase their confidence. Some students even created their own videos explaining a verb tense or reviewing vocabulary words. These experiences led to a shift from teacher-centered review to student-driven learning.