by Michael Roberto (April 9, 2021)
Picture the absolute worst student experience you’ve had as a learner, when you were totally disengaged in a particular class. What impeded your learning? Why didn’t the course hold your attention? Was the content personally meaningful to you? Did the instructor seem to care about you or your interests at all?
Students form judgments about their courses and their instructors within the opening moments of a class. When teachers fail to hook students’ attention up front, engagement remains a struggle for the rest of the semester.
Here are seven strategies to help you connect and engage with students in every class you teach, whether that’s in person, online, or in hybrid classrooms.
1. Really Get to Know Your Students
Research shows that when you build relationships with students by getting to know them and allowing them to know you, they will learn more. Through knowledge of their backgrounds and interests, you’ll be better equipped to connect class content to their lives. You’ll enjoy teaching more as well.
Index cards/Google Forms. On the first day of class, I have students list on an index card where they’re from, their interests, their area of study, past internships, favorite hobbies, professional aspirations, and anything else they would like me to know about them. Of course, this helps me get to know each student. But the primary objective is to use some of that knowledge in the classroom—by incorporating their interests into our discussions and activities.
For online learning, this can be easily replicated with the use of Google Forms. One advantage of this approach is the ability to send the document to students and receive responses prior to our first session.
Informal group meetings. In the first few weeks of class, I post times when students and I can get together outside of my office hours. These meetings are in groups of six to eight students and are purely voluntary. We meet for 45 minutes, and the rule of these meetings is we don’t discuss the class. When we were able to get together in person, we would meet for coffee or lunches; however, adapting this for online modes since the pandemic started has been easy. It’s a great way to get to know students’ interests and career or grad school plans—topics about them. And while we don’t talk about our particular course, I do like to ask general questions about what they feel makes a great class and about their favorite teaching techniques and learning methods.
2. Establish Expectations for Participation
Students are concerned about what kind of impression they’ll have on their teachers, and often this uncertainty makes them hesitant to speak up in class. This self-censoring is an obstacle to collective learning and the exchange of ideas. To combat this, create a climate of psychological safety within your classroom where students know that it’s okay to speak up. And make participation a requirement from the start. Here are some ways to encourage participation in your classes:
- Call on students—but pay attention when extra support is needed. Collective learning can’t happen if the same three people are responding all the time. To get broad participation, I cold call students. They all know ahead of time that I may call on them at any time. For students who are particularly reticent or anxious about that possibility, I might do a warm call and let them know ahead of time so they have some warning. I also emphasize that in my class there’s no downside to wrong answers. If I call on you and you’re stuck, I’ll ask your classmates to come to your aid. “Help them out” is a phrase I use all the time, and students appreciate it. So there’s no downside to wrong answers unless you clearly didn’t do the work before class.
- Have students grade each others’ in-class involvement. My students are graded on their thoughtful contributions to class, but not by me. Peer grading certainly motivates students to participate. But it also provides me an incredibly rich record of how students contributed to their peers’ learning throughout the course.
3. Answer the “So What?” in Everything You Do—and Say
Engagement also happens when the work we give students is personally meaningful. Why does what we’re talking about matter? What are the implications for students’ lives? Based on your knowledge of the students, how does the topic relate to their next classes, to their careers, to whatever they’re passionate about outside the classroom?
Articulating the “So what?” before you hand out an assignment—and including compelling examples that reinforce the subject’s relevance—motivates students to do the work well, not just for the grade. For instance, I asked students recently to consider the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. I posed the question, “Why didn’t the world take the threat more seriously in late 2019 and early 2020?” We had a lively discussion. Students told stories of how they felt when reading news about the virus as the first cases began to emerge. Then, I assigned our multimedia case study about the Columbia space shuttle accident. I explained that the case would shed light on the crucial question of why humans downplay ambiguous or weak signals of an emerging threat. By relating the case to the headlines of today and their personal experience with the pandemic, I motivated the students to immerse themselves in the Columbia multimedia material.
4. Create Meaningful Prework
Students will also come to class more prepared to contribute if you set the stage with effective pre-work activities. Reading assignments alone aren’t sufficient, and grades are not enough to motivate. We have to broaden our perspective and think creatively about what pre-work is. The tasks we give students should answer the “So what?” question and require them to grapple with the material in some way, so they’re not blank slates when they get to class. It’s all about preparing them to engage.
5. Pace Your Lessons Well
Studies show that class activities should be changed every 7 to 10 minutes in order to keep students’ attention. It’s also a good idea avoid long lectures, which are a very passive classroom activity, and instead choose activities that involve students. Verbal discussions and Q&As offer some interaction and a break from lecturing, but that doesn’t quite equal engagement. Here are a few ways to break up lectures by shifting the topic or mode of instruction:
- Short videos. Interject a related video clip and get students to respond to it. Obviously, YouTube is a great source for this.
- Polling apps. Every so often, poll the class to get students’ quick responses to a particular question or topic. With several polling apps available, you can choose one that’s best suited to your classroom setup.
- Group work and sharing. Engage students in teamwork. Have them complete a task in teams, then share what they’ve done with the rest of the class. This can be done in breakout groups when online, but if in person, grouping teams together and getting students up to write things on the board also provides them a chance to move around during the class session.
6. Make Learning Experiences Active and Varied
Pacing your class activities goes hand in hand with incorporating multiple approaches to learning. At one time, I taught almost strictly by the case method. While case studies require much more active learning than a lecture does, they quickly become redundant if used every day. Pedagogical variety, with an emphasis on active learning, is important within individual class sessions and throughout the semester.
7. Show Students That You Care
Part of maintaining the rapport and engagement you’ve fostered from day one is celebrating student successes—even those beyond your classroom. I follow campus news and events and I connect with students on LinkedIn. When I read about their achievements, such as landing a new job or internship, I’ll send a little note of congratulations. And they are always grateful for it. To me, engagement is also about showing the students you care.
An Engaged Student Is an Inspired One
Many of us have heard the saying, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” In my teaching, I aim to do much more than transmit a small body of knowledge over the course of a semester. For me, engaging students means sparking their intellectual curiosity, encouraging them to ask thought-provoking questions, and motivating them to tackle challenging problems. If we engage them, we can inspire them to excel in our classrooms and become productive lifelong learners.
Check out the full article for app recommendations, and tips for face-to-face classes!
