Teaching for Engagement

Lecturing Strategies

Overview

Lecture-style learning can work well for communicating course goals and content. If you are to use a lecture as a way to communicate information to your students, consider implementing the following tips:

1. Establish learning goals

Once you and your students know where you’re going, the trip is easier and more efficient. Often the very act of creating learning goals results in reducing the amount of material to be covered, since you have brought your course into more focus.

2. Cut down on the amount of material you...

Encouraging Attendance

Overview

Engaging students during live class sessions is crucial for their learning and academic success. However, it's common for attendance to fluctuate at certain points in the semester. To reinvigorate engagement and encourage consistent attendance, consider implementing the following research-based strategies that focus on communication, flexibility, active learning, and community building.

Sustaining Engagement Without Laptop Bans

Overview

How to maintain student engagement and attention in classes is a long-standing question for many educators. Yet this question has come particularly to the fore in the wake of the emergency remote instruction necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic where uses of technology for learning became a more commonplace part of the classroom environment. As students and instructors alike had more sustained experiences with accessing learning experiences online, they also faced a core struggle of being online all the time: what it looks like to stay focused on the educational...

Working With Students in Groups

Overview

by Terry Johnson, Bioengineering

Team projects can be rewarding. They give students the opportunity to address problems too large or too deep for any single individual to tackle in the limited amount of time they can devote to your course. By bringing together students with diverse skills and attitudes, team projects give students a chance to learn from their peers - and, through discussion with those peers, to refine their own ideas.

Team projects can also be - let’s face it - The Worst. I’d like to share a few things that I’ve found helpful in...

Active Learning

Overview What is active learning?

Active learning generally refers to any instructional method that engages students in the learning process beyond listening and passive note taking. Active learning approaches promote skill development and higher order thinking through activities that might include reading, writing, and/or discussion. Metacognition -- thinking about one’s thinking -- can also be an important element, helping students connect course activities to their learning (Brame, 2016).

Active learning is rooted in...