Student Engagement Strategies

Building community helps to build trust and connection between you and your students and between your students and each other. It is also an important culturally-responsive and trauma-informed practice that demonstrates care for your students.

Community building activities can include:

• Check-ins, Polls, or Ice Breakers
• Introductions in small groups or breakout sessions
• Meaningful discussion questions
• Student interest surveys

Be aware that not all community building activities are equal. Especially at first, focus on activities that help students ease into sharing with you and with each other. Avoid ice-breakers that could cause students embarrassment or require them to have already built trust with one-another. Below are some great resources for community-building activities that work in both a face-to-face and online environment.

Active learning increases student engagement, and helps students strengthen understanding. Often, active learning also employs cooperative learning techniques that push students to engage in higher level thinking. A few commonly-used active learning strategies are listed below. For more ideas, check out the additional links at the bottom.

Think-pair-share / Think-write-share

Think-pair-share / think-write-share is one of the easiest active learning strategies to use, and it translates easily between face-to-face and online classes. This technique allows students to prepare their thoughts before discussing. If you include the "pair" portion, rather than "write," you also give all students a chance to contribute to the discussion. Even if they don't choose to share with the whole class, they have at least talked about the ideas with one other person.

When you have a question or idea you want students to talk about or discuss:

1. Give them time to think about it (usually a minimum of 30 seconds of silent time - do not spend this time talking, or students can't really think)
2. Next, allow them to talk about their ideas with a partner (or, alternately, allow them to write down their ideas)
3. Finally, invite students to share with the whole class

Jigsaw

Jigsaw is a great technique to use if you want students to evaluate a large piece of content, or if you have students who learn best by working in small groups.

1. Select your content and divide it up in 3-6 sections (depending on the size of your class and the length of the material)
2. Assign students to each section (aim for about 3-5 students for each section)
3. Students read their section independently, and then meet with the other students who read the same section to discuss it
4. Mix the groups so that you have one person from each section. Each person reports out on their section to their new group. Alternately, you can have the group for each section report out to the entire class. 

Collaborative Documents

Collaborative documents are another great tool to get students engaged and contributing. You can have students make contributions to shared documents as individuals or in  groups. They can be used during the lecture activities, for homework, or for in-class group work. Some good tools for collaborative documents:

• Google Docs - all students have access to Google Docs through UAS
  • Collaborative note-taking
  • Use with a jigsaw activity
  • Written discussions
• Zoom Whiteboard - all students have access through UAS
  • Collaborative note-taking, annotation to images and more
• Padlet
  • Limited access for free but not paid for or supported at UAS
  • Students can answer questions, share content and resources, and work in groups
• Social annotation
  • Use a tool like Hypothes.is or Perusall to have students add annotations and responses to an online reading