Engaging Your Students in the Classroom

Breaking It Down features outstanding former Signature Course students who touch on how to break down the following academic challenges during the first semester at UT: Understanding a Syllabus; Effective Note-taking; Class Participation; Reading Comprehension; and Planning. We hope you will view this short video with your students early in the semester.

Structured around the acronym F.O.C.U.S., students enrolled in Signature Courses have the opportunity to get expert advice from faculty members on how to be successful in classes this semester. We hope that you will view this short video with your students during the first few class meetings this semester.

See best practices and instructor examples on the Faculty Innovation Center’s website.

Engage students by asking how they can best learn and participate in your class. See how Moody College of Communication Professor Josh Barbour encourages all students to communicate with him how they learn best.

Whether you assign students to be official note-takers , post a copy of your notes on Canvas, or provide students with advance organizers , sharing your notes ahead of class time can reduce anxiety, help students actively participate in class, and reduce the need for some accommodation requests around notes.

UT’s Captioning and Transcription Services will caption your media for free, provided it is for class use. Captions are legally required, and benefit students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Captions also benefit English language learners, learners with ADD, and anyone who finds their mind wondering every once and a while (so, all of us).

The only thing we can rely on for sure in education is learner variability. The more you diversify how you present content, and the ways in which students have to demonstrate what they know, the more you allow diverse learners to connect into your course content and outcomes. Watch this video , in which Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing/Dell Medical School, Dr. Nico Osier, models this idea by providing their students with flexibility in how they demonstrate knowledge beyond a standard quiz format.

For more ideas and information about ways to move from accessible to inclusive in your teaching practices, contact Dr. Adria Battaglia (Faculty Innovation Center) and Emily Shryock (Services for Students with Disabilities) for a consult or customized workshop.

Before students take a quiz, I like to provide them with a list of questions that might be in the quiz. I tell them that questions in the quiz will come from this list, however, the questions are comprehensive and so in an effort to prepare for the quiz by answering all the questions, they’re in fact learning all the material that I think is most important to learn in our class.

Listen to your students… actually listen and when they don’t answer a question right away, give them time, prompts, and encouragement to engage. They are so used to passively receiving information and are so afraid of making a mistake that they really need to be supported to step out. Along these same lines, don’t stop at the first answer given by the ‘same’ student. You know the one that sits in the front row and is always quick to answer. If you stop there, no one else will volunteer and it becomes a ‘conversation’ between you and one other student with 200 observers.

Find joy in what you are teaching. If you are having fun, then your students will have fun. Joy is contagious. No matter how dry the material, if you have fun then it will transfer to your students.

Make mistakes and demonstrate that it is ok to do so and move past. If you are not perfect, then your students won’t think that they have to be. This makes you more approachable and it allows the students to relax and learn.

For my upper division, “smaller” classes (20-50 people), I’ve revived (over the last two years) the old practice of having students write reading responses. I ask for short responses and I give them choices. So, there might be 30 appropriate responses from the readings and students write ten of their choice. Discussions were dying out in my classes and it took me a semester or two to figure out that this was happening because students weren’t doing the readings. Now, I have very engaged students and excellent classroom discussions, without making the students feel that they are responsible for every single reading. Not only are discussions better, but students get to know one another better, and we build a stronger community of learning.

Many faculty members use a ‘readiness assessment test’ at the beginning of class to hold students accountable for background assignments and to allow for ‘just-in-time’ teaching to address issues that need clarification before diving into the class material. For the past decade, I have employed commercial “IF/AT” cards (Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique) for conducting these assessments in my Signature Course. These are basically ‘scratch off’ cards that give students instant feedback as to whether they get the question right, and if not, allows for additional attempts for lesser and lesser credit. With many assessment methods, students are given their results days later and have to reconstruct what they were thinking at the time of taking the test. In addition, questions are usually graded as ‘all or none’ and students do not get credit for narrowing down the choices based on their understanding. IF/AT cards overcome both of these issues, and students find them engaging. IF/AT cards are available from epsteineducation.com and I would be happy to provide cards to any faculty members who want to give them a try.

• 90% of students reported that their Signature Course encouraged them to seek support from UT Austin faculty or staff
• 90% of students reported that their Signature Course instructor made them excited about learning
• 89% of students reported that their Signature Course made them feel part of a caring university community

The 40 Assets for the 40 Acres are evidence-based factors that protect students from the risks associated with substance use. Though a few Assets call for discussion around alcohol and drugs, most Assets focus on building the connections, skills, attitudes, and mindsets that reduce misuse and its negative consequences. Examples include:

• Trusting relationships with faculty members and teaching assistants
• Development of interpersonal skills to navigate difficult topics and conversations
• Deep dives into assignments that allows the student to showcase what they have learned through creative or artistic expression
• Emphasis from the instructor for students to practice self-compassion and build self-efficacy

If you have any questions about the 40 Assets or the SHIFT initiative, please contact Jeffrey Mayo, Assistant Director of the First-Year Experience Office and SHIFT Academic Pilots Lead. SHIFT is currently recruiting for fall 2020 Signature Course faculty and is available for consultations to discuss the 40 Assets in online and in-person learning environments. Follow SHIFT on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.