Keeping Us Engaged:Putting Student Stories (and Evidence) into Action

Description

The student's voice is often missing from conversations about student success. Come hear stories from students attending various colleges and universities across the nation about what professors can do to motivate and engage them. Discover the research evidence behind the strategies suggested by students and walk away with an action plan to increase student engagement. During this session, we’ll cover a lot of ground, from first day of class activities to the power of relationships, from teaching strategies to learning tasks.

By the end of this workshop, participants know or be able to:

• Understand student perspectives on what works and why in terms of student engagement.
• Be able to summarize the research on the first day of class, professor-student relationships, and teaching strategies and tasks that result in higher levels of student engagement.
• Identify and use teaching strategies and learning approaches that engage students.

Plans for Audience Participation and Interaction:

This session is divided into five themes: (1) Engaging students on the first day of class, (2) connecting with students in and outside of the classroom, (3) using powerful teaching strategies such as demonstrations and collaborative learning activities, (4) creating meaningful assignments, and (5) using feedback to engage students. Student stories (videos and quotes) are used to introduce each theme. The research evidence behind the student suggestions are shared via an interactive mini-lecture. After each theme is introduced, participants have an opportunity to engage in small group work in breakout rooms on a task related to that theme. A variety of group approaches will be used, such as Save the Last Word for Me, where each participant writes one key point that resonated with them in the chat and then each person responds to the point before the person who wrote it explains why it was so important to them. The focus of the tasks during the group work is on identifying ways to put the student suggestions into practice. Each participant develops an action plan and gets feedback about their plan from another participant or two (via Google doc sharing). At the end of the session, the themes are summarized and participants share their action plans.