# data[].attributes.body
The Google suite is an awesome way to work collaboratively with other people in a unique, engaging way. Google Sheets in particular would have made my personal finance class more interactive and easier to complete tasks assigned to us by the instructor.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Expand all Collapse all

If you're a business with less than 300 employees, you can get started online today. Companies with more than 300 employees can contact sales to learn more about our enterprise plans.

As we've evolved G Suite into a more integrated experience across our communication and collaboration tools, we've rebranded to Google Workspace to more accurately represent the product vision.

View more FAQs
Explore Learning Center

Browse tips, guides, and how-to videos made for both new users and power users.

Get admin help

Sign in to find specific answers, manage users, or get support as a developer.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Google Workspace: Secure Online Productivity & Collaboration Tools

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn how the suite of secure, online tools from Google Workspace empowers teams of all sizes to do their best work.

# data[].attributes.body
Padlet is a great platform where instructors can present information in a very unique way. Padlet allows for the classroom to engage with each other in a very interactive way.

# data[].attributes.body
#engagewithstudents

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Starting out as a young adjunct instructor, I can painfully recall reading my lesson notes from index cards as my students sat passively with blank stares. Fortunately that didn't last long, thanks to a mentor observing my class. But I doubt my experience was much different from that of other emerging educators. After all, I had modeled these ineffective teaching practices after my own experiences as a university student.

Today, however, there has been a huge push in higher education to move beyond these passive methods of instruction that lead to less student engagement and low motivation. As Jennifer Stanchfield discovered, "More is learned through exploring and struggling than by being provided the answer."

It's harder than ever these days to keep our students' attention. But I have improved my approach over the past 30 years based on the simple belief that telling is not teaching. Because of this, I am continually exploring interesting and creative ways to engage my students.

I have identified some outstanding techniques, which I will share here, that have helped to enhance my students' engagement and motivation for learning. Many of these strategies have come from the book Total Participation Techniques: Making Every Student an Active Learner by Himmele and Himmele, which has truly transformed my teaching. So let's get started on transforming yours.

10 Engagement Strategies to Energize and Motivate Your Students

Before we break down specific strategies you can use to enhance participation, it's important to understand that there are five different types of engagement: social, behavioral, emotional, intellectual, and physical. As teachers, we may organically hit two or three of these engagement types, but some we are likely to miss, especially if we're not aware of them. I've struggled with ideas for how to get my students physically engaged, for example.

Below, I've categorized my top engagement strategies by these types to help you address all five. They have been designed for use in university classes and can easily be adapted for any area of study.

Social Engagement: Creating Connections with Students Through Collaboration and Sharing

Social engagement involves social interactions. The key to having effective social engagement is to help students get to know and trust you and other students early in the semester. The following strategies are designed to allow students to make these important connections as they help build a collaborative learning environment of support and trust.

1. Getting to Know You

Prior to the start of a new semester, I email my students a survey to learn more about their interests and preferences. Here are the key questions I ask:

What are your career goals?

How do you learn best?

Share five facts about yourself that will help me get to know you and best meet your needs.

What are your three favorite songs or musicians?

Is there anything else you would like to share that will help me better support your learning?

I also prepare a PowerPoint presentation that I use to introduce myself on the first day of class. I share personal and professional stories and family photos with the hope that my students will feel more connected to me and thus more motivated to open up themselves. I also love sharing stories about my latest connections to the country music stars I meet in Nashville (like that time I got a huge hug from Chris Janson in church).

I then have my students create name tents: they display their names on large, folded index cards to quickly familiarize the class. I also have them use this card to draw or write brief ideas about their interests, which form the basis for how they introduce themselves to their peers.

2. Find Someone Who . . .

I plan first-day-of-class activities that give students simple opportunities to get to know one another in a light-hearted way. For one such activity, I create a template with a nine-space grid in which various criteria are listed. Students must find a different person in the class who meets the criteria listed in each grid space (see Figure 1). For example, "Find someone who is an early riser."

As they circulate around the room, they must find someone for each grid space and fill in that person's name. This activity serves as a great icebreaker and helps students learn each other's names, which is important for helping them feel connected to their peers.

Behavioral Engagement: Establishing Rules, Routines, and Roles

Behavioral engagement deals with routines and behaviors that help promote learning. It is important to teach the routines and behaviors that you want your students to use to improve the quality of peer discussions and the efficiency of class activities. These strategies also help to create a sense of security as students know what to expect from you.

For example, before my students can enter the classroom, I have them wait until I open the door, as I want to be sure I have the room prepared for the day's activities. They also know that I will have a daily prompt posted for them to discuss with their peers as they arrive, which is designed to engage them in the lesson topic of the day.

Here are some other strategies for behavioral engagement.

3. Bounce Cards

With the "Bounce Card" strategy, I provide a card for each student that lists key questions or prompts I want them to discuss with a partner or small group. The questions can be generic so that the card can be used to discuss any topic. (For example, "Rephrase what your partner just said," or, "That's a great point because . . .") The questions are designed to help students strengthen their listening skills and deepen their conversations. The prompts require students to extend, rephrase, and ask follow-up questions to their bounce partners, rather than just give a simple answer.

For example, if I ask students to discuss a video clip, they might just say whether they liked it. But using a Bounce Card forces them to dig deeper. You can adapt the questions on the card to suit your educational purposes, but for the students who struggle with conversational skills, this can be a great template for helping them develop more thoughtful responses.

4. The Lecture T-Chart

You may have noticed that sometimes as students take notes, they don't seem to really be processing what they are learning. The "Lecture T-Chart" consists of a simple template where students record their notes on the left side of a page. Periodically throughout my lecture, I pause and have them use their own words to summarize the key ideas I've just presented, which they write on the right side of the template.

This pause-review-summarize process helps to strengthen comprehension and can be extended by having students share their summaries with others to further process the information through social engagement.

Emotional Engagement: Facilitating Joy, Connection, and Memories

Emotional engagement entails creating safe, positive learning experiences for everyone involved. Students will not be open to sharing their thoughts and responses in class if they feel they will be mocked or disrespected by their professor or peers.

One of the ways I create emotional connection is through music. I'll start each class playing a different student's favorite song or music video (based on what they told me in that initial survey). They love it and appreciate that I actually read their responses.

Here are some other strategies to emotionally engage your students.

5. The Ripple Method

Himmele and Himmele propose the use of the ripple method: Instead of just calling on students who raise their hand, you "ripple" your questions by first having each student respond individually to the prompt (either in their mind or in writing). They then share their responses with one to three peers before you open up the floor to volunteers willing to share with the whole class. This process ensures that every student has time to think of a response.

For example, I use the ripple method when I ask my students each week to share an "aha moment" from their clinical experiences. This relieves pressure for those students who are less motivated to engage in discussion. The students soon realize that their experiences are just as valid as everyone else's and that we are all in this together. They also realize that some of their perceived failures in the field become some of their most precious learning experiences.

Intellectual Engagement: Promoting Choice, Challenge, and Curiosity

Intellectual engagement involves curiosity and meaningful explorations. Whenever possible, give students choices in terms of tasks, topics, and strategies for demonstrating their learning. The more relevant and authentic the task, the higher the level of engagement and motivation.

Here are some activities to spur curiosity and meaning.

6. Drama, Please!

Consider using problem solving, role playing, and acting as ways of demonstrating learning. You will need to be specific about your expectations, but the freedom to explore interests and determine a mode of presentation of ideas will be motivating for many students.

In my teacher education class, I have my students roleplay parent-teacher conferences. I preface this by showing a video clip from the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. While the clip is humorous, it helps the students recognize the vulnerability of parents (and teachers) in these situations, which is an essential understanding when conducting an effective parent-teacher conference.

7. IQ Cards

IQ cards provide an interesting and efficient way for students to share insights about what they have learned, as well as raise questions after a lecture or class activity. Students write an insight (representing the "I" in IQ) on one side of an index card. This insight can be related to something new they learned during that class, or it can be a "so what" statement, indicating how this information can be applied in professional or personal practice.

On the other side of the card, the students write a question (Q) that they have about the information. Typically, I like to have students share their cards with their peers in pairs and then I collect the cards to gather informal assessment data about student learning. This works as an excellent closure activity as it reviews key lesson content and helps me assess whether students are grasping the material.

Physical Engagement: Making Movement Meaningful

Physical engagement involves some type of movement and is an often-neglected engagement strategy in the higher ed classroom. John Ratey, author of Spark (Hatchett, 2008), states that "exercise is the single most powerful tool you have to optimize your brain function." While time and space may be challenges to including physical movement in the classroom, small efforts to engage students physically help to keep them focused and may help change their brains by strengthening neuropathways leading to improved storage and retrieval of information.

While physical engagement can introduce novelty to your class, it's important to think about the physical and mobile abilities of your students, and to provide accommodations and make room for modifications when necessary.

The following strategies help to engage students in movement connected with their learning.

8. Whiteboard Splash and Gallery Walk

Whiteboard Splash (sometimes known as "chalkboard splash" or "graffiti wall") involves students responding to a prompt with words or pictures to explain an idea or concept by writing on the whiteboard (or large chart paper).

For example, I might ask my teacher education students, "What are the activities that should be included in the schedule for the first day of school for young children?" or, "What are some strategies you can use to reflect on your teaching practice?" Students work individually or in small groups to illustrate their ideas. Then students circulate around the room for a "gallery walk" to view and discuss the displayed information.

To ensure that students don't passively walk by the work, have them write down the ideas they found new, different, surprising, or worth remembering. Students can then share the results and address additional questions.

9. Inside-Outside Circles

This is one of my students' favorite strategies for physical movement and social engagement. I have students create two concentric circles where each person is in front of or behind someone in the other circle. The inside circle group is then told to turn and face their outside circle group partner. I provide a prompt for the pairs to discuss (for example, "What are some reasons for student misbehavior?") and set a time limit for each partner to share a brief response to the question.

Students then take turns listening to their partner's response. Be sure to set a timer so students know when to end their conversations. Then I have the outside circle group move two places to the left so they are facing a different person. You can provide the same or a different prompt and the process repeats.

To hold students accountable, be sure to circulate and listen to the conversations so you get an idea of their level of understanding and interaction, which you can then use in conducting a closing discussion with the whole group. If space is an issue, consider using the hallway or go outdoors (weather permitting). If you have students with limited mobility, you can conduct this activity with chairs (and wheelchairs) and students can still have rich interactions. Be sure to position any students with mobility limitations in the inner circle so just the students in the outside circle have to move during the activity.

For online classes, assign pairs of students to breakout rooms and give them a short amount of time (one to two minutes) to share their ideas with their partners. Then you can randomly assign them a new partner using a new set of breakout rooms.

10. Origami Review Game

Depending on your age, you may recall playing a game with origami paper creations with questions and answers on them. Partners can take turns telling each other's fortunes or quizzing each other. I use this often as a content review activity before exams. (You can find directions for the construction and implementation of this game here.)

Your role is to create eight close-ended questions that have simple (i.e., short) answers so they fit on the game board. (for example, "What type of engagement involves movement?" followed by the answer, "Physical Engagement.") Each pair of students receives an origami paper creation (see Figure 2), and they take turns asking each other questions from the game piece until all the questions have been covered.

Keep It Fresh and Meaningful

Adding these simple but meaningful engagement strategies into my instructional practices has not only helped create a stimulating, joyful learning environment for my students, but it has also made me a more motivated teacher. I teach a three-hour class and the time now passes quickly for everyone.

Simply put: To keep our students motivated, we have to stay motivated. These strategies can help you avoid the rut of doing the same thing all the time. But keep in mind that even a clever idea can become stale if overused, so make sure to mix and match.

Just remember that novelty and fun are additional benefits of students' cognitive engagement; they are not the main focus of our efforts. So use your class time wisely by choosing meaningful questions and engagement strategies that are related to your learning goals. If you do so, I think you'll find that your students quickly get on board.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Creative Ways to Better Engage Your Students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Starting out as a young adjunct instructor, I can painfully recall reading my lesson notes from index cards as my students sat passively with blank stares. Fortunately that didn't last long, thanks to a mentor observing my class. But I doubt my experience was much different from that of other emerging educators.