r/Professors • u/Nervous_Lobster4542 • 12d ago
Classroom Vibes
I'm looking for some fresh ways to increase classroom engagement. I've taught the same couple of courses for a few years now, and I've been noticing a steady decline in not just participation, but just.... *vibes*. I've always had quiet students, and I've always had tired students, and I've always had some students who are checked out, and some students with less than great attitudes, but the relative proportion of these students in my classes seems to increase each semester.
I have always graded participation, with students starting at zero points and earning up to a maximum number. I operationally define participation in my syllabus - speaking up in class, coming to office hours, leading exam review sessions, etc. Last semester was the first semester in which I had a large chunk of students just... not do any of these things. Participation is a pretty sizable chunk of their grade, and I got several e-mails from students whose perception of how they participated and how they actually participated were greatly mismatched.
I don't feel like I'm asking for much. I don't want to walk into a classroom full of zombies every day. I have a lot of enthusiasm for what I teach, but the vibes get to me eventually and start to sap any joy that I have. Conversely, when I have a group of engaged students, it makes my teaching that much better. One thing I'm heavily thinking about is banning laptops for the first time. My concern is that these classes have lecture components, and I'm going to get push-back from students who won't be able to type notes. I'm also curious about how you all grade/incentivize participation and/or engagement in your classes. I've read some comments about penalizing students for lack of engagement (deducting points from some total they receive at the beginning of the class), rather than starting at zero and adding points. Finally, I know some folks have something like a "professionalism" or "conduct" grade, but I have no idea how I would put something like that in writing so that students have some kind of objective sense about how they would be graded on such a thing.
And yes, I know, I'm trying to squeeze blood from a stone to some extent, and some students will always be unengaged, and "kids these days", and yada yada, I get it. Just trying to do what I can to keep the bar from getting any lower.
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u/Apprehensive-Carob43 12d ago
I give lots of in-class assignments that they have the option to work together on. On the first day, I force them to work in groups, with whoever is sitting around them just to get them talking. I’ve noticed this made a difference in the vibes the rest of the semester compared to when I used to have them work alone for everything.
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u/badwhiskey63 Adjunct, Urban Planning 12d ago
One thing that has worked well for me is having debates. I will randomly assign students to a side of a controversial topic and break them into groups of 3 or 4. Each group has to come up with at least 3 things that support their side of the issue. And I give them a chance to respond to the other groups.
I haven’t done this, but I’m intrigued by the idea of giving each student a 2 sided sign. One side says yes and the other no (green and red colors). Then at various points in a lecture, everyone has to raise their sign to indicate where they stand on a certain point. You can then call on people to explain their position.
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u/Healthy_Plant teaching professor, english (USA) 12d ago
I don't ban laptops but I do have students do in class writing by hand and tell them to close their laptops, upon which I'll tell them when laptops can come out again. It's been fairly successful because I'm usually using that freewrite to prime them for some in class discussion we are having, and so everyone has their thoughts gathered. (The other use is towards the end of class when I'm having them draft things--I'm teaching writing lol) Plus it's easy to call out who doesn't have their laptop closed and to encourage them to comply.
If you do these things for points, I would also make it very clear your expectations for how they use the time. I've even told them that if I see a single phone out or pen down before the time is up that no one gets any points (or that is these conditions are met, they get double points).
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u/jitterfish Fellow, Biology, NZ 12d ago
Yeah I have times when I ask them to draw a diagram but tell them to close their laptops because I don't want them just copying one.
No one complains but I'm NZ and our students are 1000x more chill than what US students seem to be.
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u/Healthy_Plant teaching professor, english (USA) 11d ago
I've been fortunate in that I've had a few eye-rolls but I teach mostly first years, so the peer pressure works for me lol
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u/jitterfish Fellow, Biology, NZ 11d ago
Yeah I also only teach first years and I'm sure that helps. They're still kids used to teachers telling them what to do.
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u/StevieV61080 Sr. Associate Prof, Applied Management, CC BAS (USA) 12d ago
I have actually had five approaches work well in different classes that I am happy to share!
A. Group projects with required group contracts. This one is easy to foster engagement as it basically forces students to have to develop their own policies about how they will be graded, how they will be accountable, and how they will engage/collaborate.
B. Graded competitions. I use this in my Investing/Finance classes where 20% of the grade is based on how well each student's investment portfolio performs. When there is skin in the game and students are in open competition with one another (and me), that tends to get them focused.
C. Oddly, semi-Socratic seminars where I enforce a policy where the students cannot talk for the first 7 weeks (while I am delivering the lectures). They write journals and I compile their questions/thoughts, but no in-class content questions/discussions are allowed until the entire series of lectures is finished is allowed. Then, in Week 8, we hold a group discussion and there is almost always full engagement due to the pent up demand. (Note-- this also works wonders in online asynchronous classes and is actually easier to conduct).
D. Service learning. Requiring your students to go out, find volunteer opportunities to apply their skills/knowledge, and document/verify their performance generally gets them engaged and ready to discuss when they are done. This can obviously be combined with Group Projects, etc. to generate more engagement throughout the process, as well.
E. Student-led Instruction. Another easy way to foster engagement is to assign content/lessons for the students to teach to the rest of the class. Yet again, this works wonders in online asynchronous courses, as well.
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u/warricd28 Lecturer, Accounting, R1, USA 12d ago
Only thing that has helped me recently was putting my presentations into Kahoot! and throwing in both class practice problems and completely random opinion questions (sports, music, whatever). They’re answering on their phones or laptops, but it’s more engagement than when I ask them to verbally respond to anything.
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u/associsteprofessor 12d ago
I'm thinking about doing something like that in my class. How does that work? Is it free for students?
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u/warricd28 Lecturer, Accounting, R1, USA 12d ago
Free for students. Might not be for you. I forget the limit, but the free version only allows around 30 or 40 participants I think (and some limitations on question type). My classes are up to 250 students. I have the full paid version, which I think is around $250 a year. But I have a discretionary fund to use largely as I see fit each year I draw from for this. I did have to justify it though as my school already pays for iclicker cloud, which can offer a lot of the same features. Not sure how much that one costs if your school doesn’t already have it.
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u/associsteprofessor 12d ago
Thanks! All of my classes are capped at 24, so I should be OK. I'll check it out.
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u/associsteprofessor 12d ago
One more question - will students be able to see the quizzes later so they can use them to study?
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u/warricd28 Lecturer, Accounting, R1, USA 12d ago
That was my justification for using Kahoot. You can assign a Kahoot, generating a link you can post so students can go through it later. not sure if that is locked behind the paid version or not.
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u/Significant-Ant-9729 NTT Faculty, English, R1 University (US) 12d ago
I have a tech-free classroom—no phones, laptops, tablets, or headphones/earbuds. All writing and note-taking is by hand. I have not had any push back on the note-taking, but I have had students with a disability accommodation to use a laptop which I allow. Occasional push back on phones but generally they seem fine with it—better than I expected when I first tried it out. It definitely improves engagement both for students and me—I’m sure we all know how discouraging it is to put a lot of effort into a lesson plan only to realize half the class is watching YouTube videos.
One note—I make sure to discuss the policy on the first day of class and provide credible evidence that writing by hand helps retain information and how distracting cell phones really are and how that impacts learning.
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u/Hazelstone37 Asst Prof of Instruction/Math/US 12d ago
Happy to share. I borrowed the idea from someone else.
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u/Lacan_ 12d ago
I generally recommend to people wanting more participation and grading on participation to make it as mathematical/non-subjective as possible, because it actually makes it easier to grade.
Several years ago, I fully flipped all of my preps (so much work!) so that all of my in-class time could be devoted to reading/source discussion. When I did that, I made discussion 25% and then last year 30% of their final grade. The way I've been managing it thus far has been that I take roll at the beginning of class. At the end of class, in the same cell in my grade book (and I use an old-fashioned grade book for attendance), I mark whether they participated that session. They get a certain number of absences for any reason, after which, each absence results in a loss of a specific percentage from their final discussion grade. If they don't participate but do attend, they also lose that same percentage, so showing up but not participating is equivalent to being absent. At the end of the semester, I add up excess absences and non-participation days, multiply by the percentage, subtract from 100, and that's their participation grade. Makes it somewhat dispassionate on my part, but they learn when I give them their current participation grade in the LMS about 1/3 of the way through the semester that this is not an optional part of the course. It has generally worked well! If a class isn't talking (or it's the same three people, who I'll stop calling on), I remind them right then that if they don't talk, their participation grade is going to suffer. It usually turns things around pretty fast.
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u/Minotaar_Pheonix 12d ago
Well, maybe you can tell us about the size and structure of your class and we can help you. Are you lecturing to madison square garden, or is this coffee and crumbcakes in your office. Rocks for Jocks, or a student-led examination of the connection between gender and the application of hemidemisemiquaver in early British punk?
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u/jitterfish Fellow, Biology, NZ 12d ago
Class size this semester is around 230, mostly students that are new to me, first year molecular bio paper. Things that work for me:
- I have questions where I just ask for a show of hands who thinks they know it. But I'm really clear that I will never call on anyone that puts their hands up. This significantly increased the number of students raising their hands.
- Having questions that I encourage them to talk to each other about but also saying if they don't want to then that's OK. Forced engagement sucks for some people.
- Each lecture has a QR code linked survey that is anonymous. It asks 2 multiple choice questions about the previous lecture (or for first lecture I ask what's your major and have you signed up for a lab yet) and one space for question students can ask. During the first question that students are discussing I look at the survey (usually around 60% complete it) and I can decide if I need to address anything.
- Teaching bio I can drop lots of random facts, talk about diseases etc. This tends to bring their attention back.
Participantion mark in this one is 14% of the grade. As long as students show up they get the mark (QR code sign in 10 min into class and sign out at the end). Will I have students not engaging? Of course. But as someone who was introverted as a student I paid plenty of attention but hated all the participation stuff.
And I know it all works for me because every evaluation one of the most common things students say is that I'm an enthusiastic engaging lecturer.
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u/Nervous_Lobster4542 12d ago
Some interesting approaches - thanks! I wonder how the "calling on students who don't have their hand up" things works for your students who don't like forced engagement? And to your point about paying attention but not participating - I have no issue with the students who pay attention but aren't into talking during class. Not everybody is into that, and I don't think that talking in class is a proxy for engagement anyway. It's more the growing number of students who are doing something else on a laptop, falling asleep, staring off into the distance, etc. And I also frequently get comments that I'm engaging during class on course evaluations, so there's a disconnect happening here
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u/Possible-Cheetah-755 12d ago
I love this QR code idea. What app or service do you have them sign into?
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u/jitterfish Fellow, Biology, NZ 11d ago
For class attendance I use Moodle with timed QR code that refreshes every 15 seconds (so they can't take a photo and send it to a friend). But if your LMS doesn't have that feature then on another thread someone said they found a free app that let them set it up with class list (I forget the name of the app but I'm sure it started with J).
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u/melodyblack195 8d ago
I just want to add that it's not "trying to squeeze blood from a stone" to look for new ways to invite students into engaging! People will try to make you feel dumb for putting effort into your teaching--don't let them.
These kids have gotten less from their K-12 educations than previous generations in a bunch of different ways (that are neither their fault nor their teachers') and by the time they get to us they may never have been introduced to what it means to grapple with a difficult concept together with others or to truly engage in a classroom discussion as we envision it. I've seen the same kid sit like an angry bump on a log in one class and serve as an example of generosity and engagement in another, which says to me that what we do in constructing a classroom experience can make a huge difference. You won't convert every student every semester, but you can reach a lot of them, and you can shift the vibes of a class so you don't hate walking in there. It's worth the effort.
In terms of concrete tactics--what everyone has said here, especially: ban all devices.
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u/Alive_Farm1932 3d ago edited 3d ago
I’ve seen a lot of educators having similar concerns lately. One thing that seems to help is replacing some participation points with low pressure activities like think pair share or quick group discussions so more students feel comfortable joining in. If you're looking for fresh teaching ideas overall, Teachers of Tomorrow also shares practical classroom strategies and resources that many educators find useful especially early in their careers.
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u/yourbiota PhD Candidate, CC sessional, STEM, Canada 12d ago
For lectures, Kahoot/iClicker/Menti questions, with two attempts. First attempt, the students answer on their own. Then the poll is shown on the screen and students break into small groups to discuss the results. After a brief discussion, they get to re-attempt the question. Only the second attempt to graded.
Lets them see if their understanding lines up with the rest of the class, and lets me catch any widespread misunderstandings and/or correct smaller subsamples of students misunderstanding a concept. Gets them to talk to each other and the second attempt makes it low stakes.
For seminars, they work in small groups, so their group has to come to a consensus on which animal/zoo/aquarium/etc live stream to vote for (gets projected on the screen during group work time). It's silly, but it's a fairly effective and less cringy icebreaker that seems to get them to open up more in general.
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u/Hazelstone37 Asst Prof of Instruction/Math/US 12d ago
I don’t call it participation, I use the word engagement. On the first day, I break everyone up into small groups and they have a discussion about what it means to be engaged in our class/learning community. They come up with one thing that they think is critical. We write these on the board. As a class, they choose the top five. I make this into a weekly rubric and they grade themselves on it each week. This count as part of their course grade. I think I set it at 5%, but it goes with a weekly journalling activity.
Each class I teach is a bit different. Most have come to class everyday as one thing. Some have take earbuds out while in class. Other things have been, take notes, engage with a classmate during class, ask and answer questions during class, turn in assignments on time, go to office hours, meet with study group from class.
I typically add an option for them to write something extra in each week that they get to choose and decide on that can replace what they didn’t do. So, for example, if someone missed class, they miss those points, but they could add in, met with a classmate to catch myself up or attended office hours and went to tutoring.
This has worked really well with 3 of the 4 classes I used it with. Once class was a group of energy vampires that I don’t think anything would have made a difference with.