58 Engagement Strategies

The following is a list of engagement strategies you could share with instructors to increase interaction during class.

• Arrive to class early to greet students
• Use an ice breaker activity to get attention at the start of class
• Keep energy up
  • Ask lots of questions
  • Shift activities often
  • Don’t just talk “at” students
  • Highlight students who are doing well (peer to peer)
  • Warm calling (prepare students ahead to participate)
  • Use pre-recorded short lectures in livestream while presenting to allow for easy switching to different apps
  • Include images in presentation and/or chat
    • Avatars
    • Expression Emojis
    • Gifs
    • Memes
• Attendance/Accountability
  • MS Teams provides a downloadable “Attendance Report” .csv file in the chat to the owner of the meeting at its conclusion.
  • MS Teams history shows who is present in each session
  • Be consistent with attendance
    • Required or Not required
    • Points or No points
  • Roll call chat
    • Use emojis to take roll in answer to the question: “How are you feeling today?”

• Use groups
  • Encourage semester-long study groups
  • Live groups during class (best facilitated in Channels)
    • Provide unique prompts for each Channel (e.g. Think Pair Share)
    • Instructor can check in with Channel groups
  • Group channels can be synchronous or asynchronous
  • Record group discussions
• Discussions
  • Canvas discussions are typically formal / graded and asynchronous
  • MS Teams discussions are typically informal / not graded and can be either synchronous or asynchronous