Maximizing student engagement

​During one of my on-campus interviews this past year, I was asked how I maximize student engagement. Obviously, this is important when teaching as we want our students to participate during class instead of us talking at them the entire time. I had an answer prepared for this question as any good job candidate would, but it really got me thinking. What are all the ways that I maximize student engagement? Or at the very least, what are strategies I use to assess whether students were engaged? 

Here is a list I came up with of different strategies I have used.
 

• Open-ended questions. These can be broader picture questions  posed during lecture to stimulate a mini discussion, or I also like to use these types of questions when making connections between new and old material. It allows the students to make the link on their own (with some guidance if necessary).
• Think, pair, share. Sometimes when I pose open-ended questions, students may be reluctant to share at first. In this instance, I’ll have them think about the question for a moment, turn to their neighbor and discuss their thoughts, then regroup as a class after a few moments and share their answer. 
• Review questions. These can be administered through a clicker system, polling software, or just having students raise their hands. The purpose of review questions is to review content! This can be done at the end of a major section, the end of the day, or at the beginning of the day. While this strategy may not always assess in-the-moment engagement (depending on when you insert these questions), you can tell whether students grasped the main points.
• Short written reflections. These could be either responding to a prompt or 3-2-1. Both of these techniques I describe here.
• Small activities. This could be as simple as a worksheet or a small group activity that gets students thinking about and implementing the lecture material.

 
These are some ways I have tried my hand at maximizing student engagement or assessing whether they were engaged. What strategies have you used? I’d love to hear your ideas!
 
written by Jen Blush