Examples of Student Engagement Plans

Example Student Engagement Plans Below are four exemplary student engagement plans developed by SU faculty that have found creative ways to create community in their classrooms and solve unique problems experienced in their specific programs.

Science & Engineering - Jen Sorensen

Building An Amazing Atmosphere

• Facilitate a conversation about class norms during first week, so we have a common agreement about “how to be” in the Zoom space.
• Everyone posts a brief intro video.
• Intro questionnaire administered as Canvas quiz.
• 1-on-1 meetings during the first 2 weeks.

Encouraging Plenty of Participation

• Start every class with a simple “chat box check-in” questions that everyone can respond to (e.g., What’s your favorite song right now?)
• Encourage students to use voice or chat box to ask questions.
• Everyone takes turn as “chat watcher” and calls out to me if I miss a question or comment.
• Shift between large-group and breakout rooms.
• Quality over quantity. Don’t give so much homework that students constantly feel like they are just getting by.
• Give students a low-stakes avenue to ask questions outside of class (Q&A discussion board).

Fostering Deeper Discussions

• Use a journal question to warm students up before discussion.
• Set expectation that students will share screen in breakout rooms to facilitate group work.

Providing Fruitful Feedback

• Move from 3 “big exams” to smaller, more-frequent, lower-stakes quizzes.
• Try audio or video feedback!
• Hand-written feedback on uploaded pictures of hand-written work.

 

 

UCOR/International Studies - Audrey Hudgins

Building an Amazing Atmosphere

Introductory Videos: I’ll record an introductory video and ask the students to do the same. They will post to a Padlet and respond to one or more of their classmates' introductory videos over the course of the first week.

• Getting to Know You: I’ll meet with every student for 20 minutes one-on-one in the first three weeks of the quarter. They will take a Getting to Know You survey beforehand with the following questions:

1. 1. How are you? (Seriously.)
   2. Preferred personal pronouns:
   3. Major(s) and minor(s):
   4. Expected graduation month/year:
   5. What are your top two self-care practices when under stress?
   6. How do you learn best? Is it reading, taking notes, and writing out your thoughts in a journal or on a discussion board? Is it talking over ideas and texts in small or large groups? Is it doing, i.e. creative work, application of concepts to something more hands-on, etc.? Are Powerpoint lectures your favorite? (If they are, I will try to get better at them.) In other words, I am the type of learner that thrives in class environments in which…
   7. What are aspects of your life experience (travel, service work, employment, family life) and identities (gender, race/ethnicity, socio-economic class, etc.) that bring you closer to minoritized or excluded communities?
   8. What are aspects of your life experience and identities that distance you from these communities?
   9. How do immigration issues intersect with your life?
   10. What are your goals for the class and how will you achieve your goals?
   11. Do you have access to reliable internet, a computer or smartphone, and a quiet(ish) space or headphones that would allow you to participate in synchronous class sessions by video? What about audio-only (calling in to a phone conference)? If you find you are having to share time with other members of your household, please consider that, too.
   12. What city, and more importantly, what time zone will you be in this fall?
   13. Can you say with confidence that you can be online during our scheduled class meetings? For reference, the class is scheduled to meet Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:45 - 5:50 pm Pacific Daylight Time.
   14. What due date and time works best with your work and family obligations? Fridays at 5 p.m. or midnight? Sundays at 5 p.m. or midnight? Tuesdays at 3:45 p.m.?
   15. I have Netflix and/or I can easily access it through a friend or family member.
   16. If you know Spanish, please share your level of language capacity (note that Spanish language capacity is not a requirement for this course!).
   17. What do else you want to share about yourself, if anything? Examples might be:

• • Working at a job or caregiving for someone that could that impact your ability to be present in class or to meet deadlines.
  • Something about your personal situation that might affect your education, or anything else where I might be able to help you connect with resources.
• Day One activity. I’ll use an activity called Concentric Circles through Zoom breakout rooms in which each student has 1-2 minutes per question to speak uninterrupted with a partner. With Concentric Circles the outside circle rotates to right to meet a new partner from the inside circle. In this case, I’ll just wing it with new breakout rooms.
  1. What is your day like so far?
  2. What does the word ‘border’ mean to you?
  3. My background is…
  4. What did you do over break?
  5. What experiences do you have with migration (geographic or abstract)?
  6. What are you most excited about in 2020?

Encouraging Plenty of Participation

• Discussion circles. Students will be assigned to a discussion circle on a particular theme of interest (see next section). Each time the circle meets, students will rotate between these four primary roles:
  • Convener. This person convenes the Zoom session; creates a welcoming space; listens for judgmental comments that sound offensive, insulting and demeaning; and keeps the circle on time and task.
  • Facilitator. This person leads the discussions through careful preparation, asks the circle’s prepared questions, and makes sure everyone has had a chance to speak.
  • Communicator. This person takes notes during the discussions, and in real-time collaboration with circle members, prepares and posts (AS) or shares (S) the circle response.
  • Responder. This person responds to other circles’ questions or posted reactions and reviews key takeaways following the conclusion of the class discussion period (if AS), or Connector. This person does her best to show how members’ contributions are connected to each other (if S).
• If groups have more than four members, others can take one or more of the following suggested supporting roles:
  • Questioner. This person tries to pose questions that lead to a deeper discussion, for example, “Can you give me an example of that?” “What would that look like? “How does your point connect to Theory A?”
  • Devil's Advocate. This person listens carefully for any emerging consensus. When she hears this, she formulates and expresses a contrary view.
  • Evidential Assessor. This person listens for comments that generalize or make unsupported assertions. She then asks for the evidence that supports the assertions being made.
• In the Media presentation. Student pairs will be assigned a class period to start us off with a jointly anchored 5-10-minute news broadcast that connects course themes to a current issue.
• Response letters. Instead of the students writing papers for my eyes only, they will be putting their learning into action, by sending a letter to an individual, organization, or media outlet of their choice with the goal of influencing policy on an issue of their choice connected to course themes. The students may write these individually or as a group. My hope is that the public nature of the writing effort will increase their engagement.
• National Security Council simulation. Starting on election day, the students will form a National Security Council to develop a policy recommendation on an issue connected to course themes. Every student (in cabinet position pairs) will take on a role to advise the next President on asylum policy.

Fostering Deeper Discussions

• Discussion circle themes. Students will choose one of six preferred themes (see below) and I’ll form groups by their preferences. They will meet regularly to discuss the class materials through their preferred lens. I’ll ask them to regularly share out to the class their perspective on the class materials.
  • Identity
  • Politics
  • Economy
  • Culture
  • History
  • Security

Providing Fruitful Feedback

• Learning Review. I’ll ask students to post a ~50-word review of their learning at the end of each week to get a sense of how they’re proceeding with the material.  
• In class grading of discussion posts using rubric. After our first online discussion, I pull non-attributed examples of discussion posts and we discuss what was good and how the posts might have been stronger. Then we ‘grade’ through a poll to ‘norm’ the class to a higher standard for their posts.
• Response letter working sessions. At the end of each module, I’ll have one class devoted to working together in class on their response letter for that module. They’ll come to class with a bulleted outline and we’ll cycle through mini-sessions of concept mapping, peer review, writing, peer review, re-writing, peer review, re-writing, etc.
• Audio/Video feedback. I’ll try audio/video feedback on the response letters this quarter and see how it goes. I tend to give students a lot of feedback on their work so I imagine it comes across as harsh.
• Focus on what’s working.

 

Humanities - Rebecca McNamara

Building an Amazing Atmosphere