Tag Archives: interaction

Keeping the Connection Alive During Remote Instruction

Candace Receno, PhD
Assistant Professor, Exercise Science & Athletic Training
Ithaca College

As a first year Assistant Professor, making the shift to remote learning during COVID-19 was certainly a gamechanger. As many previous blog posts have highlighted, the way we needed to look at instruction changed and forced both students and faculty to rapidly adapt. There were so many things that needed to be considered when making the transition. How flexible can our students be, now that some have become primary caretakers or have fallen ill or need to seek employment? How do instructors tackle making significant changes to their course, now that they are also dealing with similar issues? How do both groups create and participate in a high-quality course experience with fewer resources and a very short amount of time to adjust? Many of the insightful blogs posted have really highlighted how to keep these considerations in mind in order to create online courses that still meet course objectives and foster a high-quality learning experience. I have learned so much through reading these posts, in addition to numerous resources provided to our community. Through integration of these resources into my own courses, I found myself also trying to think of ways that I could keep the courses inherently “me”. Engaging and connecting with students on a personal level has always been something that I found helpful to my own teaching, but becomes hard when the mode of communication has shifted. This can also be difficult when some classes must be delivered asynchronously, in an effort to accommodate the changing lifestyles of our students. Perhaps just as important to a high-quality learning experience as shifting our instruction methods, is finding new ways to create the human connection that is much easier developed with on-campus learning. Here, I highlight some of the methods I found to be successful in making sure that I was able to keep my students engaged in the course while miles apart. While these may sound like really simple ideas, I’ll admit that I didn’t realize how important they were to the student experience until I had reflective conversations with many students after the Spring semester. With times of uncertainty still ahead, I plan to continue using these methods in the future.

1. Staying online after the class has ended.

This is probably the simplest of the suggestions to integrate, but really seemed to make a difference in getting the students more comfortable opening up over the computer screen. For my synchronous courses, I always ended class time by reminding the students I would stay in the virtual classroom to answer any questions or just to chat. I found that once students realized I would be sticking around for a few minutes regardless of if anyone else stayed, they were more willing to hang around and ask questions they might not have felt comfortable asking in front of other students or e-mailing me about. This also gave me another opportunity to reflect on how I was constructing my online course materials. Hearing what points students needed extra clarification on forced me to consider how topics that were ordinarily well understood in the physical classroom needed to be shifted with remote instruction.

2. Integrating video/audio into online discussion boards.

I needed to teach asynchronously for a particular course where students had concerns about internet availability and meeting other personal obligations, which came with completely different issues from my synchronous course. Posting notes in addition to pre-recorded lectures allowed me to successfully get course material across, but it was still missing the personal component that is fostered via in class discussion. The use of discussion boards where both the students and I posed questions to one another helped with that. Importantly, I asked students to record their questions/answers for the discussion board via video or audio whenever possible. Students continually reported that it was nice to actually hear and see one another even though live sessions were not possible. Moreover, they described how it was nice to laugh and share with one another, as responses did not have to be rehearsed and could closely mimic what might have happened in the physical classroom.

3. Holding several office hours, varying in day and time.

Disclaimer: This may be harder to implement for some individuals because with COVID-19 comes a host of additional responsibilities and stresses that need to be attended to. But, if possible even for one day, I highly recommend it. The traditional times for which we hold office hours may not be feasible when we take into account the added responsibilities of needing to stay at home. So, why not hold office hours at different times that lend themselves to our new schedules? I found that holding office hours much later than I normally would resulted in many more students coming to them. Moreover, similar to my first suggestion, I made sure that students knew I’d be in the meeting room for my virtual hours regardless of if students signed up or not. Previously, I had always had an “open door policy” where students knew they could stop by my office without prior notice as long as my door was physically open. The new virtual office hours I held helped to mimic that. By having drastically different hours on different days, I tried to make sure that students could stop in whenever suited them. An important memory that stuck with me about this particular method was an instance when I was available at 7 pm on a Tuesday night. I had a student who showed up just wanting to talk, and stated, “I figured I wasn’t bothering you since you were on here anyway.” Prior to COVID-19, she often stopped in to talk about how things were going. Through our virtual conversation, I learned that this student wasn’t seeking any help related to the class, but just wanted to talk because it helped things feel “normal” again. Even if you can’t hold a large variety of office hours, I truly think that doing something that helps mimic the ways you previously interacted with your students is so helpful during this time.

4. Holding “unofficial” hours.

This was a tip that I originally learned from a colleague, and adapted to fit my own subject matter. This colleague would host “unofficial” hours, where she would sporadically e-mail students to let them know she would be in an online meeting room partaking in some fun activity. For example, on a random weeknight, she e-mailed students and said they could join in on her quest to make enchiladas. Several students took her up on that offer, and she used it as a time for the class to come together without any defined learning expectations. This gave her students the opportunity to connect as they would have previously, in a class that was now asynchronous during remote learning. She began to take sessions one step further, and would ask her students to describe ingredients in her cooking sessions in the context of her speech language pathology lectures. In an effort to take her advice and put my own spin on it, I began asking students to join me when I would participate in online workouts. It became a great way to have students connect with their classmates using an activity that we all had some interest in. With students in my pathophysiology course, I’d sneak in questions about how students felt after participating in a particular exercise and how this might impact the clinical populations they work with, giving me a way to reiterate what they had learned in a real-world context.

In my experience, a large part in keeping students engaged was understanding that the human component to a course has the potential to impact student learning irrespective of how well we can pivot our course formats to meet remote instruction needs. No matter how it’s done, showing the students that you are still on the other side of that WiFi signal is an important consideration for all of us. I hope that my experience helps to identify other ways you might do this, and I’d appreciate you sharing your own ways to cultivate the student-instructor relationships via online methods.

Candace Receno is an assistant professor in the Exercise Science & Athletic Training department at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY. She earned her PhD in Science Education from Syracuse University and served as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Biological Sciences department at Le Moyne College for two years. Candace just completed her first year as an Assistant Professor at Ithaca College, where her undergraduate and graduate courses include Advanced Exercise Physiology, Cardiopulmonary Assessment for Exercise, Pathophysiology, and Foundations of Human Performance and Wellness. She also hopes to continue engaging undergraduates in research related to exercise performance in special populations.

Teaching Physiology with Educational Games

Fernanda Klein Marcondes
Associate Professor of Physiology
Biosciences Department
Piracicaba Dental School (FOP), University of Campinas (UNICAMP)

Educational games may help students to understand Physiology concepts and solve misconceptions. Considering the topics that have been difficult to me during my undergraduate and graduate courses, I’ve developed some educational games, as simulations and noncompetitive activities. The first one was the cardiac cycle puzzle. The puzzle presents ﬁgures of phases of the cardiac cycle and a table with ﬁve columns: phases of cardiac cycle, atrial state, ventricular state, state of atrioventricular valves, and state of pulmonary and aortic valves. Chips are provided for use to complete the table. Students are requested to discuss which is the correct sequence of ﬁgures indicating the phases of cardiac cycle, complete the table with the chips and answer questions in groups. This activity is performed after a short lecture on the characteristics of cardiac cells, pacemaker and plato action potentials and reading in the textbook. It replaces the oral explanation from the professor to teach the physiology of the cardiac cycle.

I also developed an educational game to help students to understand the mechanisms of action potentials in cell membranes. This game is composed of pieces representing the intracellular and extracellular environments, ions, ion channels, and the Na⁺-K⁺-ATPase pumps. After a short lecture about resting membrane potential, and textbook reading, there is the game activity. The students must arrange the pieces to demonstrate how the ions move through the membrane in a resting state and during an action potential, linking the ion movements with a graph of the action potential. In these activities the students learn by doing.

According to their opinions, the educational games make the concepts more concrete, facilitate their understanding, and make the environment in class more relaxed and enjoyable. Our first studies also showed that the educational games increased the scores and reduced the number of wrong answers in learning assessments. We continue to develop and apply new educational games that we can share with interested professors, with pleasure.

Contact: ferklein@unicamp.br

Luchi KCG, Montrezor LH, Marcondes FK. Effect of an educational game on university students´ learning about action potentials. Adv Physiol Educ., 41 (2): 222-230, 2017.

Cardozo LT, Miranda AS, Moura MJCS, Marcondes FK. Effect of a puzzle on the process of students’ learning about cardiac physiology. Adv Physiol Educ., 40(3): 425-431, 2016.

Marcondes FK, Moura MJCS, Sanches A, Costa R, Lima PO, Groppo FC, Amaral MEC, Zeni P, Gaviao KC, Montrezor LH. A puzzle used to teach the cardiac cycle. Adv Physiol Educ., 39(1):27-31, 2015.

Fernanda Klein Marcondes received her Bachelor’s Degree in Biological Sciences at University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas – SP, Brazil in 1992. She received her Master in Biological Sciences (1993) and PhD in Sciences (1998). In 1995 she began a position at Piracicaba Dental School, UNICAMP, where she is an Associate Professor of Physiology and coordinates studies of the Laboratory of Stress. She coordinates the subjects Biosciences I and II, with integration of Biochemistry, Anatomy, Histology, Physiology and Pharmacology content in the Dentistry course. In order to increase the interest, engagement and learning of students in Physiology classes, she combines lectures with educational games, quizzes, dramatization, discussion of scientific articles and group activities. Recently she started to investigate the perception of students considering the different teaching methodologies and the effects of these methodologies on student learning.

Motivational Interviewing in Higher Education

Motivational interviewing (MI) originated in Norway in the early 1980s by psychotherapists who began to use this principle to treat patients with drinking difficulties. He suggested one “could use empathetic listening to minimize resistance and increase motivation for change” ¹. The methodology was further developed, revised and expanded^{2, 3} by William Miller and fellow clinical psychologist Stephen Rollnick to elicit change behavior using intrinsic motivation to overcome resistance and ambivalence.

MI has gained greater popularity with it’s expansion from treatment of addiction by psychologists to healthcare providers working to elicit change health-related behaviors such as smoking cessation, exercise and healthy eating habits. This is where I first encountered MI. The outpatient physical therapy clinic where I was working offered a continuing education class for physical and occupational therapists to learn MI principles, conversation and listening (especially listening) skills to elicit change behavior in our patients. Most of our patients are motivated to perform their home exercise program and implement lifestyle modifications, if necessary, to help in pain management and improving function. However, as in the classroom, there always seems to be 1 or 2 patients on your schedule where it feels like pulling teeth to get them involved and motivated to participate.

During the 2-day MI course, we practiced reflective and empathetic listening skills and learned how to drive a conversation so the patient is the one doing most of the talking. I worked to expand these new skills with my patients in the PT clinic. It was harder than I anticipated to withhold my opinion on how I thought various obstacles could be overcome or ways my patients could make time in their day to do their home exercise program. However, what emerged was a patient-driven conversation where they devised ways to make behavioral changes and I felt like I was doing less work. Woah.

I split my time between treating patients as a PT in an outpatient PT clinic and being a PhD student. For many reasons I love this split in my roles, but one of the best parts is experiencing how what I learn in one environment influences my actions in the other. In my role as a lab instructor, discussion leader and eventually sole instructor on campus, one of my biggest challenges was knowing how far to go to reach out to the seemingly disengaged or apathetic students. I felt responsible for their learning, I wanted them to get the most out of the short time we spent together in the classroom and I wanted them to have a positive experience. At the same time, I recognized that I cannot make a student learn. It was unclear to me how far I should be reaching, how often should I pull them into the conversation and really, how to manage the less well-engaged students.

I made use of the many wonderful people and resources available to me to better understand how others dealt with similar experiences and feelings. I also started to think about how I handle the patients in the PT clinic that are there “because my doctor sent me”, at least on the surface don’t seem to want to be there and take few actions to help themselves resolve their pain. And then the thought, “why not use MI strategies in the classroom”, came to me. While MI is continually evolving over time with its ongoing expansion into more disciplines, to me, MI is a style of listening (really listening) and questioning to facilitate change behaviors by working with the other person to identify their intrinsic motivation. And many of the keywords used to describe MI are words that have also been used to describe high-quality pedagogical techniques such as collaboration, empathy, autonomy and promoting self-efficacy.

After a few reflective listening conversations, what followed was not a miracle transformation of student behavior. However, I gained a much better understanding of the student’s situation from her perspective, with many layers of complexity built in, and was able to give that student what she needed at that moment in time – which did not involve getting an A in that class. We were now on the same page. I felt so much better about the situation and I lost the guilt and stress over not being able to improve participation in the seemingly unengaged student in the back of the class. This student seemed to also feel more comfortable in class and with me. She did not pass that class, but it was what she needed to do at that time. She took the class again over the summer, when her personal life allowed her to succeed in the classroom, with a high level of engagement throughout the term. It was a huge win for both of us – she was eventually successful in the classroom and I felt good about meeting her where she was on that path to success.

I certainly am not the only one who has thought to transfer MI strategies from the healthcare setting to the classroom. In fact, Harvey Wells and Anna Jones have recently published a couple papers on the theoretical basis⁴ and practical application⁵ of using MI in higher education classrooms. They argue that using MI in higher education classrooms can lead to student-teacher collaboration, facilitate building self-efficacious behaviors in students and establish a student-driven pathway to change⁴. After all, isn’t learning a non-linear process of change? Why not couple that process with a set of useful techniques educators can use to see the change they want to see in students?

To be sure, there are challenges associated with taking a method or style of communication from one discipline and adapting it to another. Certainly, empathetic and reflective listening practices can easily lead to a greater emotional involvement, yet as Wells & Jones⁴ have described, “education is not (nor should be) therapy”. Using MI strategies should not be viewed as a mechanism to “treat” a student, but rather as a tool to foster change within a student and help educators to understand where they need to meet the student, so they can walk along the same path instead of pushing against each other.

While empirical evidence is needed to determine the effectiveness of using MI in higher education, given my own use of and success with MI, I can foresee MI practices becoming more prevalent in higher education as a mechanism to identify student-driven goals with a pathway for educators and students to collaboratively meet those goals. I encourage you to do a little reading on MI practices. At a minimum it will make you a better listener.

References

1) Rollnick, S. and Allison, J. (2004). Motivational Interviewing. In The Essential Handbook of Treatment and Prevention of Alcohol Problems. (105-116). Chapter 7: West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

2) Miller, W.R. and Rollnick, S. (1991). Motivational interviewing: Preparing people for change. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

3) Miller, W.R. and Rollnick, S. (2013). Motivational Interviewing: Helping people change, 3^rd edition. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

4) Wells, H. and Jones, A. (2018). Learning to change: the rationale for the use of motivational interviewing in higher education, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 55:1, 111-118.

5) Wells, H., Jones, A. and Jones, S.C. (2014). Teaching reluctant students: using the principles and techniques of motivational interviewing to foster better student-teacher interactions, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 51:2, 175-184.

Katie Kolwaski completed her BS and DPT from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. After practicing as a full-time PT for 4 years, she decided to pursue further education at the University of Oregon. In 2017, she finished a MS degree in Muscle Physiology and then transitioned into the Neurophysiology lab for her PhD, studying the impact of mental fatigue on neuromuscular function in older adults and the potential role of physical activity in modulating that relationship. Katie has since moved to the University of Western Ontario in the great white north in order to finish her PhD. She continues to treat patients as a PT and teach students within the Physio school in London, ON as a TA.

Mentoring Mindsets and Student Success

There are numerous studies showing that STEM persistence rates are poor (especially amongst under-represented minority, first-generation, and female students) (1-2). It is also fairly broadly accepted that introductory science and math courses act as a primary barrier to this persistence, with their large class size. There is extensive evidence that first-year seminar courses help improve student outcomes and success, and many of our institutions offer those kinds of opportunities for students (3). Part of the purpose of these courses is to help students develop the skills that they need to succeed in college while also cultivating their sense of community at the university. In my teaching career, I have primarily been involved in courses taken by first-year college students, including mentoring others while they teach first-year courses (4). To help starting to build that sense of community and express the importance of building those college success skills, I like to tell them about how I ended up standing in front of them as Dr. Trimby.

I wasn’t interested in Biology as a field when I started college. I was going to be an Aerospace Engineer and design spaceships or jets, and I went to a very good school with a very good program for doing exactly this. But, college didn’t get off to the best start for me, I wasn’t motivated and didn’t know how to be a successful college student, so my second year of college found me now at my local community college (Joliet Junior College) taking some gen ed courses and trying to figure out what next. I happened to take a Human Genetics course taught by Dr. Polly Lavery. At the time, I didn’t know anything about Genetics or have a particular interest, I just needed the Natural Science credit. Dr. Lavery’s course was active and engaged, and even though it didn’t have a lab associated with it we transformed some E. coli with a plasmid containing GFP and got to see it glow in the dark (which, when it happened almost 20 years ago was pretty freaking cool!). This was done in conjunction with our discussions of Alba the glow-in-the-dark rabbit (5). The course hooked me! I was going to study gene therapy and cure cancer! After that semester, I transferred to Northern Illinois University and changed my major to Biology.

So, why do I bring this up here? When I have this conversation with my undergraduate students, my goal is to remind them that there will be bumps in the road. When we mentor our students, whether it be advisees or students in our classes, it is important to remind them that failure happens. What matters is what you do when things do go sideways. That is really scary for students. Many of our science majors have been extremely successful in the lead up to college, and may have never really failed or even been challenged. What can we do to help our students with this?

First of all, we can build a framework into our courses that supports and encourages students to still strive to improve even if they don’t do well on the first exam. This can include things like having exam wrappers (6) and/or reflective writing assignments that can help students assess their learning process and make plans for future assessments. Helping students develop self-regulated learning strategies will have impacts that semester (7) and likely beyond. In order for students to persevere in the face of this adversity (exhibit grit), there has to be some sort of hope for the future – i.e. there needs to be a reasonable chance for a student to still have a positive outcome in the course. (8) This can include having a lower-stakes exam early in the semester to act as a learning opportunity, or a course grading scale that encourages and rewards improvement over the length of the semester.

Secondly, we can help them to build a growth mindset (9), where challenges are looked forward to and not knowing something or not doing well does not chip away at someone’s self-worth. Unfortunately, you cannot just tell someone that they should have a growth mindset, but there are ways of thinking that can be encouraged in students (10).

Something that is closely tied to having a growth mindset is opening yourself up to new experiences and the potential for failure. In other words being vulnerable (11). Many of us (and our students) choose courses and experiences that we know that we can succeed at, and have little chance of failure. This has the side effect of limiting our experiences. Being vulnerable, and opening up to new experiences is something important to remind students of. This leads to the next goal of reminding students that one of the purposes of college is to gain a broad set of experiences and that for many of us, that will ultimately shape what we want to do, so it is okay if the plan changes – but that requires exploration.

As an educator who was primarily trained in discipline-specific content addressing some of these changes to teaching can be daunting. Fortunately there are many resources available out there. Some of them I cited previously, but additional valuable resources that have been helpful to me include the following:

Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide. Felder & Brent Eds.
- Covers a lot of material, including more information of exam wrappers and other methods for developing metacognitive and self-directed learning skills.
Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty by Lang
- Covers a lot relating to student motivation and approaches that can encourage students to take a more intrinsically motivated attitude about their learning.
Rising to the Challenge: Examining the Effects of a Growth Mindset – STIRS Student Case Study by Meyers (https://www.aacu.org/stirs/casestudies/meyers)
- A case study on growth mindset that also asks students to analyze data and design experiments, which can allow it to address additional course goals.

President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. (2012). Engage to excel: Producing one million additional college graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Office of Science and Technology.
Shaw, E., & Barbuti, S. (2010). Patterns of persistence in intended college major with a focus on STEM majors. NACADA Journal, 30(2), 19–34.
Tobolowsky, B. F., & Associates. (2008). 2006 National survey of first-year seminars: Continuing innovations in the collegiate curriculum (Monograph No. 51). Columbia: National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, University of South Carolina.
Wienhold, C. J., & Branchaw, J. (2018). Exploring Biology: A Vision and Change Disciplinary First-Year Seminar Improves Academic Performance in Introductory Biology. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 17(2), ar22.
Philipkoski, P. RIP: Alba, The Glowing Bunny. https://www.wired.com/2002/08/rip-alba-the-glowing-bunny/. Accessed January 23, 2019.
Exam Wrappers. Carnegie Mellon – Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence. https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/teach/examwrappers/ Accessed January 23, 2019
Sebesta, A. and Speth, E. (2017). How Should I Study for the Exam? Self-Regulated Learning Strategies and Achievement in Introductory Biology. CBE – Life Sciences Education. Vol. 16, No. 2.
Duckworth, A. (2016). Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Scribner.
Dweck, C. (2014). The Power of Believing that you can Improve. https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare
Briggs, S. (2015). 25 Ways to Develop a Growth Mindset. https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/develop-a-growth-mindset/. Accessed January 23, 2019.
Brown, B. (2010). The Power of Vulnerability. https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?language=en&utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

Christopher Trimby is an Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Delaware in Newark, DE. He received his PhD in Physiology from the University of Kentucky in 2011. During graduate school he helped out with teaching an undergraduate course, and discovered teaching was the career path for him. After graduate school, Chris spent four years teaching a range of Biology courses at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), after which he moved to University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Wisconsin Institute for Science Education and Community Engagement (WISCIENCE – https://wiscience.wisc.edu/) to direct the Teaching Fellows Program. At University of Delaware, Chris primarily teaches a version of the Introductory Biology sequence that is integrated with General Chemistry and taught in the Interdisciplinary Science Learning Laboratories (ISLL – https://www.isll.udel.edu/). Despite leaving WISCIENCE, Chris continues to work on developing mentorship programs for both undergraduates interested in science and graduate students/post-docs who are interested in science education. Chris enjoys building things in his workshop and hopes to get back into hiking more so he can update his profile pic. .

Establishing rapport with your class BEFORE they are your class

Think back to some of the best courses/semesters you’ve ever had teaching (or as a student). I can almost guarantee that you fondly remember several of the students who were in the class. You would recognize them today even if you have had thousands of students since they last sat in your classroom. You probably remember specific interactions that you had. Maybe (after they were out of your class and preferably graduated, you even accepted their Facebook friend requests) Why? What made those students so memorable? Maybe it was a common academic interest or passion, some sort of unique personality trait, or maybe some unexplainable, unseen force that developed organically that you can’t pinpoint and think you can never purposefully recreate in future courses. Well, I’m here to tell you that you just might be able to recreate it. In fact, you can actually manufacture it for your future courses. While it does sound like cheating, it will help make your class successful for all of the other students as well.

With the beginning of the fall semester approaching, the first few days of your course will set the stage for the next 16 weeks. Obviously being well-prepared with the syllabus, course objectives, and course schedule well organized and outlined for the students is necessary as Angelina eloquently outlined in the previous article. Further outlining the expectations of yourself as the instructor and the students as the learners will help to start your course on the right trajectory. But a classroom success strategy that is easy to overlook, especially in the hectic first days of the semester, is building an early rapport between yourself and the students. While building rapport with the students comes more easily for some than for others (we all have that colleague who seems to naturally have the right combination of wit, charm, and caring and who never seems to have a problem engaging students), numerous factors contribute to its development, and nearly all of them can be planned for and controlled, manufactured if you will. I did not realize to what extent this was true until very recently though.

Generally, I have a good rapport with most of my classes and my Individual Development and Educational Assessment (IDEA) evaluation scores seem to indicate that is the case. However, the impetus for this article came after I struggled through my recent summer session course. I was left questioning my teaching abilities after every one of the 20, 2-hour-long class meeting times. Since I had taught the course multiple times, in the same time slot, and used all of the same strategies and more in attempts to connect and engage with the students like I successfully had in previous courses, I was baffled as to what the difference might be. Why was this one section so much less engaged, less likely to ask questions, less enthusiastic about the various activities, less likely to stop by my office, and less likely to e-mail with non-course related physiology questions? I had done everything that the literature recommends to develop rapport with students, but after my own post-hoc course evaluation and some serious introspection, I have an idea of what went wrong. I had not laid the ground work to build rapport with even one single student BEFORE the class began. While great articles do exist on building rapport in the classroom (see Meyers 2009 and Buskist & Saville 2001), few of them discuss how to build rapport before you’re in the classroom. It’s easier than you realize.

Thinking back to some of the best classes I’ve ever taught, I realized that I have always had at least one “go-to” student from the very first day of class, a student who I knew was reasonably comfortable speaking up in front of the whole class. I would use this student as a bellwether for the whole class in the first couple of days, posing questions directly to him or her and asking for comments and feedback. Inevitably, this would show other students that it was okay to speak up, make comments, and ask questions. Usually this student is pretty outgoing, but not always. Usually this student is good academically, but not always. Sometimes this student could be defined as the “class clown,” but not always. Almost always, however, I have known or at least communicated with this student before the semester has begun. Sometimes the student was in a previous class I taught or was my advisee, but often it is just a student who had trouble registering or had a question that required coming to my office before the first day of class. How did these students become my go-to students? What did I do to make these my go-to students? What makes them different? I have no idea honestly, but something about that first interaction, however innocuous, enables it to occur. Considering my past go-to students, I’ve come up with the three main ways that you can make sure that this interaction occurs in your class.

During the advising and registration period (often the semester before), encourage students that you know to enroll in your class.
- If you’re an advisor for students who might take your course this is actually pretty easy. Identify several students who might be able to fit your course into their schedules. Encourage them. “I really would enjoy it if you were able to take my course.” I have found this to be a very effective way to get students who are already comfortable speaking with me into my class. Not an advisor? E-mail students you’ve had in other courses or you’ve worked with in some other capacity.
Prior to the semester start, someone is bound to e-mail or stop by your office to ask about your course, tell you he/she is having trouble registering, ask about a textbook, etc. Use this as an opportunity.
- Obviously in these situations learn the student’s name, but also ask a couple other questions. “How’s your semester going?” “How was your summer?” “What makes you interested in this class?” “Is that shirt from that local 5k? You like running?” These interactions might seem like meaningless chit-chat, but they can really lay the foundations for classroom rapport later on. Latch on to anything the student says that you might be able to use later in class. Now you know you have a runner that went to the beach over summer. Great! You teach a physiology class and now you have a wealth of information that can make your lecture relevant to that student…and likely many more. Mention the student by name when you bring up the topic.
Once you receive your class roster, look at it! E-mail the students even if it is weeks before the course starts.
- Scan through your roster looking for students you’ve had previously or otherwise know. Send them individual e-mails and tell them you’re glad they’ll be in your class. Look at each student’s major, minor, even club affiliations if you have access. Take note of anything you can use later. Craft an e-mail to all the students to introduce yourself. “Hi! I’m Ed Merritt and I’ll be your professor for exercise physiology. I’m really looking forward to meeting everyone. Looking at the roster I see we have several nutrition majors in this class. Remind me to tell you a story about the time I ate a doughnut right before a hard workout. I also see we have a British literature major. Don’t worry. I’ll find a good story for you too! Let me know if you have any questions or concerns before the first day, otherwise I’ll see you soon!”

These three strategies alone will almost always insure that you have a go-to student for the first day of class. Use this connection. Call on him or her by name and show the class that you care about that student. The class won’t know that this is your go-to student, but once you have your go-to student engaged the rest of the class is much more likely to engage. Rapport is contagious, and once you have it with the class, teaching the material is much more enjoyable, and the student outcomes are much better. And hopefully you won’t have to suffer through a semester questioning your teaching abilities after every class.

Good luck with the upcoming semester!

References

Meyers SA. Do Your Students Care Whether You Care about Them? College Teaching, v57 n4 p205-210. 2009.

Buskist W, Saville BK. Creating positive emotional contexts for enhancing teaching and learning. APS Observer. p12-13. 2001.

Ed Merritt is an assistant professor in the Department of Health and Exercise Science at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Ed received his doctorate in Kinesiology from the University of Texas at Austin and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Cellular and Integrative Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Ed’s research focuses on the molecular underpinnings of skeletal muscle atrophy after trauma and with aging, but he is also equally involved in the scholarship of teaching and learning and melding educational outreach activities with service learning.

Candace Receno, PhDAssistant Professor, Exercise Science & Athletic TrainingIthaca College