Getting Students Ready for Classroom Engagement
First Day Questions: Get Students Ready for Classroom Engagement
Instructors often struggle with getting students to engage in hands-on activities during class. Small group projects and peer-based learning activities can be especially challenging, especially if these aren’t introduced until the second or third week of the term. Do students understand why we are asking them to learn this way?
One strategy is to involve students in thinking about this on the first day of class. First Day Questions developed by Gary Smith (UNM) are intended to begin a dialogue where, by their own admission, students come to understand the benefits gained by participating in class and engaging in group-based learning activities. Discussing these three questions on the first day of class helps students to understand their role in the learning process and makes them more open to classroom engagement.
Question 1: Which of these is most important to get out of your college education and this course? Is it to:
Of course all three are important and students will recognize this, as well as the hierarchy implied in the list. After some discussion, student responses will most likely be divided between Goals 2 and 3. This is a good start.
Question 2: Now, looking back at these three goals, what are the best ways to accomplish them? Remember that learning takes work—inside and outside of the classroom. So which do you think would be best achieved by working on your own outside of class, and which would be best achieved by working with me and your peers during class?
Students will almost always agree that acquiring information can be done alone or outside of class, but the other two: learning to use information in new ways, and developing lifelong skills, are hard to do alone and are best achieved in class with their instructor and peers. This is often a turning point for students who are used to being told what to do and have rarely considered their part in the learning process. Happily, this sets the stage for the third question where students are asked to consider the best approaches for accomplishing Goals 2 and 3.
Question 3: If we use class time to focus on applying information in new ways and building lifelong, or career-based skills, would you prefer to be lectured to, or would you learn more by actively engaging in discussions, applications, and small group projects that make you practice what you are learning?
Of course both approaches have value, but in most cases, students will come to understand that asking them to participate in learning activities during class is intended to help them succeed in their goals. They may also come to see that lectures are only one way for them to learn, and that active participation on their part will improve their chances for success in this class, and in their lives. Students may also be reminded that having successful in-class experiences means they need to come to class prepared—having read the text, watched the videos, done the homework— so that they can participate fully and fairly with their peers.
Will these First Day Questions work for your class? Try it and see. Students may not have much experience with active learning but helping them think through these questions and the reasoning behind them, should make them more willing to try.
For more information on student engagement in class, see evidence-based research as well as this study from Harvard showing that students learn more from active engagement than they think.Smith, Gary A., First Day Questions for the Learner Centered Classroom. Retrieved from https://cdn.serc.carleton.edu/files/introgeo/firstday/first_day_questions_learner-ce.pdf