As an educator, you know the importance of student engagement. But it’s not easy to get your class involved when they’re secretly scrolling on their phone or falling asleep during a lesson.
Engagement also goes beyond keeping your students’ attention — it’s about using teaching strategies that help students feel excited about learning and motivated to dive into the lesson. For example, a Gallup poll of Gen Z students found that 46% of respondents were excited at school because they could learn in a hands-on way.
To help you shake up your next class, we’ve put together a list of student engagement strategies you can use to transform your lessons and encourage more participation.
1. Tie assignments and lessons back to goals for the class
One of the best strategies to promote student engagement is to connect the course’s objectives with each assignment, lesson, and activity. This can be as simple as stating the related goals at the beginning of presentations or at the top of assignment instructions.
Regularly revisiting course objectives can also help students see where they stand with the material. For example, if a student struggles after a lesson, they’ll know what topics to focus on when reviewing resources and asking questions.
2. Start with a tailored warm-up
No matter what time of the day it happens to be — though we all know mornings are the toughest — jumping right into a lesson or lecture is rarely easy. Kicking off with a warm-up activity can help get everyone engaged and focused from the start.
Quick icebreaker questions are the perfect way to ease your class into learning mode. For example, if you’re diving into a new topic, ask students what they know about that subject before beginning the lesson.
3. Lead a quick brain break
Sometimes, students need a moment to reset before diving back into the action. Spending time on something quick and quirky can be a fun way to reset at the end of an info-heavy lesson. For example, you might ask students to describe their mood that day using an emoji.
4. See technology as a tool, not as a distraction
Technology can be intimidating if you don’t leverage it in the right way. If smartphones are distracting your students, maybe it’s time to incorporate them as part of your lesson plan.
Apps, software, and online student engagement tools and strategies can help enhance everyone’s experience. For instance, instead of having students raise their hands and answer questions one by one, they can submit answers in a live poll and review them in a word cloud.
Technology — specifically AI — can also help you develop creative ways to engage your students. Using the right AI prompts for the classroom can unlock ideas for icebreakers, lesson plans, and more.
5. Gamify your lessons
Students may struggle to focus if each class includes a 30-minute slideshow presentation. Instead, keep things fresh by incorporating classroom games into your lesson plans.
For example, when teaching students about business negotiation, have them role-play a scenario to apply best practices and understand a business owner’s perspective.
6. Regularly test students
Instead of assigning a midterm-style paper every other week, try more frequent quick-hitter assessment quizzes to help keep students engaged during lessons.
Doing quick pulse checks and actively quizzing students can help you see if they’ve been paying attention and retaining the information.
Knowledge tests don’t have to be boring or stressful, either. Instead of a paper and pen and test, try using an interactive online quiz or trivia session that will be quick and easy to set up and run.
7. Promote self-assessment
Self-assessment exercises help improve students’ self-awareness about how well they understand the class, encourage them to engage more deeply with the material, and empower them to take ownership of their learning.
Help promote self-assessment by providing a rubric that includes:
- Related course objectives
- Description of knowledge assessed in the lesson/activity/assignment
- Areas to score understanding or performance
- Reflection questions
Students can use rubrics to review assignments and gut-check their understanding of the lesson. Rubrics also help students see how you’ll grade their work.
Other self-assessment activities might include students creating study guides or keeping a learning log or journal for the course.
8. Make time for peer review
Your class can also take a collaborative approach to self-assessment. Peer review helps students get comfortable with giving and receiving feedback. It also helps them get an outside perspective they may not have otherwise received.
To create an effective peer review process, give students criteria for sharing constructive and effective feedback. Then, demonstrate this process with the class using a short writing sample.
You can use peer review as a one-off activity or a core part of your lesson plan. For example, you might require students to get papers peer-reviewed by at least two others in the class before submitting them for a grade.
9. Brainstorm together
Brainstorming is an engaging way to check student understanding since they’ll need to focus and take their time with their responses.
It also allows students to think creatively and collaborate with their peers.
For example, you might pose a new scientific theory to the class and have them brainstorm ways to test that theory. In a literature class, have students chat about a major plot twist in a famous novel and come up with alternatives the author could have taken to improve the story.
10. Let students take the lead in teaching
Instead of leading each discussion and lesson, let your students take turns instructing on different topics. Giving students responsibility over a topic can help them feel motivated to learn and master the information. Either start small with student-led discussions or incorporate student-led lessons throughout the course.
To balance creativity with course objectives, give students a list of concepts or topics they must discuss along with a few presentation options. Some students may prefer sharing their knowledge with a traditional slideshow, while others may want to have more hands-on activities.
11. Spark discussion in small groups
Some students may be more inclined to participate if you create space for smaller discussions. Here’s an example of how to set one up:
- Give your class a heads-up on when you’ll schedule the discussion so they can keep it in mind during the lesson.
- When it’s time for the discussion, split the class into smaller groups.
- Share two to three open-ended questions to get the conversation started and let the groups chat for about 10-15 minutes.
- Once time is up, have each group nominate one person to share what they discussed with the rest of the class, or have each group submit their thoughts through a collaboration tool.
12. Assign ongoing think-pair-share assignments
Small groups may not work for every class. It can be tough to quickly organize a 500-person lecture hall without losing precious instruction time. Instead, have students do a quick think-pair-share. It might look like this:
- Students individually reflect on a question or prompt for five to 10 minutes.
- Each student pairs up with another student to share their thoughts.
- Some pairs share their thoughts with the full class.
13. Hold a full-class reflection session on the material
Reflection is an important tool for learning and improving. Students can look back and see what they’ve learned, where they’ve excelled, what they still need to improve upon, and what their ultimate goal is.
Offering students the opportunity to do this can help them regain focus and a sense of perspective. This can lead to higher levels of engagement since they’ll better understand the context of each lesson and the work required.
14. Give opportunities for self-paced learning
Self-paced learning can help remove a common point of frustration for many students: time. Trying to understand complex topics or remembering a series of facts can be tough to accomplish within a single class.
The “flipped classroom” approach is one way to give your students more freedom with their schedule. With this method, students watch lessons and review course material at home.
That way, you can use class time for more collaborative activities and discussions based on the material. Give students the scheduled activities and topics ahead of time so they can plan accordingly.
15. Provide flexible assignments
All students engage with information in different ways. Some may thrive with straightforward reading assignments, while others may prefer hands-on projects. Allowing some flexibility can help students learn the way they want to while ensuring you still hit your course objectives.
For example, rather than assigning everyone an essay, give students the option to demonstrate their knowledge in other ways, like:
- Interviewing an expert on the subject and submitting a reflection of the interview
- Recording a video version of an essay
- Designing an infographic or eBook on the subject
16. Consider pass/no-pass assignments
Adding more strategies for student engagement can be a balancing act for you and your class. On the one hand, engaging assignments can be a welcome break from lectures, but on the other hand? They can create more work — and stress — for students and add more hours of grading to your schedule.
Pass/no-pass assignments let you give students credit for completing an activity or assignment without the added stress of grades. For instance, make in-class discussions pass/no-pass activities so students can focus more on sharing and less on sharing the “right” perspective.
17. Explain connections to everyday life
Students may struggle to learn concepts and theories if they don’t understand why it matters. These connections can look vastly different between subjects. For example, if you’re teaching a lesson related to chemical reactions, walk through the steps of baking a cake to show students how these reactions transform ingredients in real life.
You can also encourage everyone to share their personal stories and experiences. If you’re teaching the class about a historical event, ask students about a time in their life that relates to that event.
18. Create clear expectations for engagement
After sitting through years of slideshows, your students will likely be happy to have a lesson that switches things up. But some students may be caught off guard if they haven’t participated in engaging activities in the past.
To prepare students ahead of time, include the following information in your class syllabus:
- Schedule of assignments, activities, and lessons
- Grading information
- Engagement expectations, especially as it relates to grades
19. Adjust as needed
You may need to think on your feet if a planned assignment or activity isn’t working. For example, if most of your students are chatting about vacation plans instead of the discussion questions, that may be a sign to switch to another activity. Have a list of activities, assignments, and lessons ready for quick pivots when an activity isn’t working as planned.
20. Regularly encourage questions
Many engaging activities may seem like they need a lot of prep work or a significant amount of class time. The reality is that student engagement strategies in the classroom can be as easy as creating space for questions.
You can encourage students to ask questions:
- Before lessons to connect how it relates to course goals
- During lessons to clarify misunderstandings
- After lessons to share what they still don’t understand and what they’d like to learn more about
Learning is a two-way street. Letting your students openly share what they’re struggling with or curious about at that moment can help you adjust as you go.
21. Gather student feedback
The benefit of feedback is twofold: Students can take a more active part in their education while you can better understand how to keep your students engaged.
For instance, feedback can help you understand what types of instructional strategies help your students retain information better and if others cause them to switch off and daydream.
How to measure student engagement
Increasing student engagement and concentration levels is great in theory, but how do you measure it? Running formative assessments can be a good way to get a grasp on what your students do and don’t understand.
It can also be a good way to see if a particular lesson is tough or if the teaching strategies just aren't connecting with students. Combining this with self-assessment and feedback forms can help you document and measure engagement levels.
Make lessons more engaging with Mentimeter
There are many types of student engagement strategies to help bring your lessons to life. Thankfully, there are also plenty of tools that can make this process easier for your online, hybrid, and in-person classes.
Mentimeter can help you turn lectures and class time into conversations. Instead of using a static slideshow, use Mentimeter in the classroom to lead discussions, let students ask questions, and go over class feedback in real time. After class, Mentimeter lets you analyze submitted answers to inform future lessons.
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