Enhancing Classroom Participation
The benefits of student participation are widely recognized but getting students to participate can be a challenge. Here you'll find resources we have developed for our SF State faculty as well as information and resources for strategies and techniques you can use to increase participation in your class. Come to a workshop or sign up for a consultation for assistance with specific questions you may have.
- Student Learning Support - Two student learning resources from CTFD have a participation focus. Visit our Student Learning Support page to find out how to integrate these online tutorials into your curriculum.
- SLR Groupwork
- SLR More Than Raising Your Hand
- SF State Collaboratory
- The Collaboratory provides the most modern classroom environment on campus for students and teachers to experience real-time collaborative learning with a variety of technology tools. Teachers who use the Collaboratory find that they enhance student participation by facilitating anonymous input from 100% of their class. The room design provides a safe and supportive environment for student interaction and encourages open communication from all participants online or offline.
For some general guidelines and information on encouraging and facilitating participation in your classroom, you may want to visit some of the following links.
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Town Halls and Post-It Notes - This first person article focuses on the techniques of using post-it notes to go from 'seminars' to 'town hall meetings' in the classroom. Addressing the issue of required participation and creating structured cooperative learning opportunities, you may find some techniques and information here to work with.
- Ideas for Increasing Class Participation - This seminar handout from Carnegie Mellon gives some tips for increasing class participation and encouraging active learning.
- Suggestions for Instructors - The NYU Stern School of Business has put together a few more tips for what to say on your syllabus, techniques for increasing class participation and ones for managing over participators.
Problem Based Learning
Problem-based learning is an approach to teaching designed to help students develop essential skills required to find information, work with it and communicate it to others. Using problem-based learning, students often have higher long term retention of information and see more clearly the interconnection between disciplines.
Problem-based learning can be applied to classes of any size and require the instructor to consider a range of issues such as assessment, effective use of groups and more. A wealth of resources exists online and in print to help you learn more about it. These links can help you get started.
- Problem-Based Learning - Instructors at the University of Delaware literally wrote the book about problem-based learning and have quite a bit of information on their website.
- PBL Books and Resources - The University of Deleware provides a list of books and resources on problem-based learning to help you get started.