High-Impact Teaching & Learning Strategies

Make Class-time Valuable for Students: a Quick Guide to High-impact Teaching & Learning Strategies

1. Introduction
2. Instructor practices that support student engagement
3. In-class opportunities to actively engage students
4. Leverage the science of learning
5. Table of Active & Interactive Student Engagement Strategies & Implementation Examples from MIT Classrooms (Download available)
6. Additional Resources

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1. Introduction

This guide provides suggestions for Instructor actions, class structure, and active learning practices that can enrich the learning experience and help students to see class time as a valuable and integral part of their learning. Opportunities for students to meaningfully engage in a community of learners, and to retrieve, explain, and apply course concepts, and to receive timely and direct feedback from an expert during class are critical for deep learning and enduring understanding.  

These strategies can be useful in all disciplines, subjects and course formats, but may be particularly relevant to instructors who teach traditionally lecture-based and/or larger courses.

2. Instructor practices that support student engagement 

Build relationships with students 

• Learn and use students’ names
• Teach to the whole room: walk aisles; look/call to the back; check audibility/visibility.
• Face students; avoid split-attention slides (showing a complex image or animation while talking about something else).
• Do brief wellbeing check-ins after high-stress moments (quick anonymous polls or thumbs-up/-down checks). 

Structure class sessions to support learning

• Open with a 2–3 min recap (can be student-led): “What’s the key idea from last time? What’s still unclear?” 
• Segment lecture into short chunks with at least one opportunity for students to actively engage in the learning process.* 
• Start/end on time; don’t introduce new material in the last ~10 min.
• Save 3 minutes at the end of each class for students to reflect on/synthesize the material presented in class and/or complete an Exit Ticket or MUD Card.* [Use this info at the start of the next class meeting, or clarify through Canvas or the course website.]

*See, 3. In-class opportunities to actively engage students, below.

Invite questions and affirm students’ ideas

• Adopt Enthusiasm as a Practice
  • Build in moments where students identify something compelling or exciting about a peer’s idea.
  • Model intellectual curiosity and visible appreciation for creative thinking.
  • Encourage brief “idea amplification” exercises, where students build on (rather than critique) a peer’s contribution.

• Normalize struggle: “This is hard; mistakes are common at first. The teaching team is here to support you”.  For additional information, see TLL’s page on Growth Mindset. 
• Acknowledge when students look confused. Do not single out individual student(s) – rather address the entire class.
  • Request clarifying questions, wait at least 30 seconds
  • Use a phrase like: “What questions do you have?” (rather than “Who has questions?”)
• Avoid suppressing engagement: value the fact that students ask questions. 
• Don’t use phrases like “this is easy”. 
• During peer discussions: circulate and listen (don’t stand and wait in the front of the class).
• After activities: share student thinking (display/quote common reasoning & invite explanations).
• Foster cooperation among students (support a community of learners), design prompts that reward reasoning and group sensemaking.

Communicate the purpose and relevance of learning

• Be transparent about the purpose of in-class activities, assessments, and policies. 
• Increase value: connect content to authentic applications; describe how practitioners use the concepts & skills.

3. In-class opportunities to actively engage students

In his seminal 1989 paper, Richard Hake defines interactive student engagement  as “. . . heads-on (always) and hands-on (usually) activities which yield immediate feedback through discussions with peers and/or instructors.”  (Hake, 1989)

When well-designed and relevant in-class learning activities are built into a course, students are more likely to see the value in attending class. These activities provide opportunities for students to actively retrieve & apply course concepts, identify knowledge gaps, and to receive timely, in situ feedback to strengthen their understanding. In addition, interactive engagement during class provides instructors with valuable feedback on student understanding, misconceptions, and knowledge gaps.

The table below provides an overview of a wide range of interactive student engagement strategies that can be easily and effectively implemented in any class format or discipline: from small, discussion-based classes to high-enrollment, traditionally lecture-based courses. The strategies are organized by time commitment. It is recommended that instructors incorporate at least 2 or 3 small or medium time-commitment activities, or 1 larger time-commitment activity per 50-minute class. Additional strategies and guidance for their implementation can be found in this Active Learning Library.  

It’s also important to note that course formats such as labs, projects, performances, discussions, and experiential learning are highly effective in engaging students. In general, these formats tend to be more time- and resource-intensive and may not be feasible for large classes without a significant course redesign.

Please note:

• The amount of peer engagement tends to increase when the time commitment increases. Well-designed peer interactions can contribute to deeper understanding. 
• When incorporating active learning strategies, it is important to offer a variety of ways for students to participate over the course of the semester: solo (low social risk), in pairs and small groups, or as a whole class (polling) with anonymous and non-anonymous contributions.
• For any activity involving small groups:
  • Vary the group assignments so that students interact with many peers across the semester.
  • Provide explicit, transparent, and brief prompts that require synthesis rather than recall.
  • Randomly assign “reporters” to share the work of individual groups: i.e., the person with the closest birthday, or the person wearing the most green, or the person who last ate a tomato…

 If you would like to discuss how to incorporate active learning in your course, please reach out to the Teaching + Learning Lab (TLL).

4. Leverage the science of learning

Class time offers an opportunity to design-in activities based on the science of learning to help students retain, organize, and integrate their knowledge and to motivate them to engage with challenging and authentic learning tasks with the support of their peers and instructors. To leverage the science of learning with in-class activities:

• Engage students in explanation. Self-explanation practices deepen conceptual understanding by making connections with related concepts and elaborating on learned concepts by asking why or how questions (Chi, 1984)
  • Ask students to explain a particular concept, process, or their reasoning for a step in problem solving. Take it a step further by asking them to explain the relationship between two concepts. 
  • Follow up on a multiple-choice polling question by asking students to explain why the answer is correct and/or why alternatives are incorrect.
• Space out and interleave practice with key concepts and skills. Revisit concepts from previous classes to bolster their retention, help them make connections, and signal the continued importance of past content. Mixing up or interleaving different types of material (e.g., distinct concepts, types of problem sets, or content from different units or disciplines) has the added benefit of helping students not only retrieve but also integrate and organize key concepts. Spacing and interleaving often co-occur. For example, in a math course, a student might work on various types of problems all mixed up, so that practice with any one type of problem is spaced out (an example of spacing), with other types of problems occurring between examples of the same type (an example of interleaving).
  • Reuse 1–2 questions from last week or the last unit before introducing new material. Explain the rationale for revisiting past concepts as a way to build connections between past knowledge and new learning.
  • Intermix different problem types to help students practice evaluating which problem-solving approach, information, and skills are relevant to each problem. By interleaving problems, students have the opportunity to discuss and explain their reasoning with classmates and pose questions to the instructor.
• Motivate students to engage with challenging learning tasks. Students are more likely to engage in challenging learning tasks when they see value in what they are learning and have some agency to make choices about how they learn.
  • Explain the purpose of class activities and link them to concepts and skills that will be useful in assessments, future courses, and/or their lives and careers
  • Provide authentic class activities that are tied to real-world contexts and constraints
  • Ask students to make connections between their learning by pausing class to ask students the most important thing they learned that day, and why it matters to them or to society
  • Provide students with choices about topics for activities (e.g., which case study to discuss)

For more activity ideas, in-depth explanations, and relevant literature, see Help Students Retain, Organize, and Integrate Knowledge.

5. Table of Active & Interactive Student Engagement Strategies & Implementation Examples from MIT Classrooms

Legend

= Activity involves students individually thinking and answering questions. Activity may include an overall class debrief/discussion.

= Activity involves peer interaction and may involve students working individually first before interacting with peers. Activity usually includes an overall class debrief/discussion.

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6. Resources used in the creation of this document

• University of British Columbia – Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI): Basic instructor habits to keep students engaged
• Carleton College – SERC: Interactive Lectures | Interactive Engagement
• Harvard – Bok Center: Twenty Ways to Make Lectures More Participatory
• Harvard – ABL Connect
• Hake, R. R. (1998). Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses. American Journal of Physics, 66(1).
• Teaching Tools
• C.H. Crouch, A.P. Fagen, J.P. Callan, E. Mazur. (2004). Classroom Demonstrations: Learning Tools Or Entertainment? American Journal of Physics. Volume 72, Issue 6. 835-838. DOI: 10.1119/1.1707018 https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-physics/203 
• Chi, M. T., De Leeuw, N., Chiu, M., & Lavancher, C. (1994). Eliciting self-explanations improves understanding. Cognitive Science, 18(3), 439-477. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0364021394900167
• MIT Teaching + Learning Lab – Teaching Resources
  • Growth Mindset
  • Help Students Retain, Organize, and Integrate Knowledge
  • Assess for Learning 
• Thanks to MIT Professor Bevin Engelward for her contributions to this doc