Truman State University

Several years ago, one of my colleagues told me this. He had been working on his teaching and had incorporated many of the strategies known to lead to better learning in class—writing objectives and sharing them with students, using active learning exercises in class to get students engaged with the material, grounding each new topic in real-world applications, and making sure his tests were fair. Despite all that, he was not satisfied with his student evaluations. He looked at the comments and found that many students didn’t feel that he cared about them or their learning. He really did care, and he wanted to make sure they knew it. Next semester, he made a point to (1) learn their names, (2) be available to them right before and after each class session and during office hours, and (3) let them know he was enthusiastic about the course subject and eager to help them learn it. Those were the only changes he made, but they made a huge difference. At the end of the semester, his evaluations went up a full point on a 5-point scale.

That result may be surprising but it turns out to be completely consistent with cognitive science and extensive educational research, both of which have shown that students learn better when they feel a sense of personal connection with their instructors.

• There is a distinct network in the brain for social thinking, and we default to it when we are not concentrating on something. Whenever we pause for a moment during or after a cognitive activity, our brain turns its attention to people and our relationships to them. We are in essence hard-wired for connection to others. (Lieberman, 2013)
• In a landmark longitudinal study, Astin (1993) identified factors strongly and positively associated with students’ learning outcomes and their attitudes regarding their college experience. The most important factor was high quality student-faculty interactions. That finding makes sense. Strong positive interactions with teachers make students comfortable about asking questions and seeking help. They also motivate students to learn from those teachers, and motivation strongly correlates with adult learning (Wlodkowski & Ginsberg, 2017).
• Further empirical support for the importance of connections is provided by Komarraju, Musulkin, and Bhattacharya (2010), who found that first-year students who perceived their teachers as being approachable, respectful, and available for interactions outside of class were particularly likely to be motivated to learn and confident about their academic skills.

So if learning is promoted by motivation and our students’ perception of our caring about them strongly promotes their motivation to learn in our classes, what can we do to communicate caring to them? Following are a few suggestions. There’s no need to do all of them: just pick a couple that look reasonable to you that you’re not already doing.

• Take time to introduce yourself early in the course. The first day is the most natural time to make sure students get to know you and perceive your enthusiasm for teaching them. Include some personal details (family, pets, travels) along with information about what excites you about what you’ll be teaching. In online courses, post a short video to introduce yourself.
• Learn student names. Being able to call your students by name tells them that you care enough about them to make the effort to learn who they are, and research has shown that your knowing their names has a strong impact on their motivation to work hard in your class (BYU, website; Cooper, Haney, Krieg, & Brownell, 2017). Even in big classes, you can learn most names if you use strategies like making a seating chart and using it to call on students, or having the students make tent cards with what they want to be called and display the cards in each class session until you’ve learned most of the names. For more ideas, take a look at https://ctl.byu.edu/learning-student-names
• Give an autobiography assignment. During the first week of class, have the students write brief (½–1 page) autobiographies including anything they’d like you to know about them. Use the autobiographies to help you learn their names. Try to connect course content to some of their interests.
• Early in the course, require each student to make a 5-minute visit to your office. Use that time to find out where they’re from and what interests them. It will help you learn their names and more about them, and it will also help them find your office and discover that you want to help them be successful. They will then be much more likely to come during your office hours and seek out your help when they need it. In online classes, schedule a chat or online call to accomplish the same goal.
• In face-to-face classes, come to class early and stay late. Those informal moments before and after class are when many students will come up and ask a question, and in the pre-class conversations you may discover something on their minds that you can integrate into the class. Ask about how they are doing and listen when they tell you.
• Consider having some office hours in the student lounge and/or online in Google Hangouts or a chat room. Going to where the students are is a powerful technique to communicate caring about their learning.
• Be proactive when you think there may be a problem. If students do poorly on an assignment or exam or stop coming to class, reach out to them via email or text message, letting them know you’re concerned and want to help.
• Keep a list of campus resources handy. When you discover a student is having a personal or academic problem, you’ll be ready to help them get to the campus services that could make a difference.

Do you have other ideas about how to show students you care about them and their learning? Leave them in the comments—I’d really like to hear them!

References

Astin, A.W. (1993). What matters in college: Four critical years revisited. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

BYU Center for Teaching and Learning. (website). Learning student names.

Cooper, K. M.; Haney, B.; Krieg, A.; & Brownell, S. E. (2017). What’s in a name? The importance of students perceiving that an instructor knows their names in a high-enrollment biology classroom. CBE Life Science Education, 16(1).

Komarraju, M., Musulkin, S., & Bhattacharya, G. (2010). Role of student-faculty interactions in developing college students’ academic self-concept, motivation, and achievement, Journal of College Student Development, 51(3), pp. 332-334.

Lieberman, M. D. (2013). Social: Why our brains are wired to connect. Crown Publishers: New York.

Wlodkowski, R. J. & Ginsberg, M. B. (2017). Enhancing adult motivation to learn: A comprehensive guide for teaching all adults, 4^th ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

For more information on these topics, see Richard Felder and Rebecca Brent’s book, Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide, Section 3.6.1, pp.52-56.

Please follow and like us: