Do you have any students who participate too much? The ones who would answer every question and happily dominate every classroom discussion if we let them?

Do better students sit in front, or does seat selection contribute to better grades? A recent study examined this question.

Do you have one or two high-maintenance students in your classes? If you do, then you know how they can sap your energy.

Starting a lecture can be a challenge: getting everyone seated, attentive, and ready to move forward with the content can take several minutes. I have found that sometimes it feels abrupt and disjointed, especially when it has been a week since the last class meeting, so I’ve been working on strategies that help me get a class going without wasting time and that get all the students engaged and ready to learn.

Although endless volumes about classroom discipline proliferate in the professional libraries of K–12 instructors, as college professors we seldom think we need advice on the issue. After all, our students choose to be in classes at our institutions. Many, if not most, are placing themselves and their families in huge financial debt to attend. Besides, we’ll just kick them out of class if they display behaviors not tolerated in civilized societies.

In the fifth installment of a six-part series on building student engagement today’s teaching tips focus on strategies for improving classroom interactions.

In this, the fourth article in a six-part series on building student engagement, I offer specific suggestions for what to do in the classroom get your students interested and excited about your course.

In previous articles I’ve offered effective teaching strategies for building student engagement by setting the tone with the syllabus and first classes. Today we move to the general classroom atmosphere. The following suggestions will help you build an atmosphere of constant engagement, passion and learning.

In yesterday’s post I provided tips on how to use the syllabus to build student engagement. In this article I offer some suggestions on how to get students involved in the first few classes to ensure a more engaging course throughout the semester.