Possible ways to improve attendance

One of the most frequent concerns I hear is, “My students just aren’t coming to class.” With so much content available online, recorded lectures at their fingertips, and the sense of distance that can come with large classes, this challenge is becoming more common and more complex. In this post, I will look at some of the more popular reasons reported for students not attending class and share practical, evidence-based ways to re-engage students in the classroom.

The Anonymity Epidemic: When Students Feel Like Just Another Face

Many students, particularly in large enrollment courses, feel anonymous. They don’t believe their individual presence makes a difference, leading to a disengagement from the classroom community. This isn’t just a large-class problem; it arises when students lack meaningful connections with instructors, TAs, or even their peers. Overcoming this anonymity is key to fostering a sense of responsibility and belonging.

Strategies to Combat Anonymity:

  • Be Present Before Class: Arriving early to chat informally with students is a simple yet powerful way to build rapport. Ask about their weekend, recent movies, or even their experience with the last assignment. These small gestures humanize you and create a connection.

  • Active Engagement is Key: Design activities that actively involve students with the material. Pose intriguing questions, facilitate brief peer discussions, or utilize classroom response systems like TopHat https://uits.iu.edu/tophat/index.html to “vote” on responses. This transforms passive listening into active participation, fostering an intellectual community.

  • Learn Their Names (or Try): Even the attempt to learn student names is deeply appreciated. Ask for names when students speak and use them in your response. Consider using a photo roster from Canvas to help you put names to faceshttps://toolfinder.iu.edu/tools/iu-photo-roster. A study in a high-enrollment biology course found that students’ perception of their instructor knowing their name was highly correlated with a sense of belonging, even though the instructors didn’t know every student’s name https://www.lifescied.org/doi/full/10.1187/cbe.16-08-0265 This suggests that the effort and intention behind using a student’s name are just as important as the memorization itself. For more strategies see: https://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/how-to-learn-students-names/

  • Cultivate Peer Connections: Encourage students to get to know each other. In in Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College(Felten & Lambert, 2020) https://iucat.iu.edu/catalog/19430355mention that students benefit when they are guided in how to connect, not just told to “work together.” On the first day, have them introduce themselves to those around them. Additional strategies might include teaching collaboration skills, establishing norms for group work, or prompting reflection on what makes a partnership effective. If you use group work, rotate group members throughout the semester. Periodically have students shift seating to broaden their peer interactions.

  • Personalized Feedback (Even in Large Classes): While challenging, finding ways to provide even small amounts of personalized feedback on assignments can significantly reduce feelings of anonymity. This could be through targeted comments on a rubric or brief, individualized responses to discussion forum posts. In large classes, it’s impossible to give every student a paragraph of detailed feedback each week, but you can make feedback feelpersonal by thinking in layers. I like to frame it as macro, meso, and micro feedback. At the macro level, I share short announcements summarizing class-wide trends; what students are doing well, what’s tripping them up, and a few standout examples. At the meso level, I provide targeted feedback to lab sections, project teams, or discussion groups that speaks directly to their shared progress. Then at the micro level, I use rubrics and comment banks to individualize comments just enough to sound human…adding a student’s name or referencing something specific from their work. It’s not about writing more; it’s about being intentional with how students experience the feedback they receive.

The “Why Bother?” Dilemma: Lack of Incentive, Relevance, and Engagement

Students often skip lectures if they perceive the content as readily available elsewhere, not directly relevant to their goals, or simply boring.

 

Strategies to Create Incentive and Relevance:

  • Incentivize Attendance: Leverage students’ natural focus on grades. Make attendance a component of the grade, or administer short, low-stakes quizzes at the beginning of class using tools like Canvas or TopHat.

  • Design Slides to Drive Presence:Explicitly state that your posted slides are incomplete. Design them as skeletal frameworks, requiring students to annotate and fill in critical explanations and examples during lecture. This creates a clear value proposition for attending.

  • Debunk the “Notes from a Peer” Myth:Directly address the inadequacy of relying solely on peer notes or even AI-generated summaries. Emphasize that context, instructor insights, and the organic flow of a live lecture cannot be fully replicated.

  • Connect to Their World: Embed examples, applications, and topics that resonate with students’ fields of study and current cultural interests. Utilize Canvas Course Analytics, Reports and Dashboardsand/or  pre-course surveys to understand your student demographics and tailor examples accordingly.

  • Pique Interest from the Start: Begin lectures with a challenging question, an intriguing anecdote, or a real-world problem that immediately grabs attention and motivates sustained engagement.

  • Convey Your Enthusiasm: Your passion for the subject is contagious! Share personal stories, recent discoveries, and your excitement for the discipline. Voice and body language naturally convey this enthusiasm.

Overcoming Information Overload and Misaligned Expectations

Sometimes, students skip because they feel overwhelmed, confused by lecture goals, or perceive the lecture as redundant to textbook material.

Strategies for Clarity and Complementary Learning:

  • Chunk Your Lectures & Re-engage:Recognize that typical attention spans are 10-20 minutes. Plan your lectures in shorter chunks, incorporating varied activities every 15-20 minutes to re-engage attention (e.g., questions, visuals, demonstrations, group work, videos). Consider attending the upcoming Active Learning Block Party for Large Classrooms sponsored by CITL for engagement ideas.

  • Complement, Don’t Reiterate, the Textbook: Use class time to expand on readings, provide alternative perspectives, facilitate problem-solving, or have students generate their own examples. The lecture should offer something the textbook doesn’t.

  • Provide Unique Experiences: Bring in guest speakers, conduct live demonstrations of code or hardware, or share cutting-edge research and innovations that students wouldn’t encounter elsewhere that connect with course content.

  • State Your Goals Clearly: Explicitly articulate the learning objectives for each lecture. Use these goals as “mileposts” to help students track their progress and understand the desired outcomes.

  • Share the Organization: Provide an outline, agenda, or visual representation of the lecture’s structure. Don’t assume novices will automatically see the logical connections among concepts.

  • Encourage Support Services: If you identify students struggling with academic or non-academic demands, refer them to appropriate support services like Academic Development, the Counseling Center, or Student Health.  Student Resource Slideshow.pptx

  • Support Language Learners: For students whose first language is not English, refer them to resources like the Office of International Services which offers drop-in English tutorials for second language students https://ois.iu.edu/get-involved/english-tutorials/index.html

  • Provide Recordings (Strategically):While recordings can reduce attendance, they are a valuable accessibility tool. If you record, emphasize that the recording is a supplement for review or for those with legitimate absences, not a substitute for live engagement. Consider how you might make the live session distinctly more valuable than the recording (e.g., interactive elements through PlayPosithttps://uits.iu.edu/services/technology-for-teaching/instruction-and-assessment-tools/playposit/index.html, Q&A).

The Power of Visuals and Storytelling

In fields like Computer Science and Engineering, abstract concepts can be difficult to grasp. Visuals and real-world narratives can significantly enhance comprehension and engagement.

Additional Tips:

  • Integrate Visualizations: When explaining complex algorithms, data structures, or system architectures, use diagrams, flowcharts https://miro.com/, and animations  Show, don’t just tell. Consider generating some of these visualizations on the fly with your students!

  • Tell Stories of Impact: Frame technical concepts within the context of real-world problems they solve or innovative applications. How did this algorithm enable a new technology? What societal problem does this data science technique address?

  • Live Coding Demonstrations: For programming or data manipulation courses, live coding is incredibly effective. It allows students to see the process, observe debugging strategies, and ask questions in real-time. Make sure to slow down and explain your thought process.

  • Guest Speakers from Industry: Invite professionals from relevant industries to share how the concepts taught in class are applied in their day-to-day work. This provides tangible career relevance.

By adopting these evidence-based strategies, faculty can transform their lectures from passive information dissemination into vibrant, engaging learning experiences that students genuinely want to attend. The goal isn’t just to fill seats, but to foster deeper learning and a stronger connection to the academic community.

 

The Guide on the Side: Coaching STEM Students in Problem-Solving

From Manager to Mentor: A Practical Strategy for AI Development

As faculty, we know that working effectively with our Assistant Instructors (AIs) is key to a successful course. In last week’s post on “Best Practices for Working with Assistant Instructors,” I highlight the importance of mentorship and creating professional development opportunities. But what does that mentorship look like in practice?

One of the most impactful ways to mentor our AIs is to equip them with high-leverage teaching strategies. Instead of just managing their grading, we can teach them how to teach. A powerful approach for this is the “Guide on the Side“ philosophy, which shifts the AI’s role from a simple answer-key to a learning coach.

The Guide on the Side: Coaching STEM Students in Problem-Solving

It’s a familiar scene in any STEM lab or office hour: a student, staring at a screen, is utterly stuck. For new teaching assistants (Associate Instructors, or AIs), the temptation is strong to take the shortcut; to grab the keyboard, write the line of code, or simply provide the answer. But while this solves the immediate problem, it bypasses a crucial learning opportunity.

This is where the Guide on the Side approach comes in. It’s a teaching philosophy that equips new AIs with practical strategies to coach students through the problem-solving process rather than solving problems for them. For faculty in STEM, empowering your AIs with these skills can transform your students’ learning experience. 

Why This Shift in Pedagogy Matters

Across STEM disciplines, students frequently encounter “sticking points” moments of cognitive friction where the path forward isn’t obvious. If an instructor or AI simply hands over the solution, the student leaves with a single answer but no transferable skill. They learn to be dependent on an external expert.

By contrast, an instructor who guides the process models resilience, inquiry, and expert reasoning. The student leaves not only with a solution but with strategies they can apply to the next problem, and the one after that. They learn how to think.

Putting Theory into Practice: Activities for Your AIs

Faculty can use these activities in their own training sessions to help AIs develop a coaching mindset:

  • “Sticking Point” Brainstorm: In a think-pair-share format, AIs identify the most common places their students struggle. This builds a shared awareness of teaching challenges and normalizes the experience.

  • Scenario Analysis: AIs compare two contrasting dialogues: one where the AI gives the answer directly, and another where the AI uses Socratic questioning to lead the student to their own solution.

  • Questioning Roleplay: In pairs, AIs practice how to respond with guiding questions when students make common statements like, “I’m totally lost,” or “Can you just tell me if this is right?”

A Simple Framework for Modeling Expertise

A core strategy of this approach is teaching AIs to make their thinking visible. Experienced problem-solvers naturally follow steps that are often invisible to novices. Encourage your AIs to narrate their own problem-solving process explicitly using a simple four-step framework:

  1. Understand: Restate the problem in your own words. What are the inputs, the desired outputs, and the constraints?

  2. Plan: Outline possible approaches. What tools, algorithms, or libraries might be useful? What are the potential pitfalls of each approach?

  3. Do: Execute the plan step by step, narrating the reasoning behind each action. (“First, I’m going to create a variable to hold the total because I know I’ll need to update it in a loop.”)

  4. Reflect: Test the solution. Does it work for edge cases? Could it be more efficient? Are there alternative ways to solve it? 

This explicit modeling teaches students how to think, not just what to do.

The Power of a Good Question: Building a Question Bank

Guiding questions are the primary tool of a “Guide on the Side.” They skillfully shift the cognitive work back to the student. Encourage your AIs to build a bank of go-to questions, such as:

  • To start a conversation: “What have you tried so far?” or “Can you walk me through your current approach?”

  • To prompt a next step: “What does that error message suggest?” or “What’s the very next small step you could take?”

  • To encourage deeper thinking: “Why did you choose that particular method?” or “What are the trade-offs of doing it that way?”

  • To promote reflection and independence: “How could you check your answer?” or “What would you do if you encountered a similar problem next week?” 

Navigating Common Classroom Challenges

This approach provides concrete strategies for these common moments:

  • When a student is silent: Allow for sufficient wait time. If the silence persists, break the problem down and ask a simpler, first-step question.

  • When a student is frustrated: Acknowledge their feelings (“I can see this is frustrating; these problems are tough.”) and normalize the struggle before gently re-engaging with the task.

  • When a student just wants confirmation: Instead of giving a simple “yes” or “no,” redirect with a metacognitive prompt like, “What makes you confident in that answer?” or “How could you design a test to verify that?”

Resources for a Deeper Dive 

For faculty and AIs who want to explore this pedagogical approach further, these resources are short, impactful, and highly relevant:

  • Book: Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning by James M. Lang

  • Article: Asking Questions to Improve Learning – Washington University in St. Louis Center for Teaching and Learning

  • Video: Eric Mazur’s video on Peer Instruction is a great resource for understanding how to shift from traditional lecturing to more active, student-centered learning. He effectively demonstrates the curse of knowledge and how students learning from each other can be more effective than an expert trying to explain something they’ve long ago mastered.
    His approach, where students first think individually, then discuss with peers, and finally re-evaluate their understanding, directly aligns with the principles of guiding students through problem-solving rather than just showing them the answer. It emphasizes active processing and peer teaching, which are crucial for deeper learning and developing independent problem-solvers.

The Takeaway for Faculty

The “Guide on the Side” approach aligns perfectly with evidence-based teaching practices. By encouraging your AIs to slow down, model your thinking, and use questions effectively, you help them grow from being answer keys into becoming true teaching coaches. The result is a more engaged and resilient cohort of students who leave your courses not only with solutions, but with the confidence and strategies to tackle the next challenge independently.

Strategies to Help Struggling Students Turn It Around

The following tips were adapted from materials developed by Doug Holton, PhD. They are intended to help faculty support students at the midpoint of the semester who are struggling in class:

Integrating Retrieval Practice into classroom instruction

Retrieval practice is one of the most effective methods of learning and remembering information for long-term use. During retrieval practice, students “retrieve” what they know about a topic or lesson out of their memory. Retrieval practice requires effort on the part of the student to recall specific information, which is beneficial to improving learning and strengthening students’ memory. Retrieval practice can be “…a no-stakes learning opportunity that increases student performance, beyond formative and summative assessments” (Agarwal & Bain, 2019, p.4).

In general, giving students multiple opportunities for practice and retrieval will break up a lecture with short brain breaks and prove valuable in the effective learning process. If we can work these methods into our instruction and teach students how to use them on their own, our students stand a much better chance of actually remembering our material (Gonzalez).

Effective Learning and Studying Strategies Examples adapted from ASEE:

Spaced practice and interleaving

  • Spaced practice: Study material over longer, spaced intervals instead of cramming. For example, review material a day after class and then again a few days later, and so on.

  • Interleaving: Mix your practice of different subjects or skills together. For instance, instead of doing all your math problems in one go, mix problems from different chapters to improve your ability to switch between concepts. 

Jot Recall (Oakley, et al., 2021, p. 12-13)

  • Students check understanding of concept by recalling information without aids.

  • Promotes retrieval and spaced repetition to reinforce long-term memory.

  • Can be used in class or out of class as a study technique.

  • Pause and have students use a blank piece of paper to recall concepts by writing notes or making a drawing

  • Have students compare and discuss within a small group

Retrieval practice and elaboration

  • Retrieval practice: Actively recall information from memory rather than just rereading notes. This can be done by testing yourself with practice questions or by explaining concepts aloud in your own words.

  • Elaboration: Expand on new information by asking questions and connecting it to what you already know. For example, relate new theories to real-life situations or stories. 

Notetaking (Oakley, et al., 2021, pp. 25, 30-31)

  • Students are offered handouts or outlines of lecture materials to assist with notetaking.

  • Helps students actively engage with class material, instead of struggling to make sense of content and take notes at the same time.

  • Provides better studying references.

Scaffolding (Alber, 2011 and “Scaffolding,” n.d.)

  • Students move incrementally (via ‘scaffolds’) towards a deeper understanding of material.

  • Allows students to gradually build understanding.

  • Consider that students come to your classroom with varying backgrounds, experiences, and abilities.

Varied Practice (Oakley,, et al., 2021, p. 7)

  • Incorporating opportunities for students to practice what they’re learning in different ways and contexts.

  • Helps students consolidate material.

  • Aids long-term memory.

Other effective strategies

  • Dual coding: Combine words with visuals. Create concept maps, diagrams, or sketches to represent information, which can lead to a deeper understanding.

  • Concrete examples: Think of specific examples and non-examples to clarify the meaning of a concept.

  • Teach others: Explaining a concept to someone else is a powerful way to solidify your own understanding.

  • Elaboration: Students take the time to ask themselves complex and open-ended questions about the content they are learning or studying. This improves learning and goes beyond simple recall of information.

Teaching.Tools and the Active Learning Library

The Teaching.Tools Website has a few resources that may be helpful to you.

The Active Learning Library https://teaching.tools/activities allows you to explore teaching strategies aimed to increase engagement in the classroom. This site allows you to search for activities by filtering based on:

  • Difficulty (for the instructor)

  • Prep Time Required

  • Bloom’s Taxonomy (e.g., remember, apply)

  • Active Learning (e.g., individual engagement, small group engagement)

  • Inclusive Learning (e.g., gives students choices, emphasizes the relevance or value of the material)

  • Whole-Person Learning (e.g., emphasizes student values and emotions, emphasizes metacognitive skills)

  • Formative Feedback

  • Activity Time

  • Class Size

  • Class Modality

The Pedagogical Reading List https://teaching.tools/resources is comprised of a community-generated database of resources for college teaching around topics including Accessibility and UDL

  • Active Learning

  • Assessment

  • Curriculum

  • Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

  • Education Research

  • Educational Technology

  • Experiential Learning

  • Graduate Students

  • Learning Analytics

  • Mental Health

  • Online Teaching

  • Problem/Project-Based Learning

  • Race and Anti-Racism

  • STEM

  • Science of Learning

While the Lesson Planning Tool https://teaching.tools/lessonplanner provides an interactive template for creating college-level class sessions. You can use the tool without an account. You must sign in to save your lesson. Accounts are free.