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.