Pedagogical Strategies to Increase Students’ Engagement and Motivation

Abstract

With the goal of improving accessibility and inclusivity, we have implemented a series of pedagogical interventions to increase students’ engagement and learning in a large introductory physics course. Active learning and collaboration were promoted during the lectures via several in-class strategies, including weekly 10-min quizzes, clicker questions, peer discussions, and group quizzes. Metacognition was encouraged by prompting students to reflect on their mistakes via optional exam correction assignments. In addition, self-motivation was prompted by reflections on mindset (fixed versus growth) and the consequences of in-class multitasking. The course also features two key outside-of-class resources, namely peer tutoring and evening study-halls. Here, we discuss students’ responses to these different strategies and highlight the successes and challenges of increasing engagement and performance. Among all of these components, study-halls emerged as the most successful tool to foster collaboration among students and peer learning, and to bring faculty and students closer by permitting them to work together in an informal setting. Although our experience concerns an introductory physics course, geared to life science and pre-medical students, our strategies are independent of subject and class content, and therefore could be used in any university course, as well as adapted for secondary schools.