Connecting with your students

Abstract: Meeting our students where they are requires first finding out where they are, being explicit about where you want your course to take them, and then taking purposeful steps to design your instruction to help them make that journey. Different students start out in different places, which makes our job as teachers more challenging, but also that much more important. I will share strategies for engaging and supporting students with different levels of preparation, so all can grow. I will also describe and demonstrate a variety of ways to use active learning both to help students learn more deeply, and also to gather frequent feedback from your students so you can monitor where they are in their learning. This feedback will help you plan and pitch your instruction at an appropriate level, and will also empower your students and provide them tools to monitor and take more ownership of their own learning. Meeting students where they are is a collaborative endeavor between student and instructor. I will discuss strategies to help motivate students to embrace their portion of that responsibility, and ways to optimize the learning environment to enhance focus and reduce distraction.