Improving Student Engagement

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When I see surveys of marketing instructors, the most common challenge they report is getting students to engage with course material. Which is a challenge even with fun content like marketing (which, while I am biased, I have to think is more stimulating to most 18-22 year olds than accounting or finance). Most of us want our students to arrive in class having prepared that day’s material — often a textbook (or other) reading/watching. If students arrive in class well prepared, they can better engage with any in-class activities and the instructor does not have to use precious class time to regurgitate facts and can focus on application of that content.

How can we incentivize students to prepare for class? A recent article on the Harvard Business School Publishing website titled “How to Help Undergraduates Work Smarter Outside of Class” (October 14, 2021) offers some great tips. The article starts with “3 Ways to Incentivize Undergraduates to Prepare for Class” — suggesting pre-class assignments (requiring short memos), threats (telling students they will be cold called) and grabbing attention and drawing them in (using polls to kick off class).

If you use a group project(s) in your classes, you will want to read on, as the article also offers “7 Tips to Make Undergraduate Group Projects More Successful.”

The HBSP site is a great resource. If you register, they will send you regular emails with more great teaching ideas.

Give yourself a break, and lower your cognitive load while teaching…

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I have always enjoyed Harvard Business School Publishing’s offerings. I teach a lot of MBA classes and use many of the site’s readings and cases to supplement my teaching. I have found the HBSP a wealth of support beyond just the materials it provides for its students. And over the last year, it seems like the site has doubled down on its support — or maybe just the challenge of pandemic teaching sent me there more often. Any educator can get an account at the site and that gives you access to lots of resources — including sample cases and articles.

One area that has been useful to my teaching is HBSP’s Inspiring Minds section – “motivating lessons and practical advice from the best in class.” I am always looking for tips on how to improve my teaching and you can find tons of ideas here.

A recent article by Bill Shiano, “Reducing Cognitive Overload While Teaching” really struck home with me. And while some of the examples are designed for the challenge of teaching synchronously online, the tips valuable for traditional in-class teaching as well. Especially in an online course (I taught only on Zoom last year), there are so many things to manage. As you get ready for fall — which may include (now or later) online, hybrid, or face-to-face teaching — consider checking out Schiano’s tips.

“Flipping the Online Classroom” Joe’s webinar recording…

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This is a recording of my recent webinar “Flipping the Online Classroom” hosted by McGraw-Hill. For more resources, see my recent blog posts “Flipping the Online Classroom — Resources for Online Active Learning” and “Flipping the Online Classroom — Post Webinar Q&A and Comments” [where you can also find copies of the slides and my Flip Your Marketing Class ebook.]

Flipping the Online Classroom – Post Webinar Q&A and Comments

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On May 22, I gave a presentation, Flipping the Online Classroom (this links to my previous post about the presentation). My presentation was one of a dozen for a McGraw-Hill webinar, “Our New Normal in a COVID-19 World.” During my presentation, we asked for questions, comments, and ideas from the participants. I was unable to answer all those questions during the webinar, so this post is designed to answer those questions and share participants’ comments and ideas.

“Flipping the Online Classroom” – Resources for Online Active Learning

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Today (May 22, 2020) I have the pleasure of being a presenter for a McGraw-Hill webinar, “Our New Normal in a COVID-19 World.” My presentation (one of 12) is titled, “Flipping the Online Classroom.” The presentation will be recorded and I will post a link to it after McGraw-Hill posts it. The slide deck was kind of heavy, with lots of images, so I created a lite version for download in  PowerPoint 6-up handout format. After the webinar, I will write another blog post “Flipping the Online Classroom – Post Webinar Q&A and Comments” and answer to questions from the webinar and post participant comments and ideas.

During the presentation I mention some resources I have found helpful in thinking about how to put more active learning into my online teaching. Here are links or downloads you may find useful as well:

  • Flip Your Marketing Class (an ebook download). I wrote this book a couple years ago. The book was not written for online flipping — as I note in my presentation, flipping an online class may not make sense at first blush anyway. But as I went back to that book, I realized that much of the theory laid out in there (I reference a lot of education theory as you see in the presentation) was also relevant online. It was mainly figuring out how to apply it in the online context.
  • “Suddenly Teaching Online? Free Resources to Help Faculty Affected by Coronavirus.” LinkedIn Learning offered this resource to faculty soon after the pandemic forced many of us into online teaching. A nice compilation and demonstration of one way to teach online. I only took a few classes — not a lot of active learning but a good initiation to online teaching for newbies.
  • “Moving Your Classroom Online.” Harvard Business School Publishing also put on a number of webinars and wrote articles specifically about teaching online. I have found this to be a very useful resource with some great tips about case teaching, managing class discussions, and using simulations. Some emphasis on synchronous teaching (I think that is how Harvard Business School responded) but lots of great insights, including some thoughts on how to connect COVID-19 to your coursework.
  • I am proud of how quickly The Institute for Learning and Teaching (TILT) at my home institution Colorado State University stepped up with great resources for our faculty (Keep Teaching) and students (Keep Learning).  Most of these resources are open access.
  • “Active Learning in an Online Course” from The Ohio State University. I liked how this page categorized different active learning experiences. The page is brief with links to more details.
  • “Optimizing Student Engagement with Connect Marketing” – a McGraw-Hill presentation on Connect from Allison Smith and Nicole Young. The focus is on McGraw-Hill’s Connect. This was put together right after the pandemic broke.
  • PlayPosit is a great resource for adding questions to videos. A way to make your lectures more active and interactive.
  • McGraw-Hill has partnered with online proctoring service Proctorio which is built into Connect. The arrangement offers you a bargain for online proctoring — which can be helpful in online teaching and learning.