This week, strategies for encouraging class participation from all students, and a professor tasks her students with creating their own podcasts.

Brenda Gunderson on Active Learning in Large Classes
Brenda Gunderson, an award-winning lecturer featured in ACUE’s Course in Effective Teaching Practices, shares the origins of her famed cartwheels and discusses other active learning strategies to use in large classes. (The Q Blog)

Students Who Don’t Participate in Class Aren’t All Introverts
Todd Zakrajsek illuminates the different motivations students have for shying away from active engagement in class discussions and suggests strategies for encouraging participation. (The Scholarly Teacher)

Conserving Your Teaching Energy
Neil Baldwin lists small steps instructors can take for their well-being to ensure that they are mentally, physically, and emotionally equipped to meet the demands of teaching today’s students. (Vitae)

Building Resilience into the Classroom
Likening the journey of learning to chivalric quests from history and literature, Jessica Riddell describes how instructors can teach students to find success by building their capacity for resilience. (University Affairs)

Petitions and the Power of Poetry
As some institutions deemphasize studying poetry, an English professor and poet urges instructors to teach new kinds of poetry like that in Hamilton and to teach “old” poetry in new ways. (Inside Higher Ed)

The Podcast for African Hip Hop
Msia Kibona Clark tasks her students with creating their own podcasts as a research project for her African Hip Hop course. (Africa Is a Country)

Living in the Real World
Refuting the idea that colleges should withhold special accommodations for mental health disabilities to prepare students for the working world, Cate Denial argues that, for many students, college is the “real world,” and these accommodations allow students to successfully participate in their education. (Cate Denial)

How Does Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Feel?
Using poems written by students and teachers, Kathleen Quinlan points out that embracing positive emotions helps instructors cultivate key relationships in higher education—between students, instructors and students, and students and their environments. (The Bera Blog)

Using Wikipedia to Explore the Development of Facts
Rather than discouraging students from using Wikipedia because of possible inaccuracies, one instructor has her students edit entries, which teaches them how to research and analyze facts and demonstrates how knowledge is expanded and improved over time. (Teaching & Learning Innovations)

Gadgets and Distractions
Matt Reed considers the benefits and challenges of student use of technical gadgets in the classroom. (Confessions of a Community College Dean)

Five Ways to Improve Leadership in Universities
Strategies for strengthening leadership in higher education include creating development opportunities and promoting diversity. (The Guardian)

Tasked with teaching more than 2,000 students each term, University of Michigan Senior Lecturer Brenda Gunderson uses a range of creative active learning strategies in her large classes. But it is Gunderson’s cartwheels that students often say resonate the most.

“Seeing her do a cartwheel in class because she’s so excited that the entire class got the question right [is] awesome,” a student of Gunderson tells ACUE. “I love watching my professors goof off sometimes and knowing that they can be funny, that they’re humans too and not just robots throwing information out at you.”

Gunderson, an award-winning statistics instructor who is featured in ACUE’s Course in Effective Teaching Practices, shares the origins of her famed cartwheel routine in this month’s Expert Series interview. She also discusses other active learning strategies to address the unique challenges of teaching large classes. Check out the full interview below and leave a comment to share your thoughts or questions!

In ACUE’s Motivating Your Students module, you discuss doing cartwheels to keep students engaged. How does that work and where did that idea come from?

BG: We use clickers in the classroom so that all students can answer my questions. At the beginning of every semester, I tell them that I’ll do a cartwheel if and when every single student answers a question with 100% accuracy. Now, I only do cartwheels at the end of class session because the cartwheels are not always that gracefully done, so I want to be able to walk right out when I’m done and not have to get back to teaching.

I have some sections that get no cartwheels the whole term; I have some sections of class that get one or maybe two in total for the term. This semester, there’s one section that already has two, and if they get a third that will be the most cartwheels I’ve done in any section I’ve taught.

There were two things that led to the idea. I was on a committee where we discussed how to incentivize our students to complete faculty evaluations. One of the members said, “Maybe I’ll just promise the students that I’ll wear a tutu to class if I get a 95% or higher response rate.” At the time, my daughter was in gymnastics and asked me if I could do a cartwheel. I was able to, so on a whim I decided to promise it to students. It just kind of came together at the same time.

Video: How doing cartwheels in class keeps students engaged and increases participation

Cartwheels aside, what are some more conventional active learning strategies you use in large classes?

BG: Whether it’s a cartwheel, bringing in some candy to share with the students, or showing short video clips, there are lots of things you can do to keep them excited and engaged in their learning. Some of my students tell me that they come to class regularly because, one, they might see a cartwheel, and two, in every class I have a picture, comic, or short video clip. Sometimes, it’s just something about what I did last weekend or a cool video clip that ties in with the subject of the lecture. For instance, I showed a video clip of my daughter playing her first piano recital. The song was “Lost Puppies,” and at the end, her piano instructor told her she should bark, and she did. I showed that during a part of class where we were testing a theory about whether piano lessons might improve young children’s reasoning ability.

These pictures or comics or video clips can also affirm that I’m a real person. It’s such a large class, so they may not have talked to me in person, but I want them to still feel comfortable reaching out to me.

What are the main challenges of teaching large classes, and what do you do to overcome them?

BG: When you’re teaching a really large class, it’s often in a lecture hall that is not conducive to interacting with all your students. So you need to walk up and down the aisle, make regular eye contact, and make sure students get an opportunity to raise their hands if they have a question. You have to try to make it feel like a small classroom setting.

Another challenge is that I’m not going to get to know all my students, and that’s just something that I have to accept. I’m teaching 700 students this semester, and there’s no way I’ll even know all of their names by the end. So on day one, I tell my students if they see me on campus or outside of the classroom, they should stop and say hello, introduce themselves. I want them to know that I care about their learning, so they feel comfortable reaching out.

Video: Why communication is key to active learning in large classes

How do you engage and motivate students who are taking your course because it is a requirement?

BG: Statistics, the class I teach, and many others are gateway courses that are usually taken as a freshman or sophomore with a lot of students. These are the courses that most students will say they “have to” take. There aren’t many students taking it because they want to.

So you need to use examples from different disciplines to show students the relevance of the material to their lives. Students have a variety of backgrounds and skills and interests, so I try to bring in current events from different areas, like medicine, social sciences, business, or engineering. Then students see the ways these tools help people in whatever discipline they want to pursue.

One of the things that’s been exciting lately is the ability to use technology to personalize the experience for students. We have a bank of testimonials  and advice from past students, and we use technology to deliver personalized messages to each student. For example, students in the same major can give current students advice to help them see why it’s relevant and why they’re learning the content.

That allows me to make up for the fact that I can’t sit down and talk to each of them individually, say in office hours. So it’s really helpful for these gateway courses to harness technology to speak to our students, so that they don’t just feel like a number in the class.

Video: Harnessing technology to maximize student learning

In this week’s news, Rutgers-Newark faculty describe how ACUE’s Course has helped them transform their teaching, and WVU’s president underscores the importance of investing in higher education.

Rutgers University-Newark’s New Approach to Teaching With ACUE 
Rutgers University-Newark’s Bonnie Veysey and Alexander Sannella describe how ACUE’s Course and the student-success-focused P3 Collaboratory have transformed their teaching. (The Newark Times)

WVU President Talks Education, Prosperity
Investing in higher education is a means for improving communities and keeping talent local, West Virginia University President Gordon Gee writes. (The Journal)

I Have Met The Enemy, and He Is Me
John Warner reflects on his personal challenges with teaching a stereotypical “worst student.” (Just Visiting)

‘Bad at Math’ No More
A new approach to teaching math changed a student’s mindset and gave her a newfound appreciation for the subject. (The Hechinger Report)

Revising How We Teach Revision Skills
David Gooblar suggests that using samples from students’ own writing to teach improves students’ learning and creative thinking. (Pedagogy Unbound)

Teaching in the Age of Social Media
Social media can stimulate important and challenging conversations among instructors and students. (University Affairs)

The Cost That Holds Back Ed-Tech Innovation
Teaching innovations that generate real-time data about student achievement are vital to improving higher learning institutions, according to John Lynch. (The Chronicle of Higher Education – Paywall)

The Airing of Grievances
Giving students a forum to air grievances can help both students and instructors build trust and create effective learning experiences. (Just Visiting)

One Approach to Innovation: ‘You Have to Go Slow to Go Fast’
Faculty collaborate to develop new ways to promote student success at Southern New Hampshire’s innovation lab. (EdSurge)

The Challenge of Presidential Leadership
Bowie State University President Mickey Burnim calls for colleges to work together to improve higher education access and inclusion for all and to put students first. (AASCU)

For years, Dr. Bonita Veysey began each of the classes she taught at Rutgers School of Criminal Justice in a similar way.

“I used to start every class with housekeeping stuff,” Veysey told The Newark Times in a recent interview. “It was a way to get something done while I waited for people to arrive.”

This semester, however, Veysey changed her routine after she completed ACUE’s module on Planning an Effective Class Session. Research shows that students are more engaged in their learning at the beginning of class, so Veysey implemented an engagement trigger in the first several minutes of every class.

“It has been amazing,” said Veysey. “My students are showing up on time, and they’re not wasting that time.”

Veysey is leading a cohort of faculty who are enrolled in ACUE’s Course in Effective Teaching Practices, which launched this semester as a cornerstone initiative of Rutgers University–Newark’s P3 Collaboratory. Veysey said that despite her having nearly two decades of experience in the classroom, the program has helped her refine and improve her practice.

“This has given me a completely new view of teaching,” Veysey said.

Check out the complete Newark Times video interview in which Veysey and Dr. Alexander Sannella discuss teaching practices they’ve learned and implemented and the immediate response they’re seeing from students below.

This week, the American Council on Education (ACE) selected a new class of emerging college and university leaders for its prestigious ACE Fellows Program, and a law professor is using The Wire as a teaching tool.

Future leaders. The American Council on Education has selected a diverse group of 46 emerging college and university leaders for the 2017-18 class of the ACE Fellows Program, the longest running leadership development program in the United States. (Inside Higher Ed)

Teaching with television. A law professor is bringing HBO’s classic series The Wire into the classroom to help students analyze the contemporary criminal justice system. (The Huffington Post)

College dreams. Three professors discuss the range of motivations for attending college, from a thirst for lifelong learning to the need for job-ready skills. (University of Venus)

Successful collaboration. Instructors who assign group-work projects should make sure students understand best practices ahead of time to avoid common pitfalls. (Just Visiting)

Valuing students’ stories. Christopher Emdin urges educators to empathize with students who have faced traumas and incorporate personal experiences into their teaching. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Data-based learning. Miami Dade College President and ACUE Advisor Eduardo Padrón is bringing heightened attention to the data science and analytics skills gap, echoing the findings of a new report that calls for enhanced faculty training and support. (Diverse: Issues in Higher Education)

Higher learning champions. The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) has launched a national campaign encouraging college and university trustees to play a more active role in advocating the value of higher education. (AGB)

Showing compassion. Rather than airing frustrations about students in public forums, instructors should demonstrate greater empathy and strive to understand students’ motivations in more productive ways, Joshua Eyler writes. (Inside Higher Ed)

Learning from lectures. Although many academics see lectures as outdated, Miya Tokumitsu explains how effective lectures build knowledge and require students to be engaged listeners and active learners. (The Chronicle Review – Paywall)

This week, recognizing false claims in the classroom and a professor who incorporates stereotypes into discussions.

Learning from feedback. Viji Sathy explains why timing and methodology are essential considerations in collecting feedback from students. (The Q Blog)

Facilitating civility. Colleges and universities have a responsibility to teach and develop tolerance and cultural awareness, Liz Reisberg writes. (The World View)

Teaching with tech. Now that technology and learning are interconnected, instructors need to learn about technological tools that are relevant to their disciplines and use them in their instruction, Akiba Covitz writes. (Higher Ed Gamma)

Confronting preconceptions. A professor explains how she incorporates stereotypes into classroom discussions and encourages students to confront their own perceptions and biases. (Vitae)

Fighting frauds. After teaching students about pseudoscience and misconceptions from history in a course at North Carolina State University, Alicia McGill found that the students were better equipped to analyze claims and recognize distortions. (The Huffington Post)

Reading digitally. Jason Jones discusses the importance of teaching the unique skill sets needed for reading on screens. (ProfHacker)

Faculty success. A new paper suggests that collegial support may contribute to the success of junior faculty and proposes that tenured faculty could mentor new instructors by sharing course materials, reviewing their syllabi, and observing them in class. (Inside Higher Ed)

Instructing future instructors. Leonard Cassuto advocates for graduate programs to do more to train and prepare students in effective pedagogy. (Vitae)