Kevin Gabbert

At my school there is a student that all the instructors find to be 'difficult'. He thinks he knows everything and is constantly challenging his instructors, which often disrupts the class. At first I found this student to be difficult myself, until I noticed that whenever I agreed that he was right about something he didn't interrupt again for about half an hour. This gave me an idea, and from then on I tried to ask him questions periodically that he would be likely to get right, and this has kept him engaged in the class and no longer disrupting… >>>

I've found that a good way to get my students to engage in the class is to keep them guessing what I'll do next. Sometimes I'll walk up and down the rows or call on a student seemingly at random. I may assign a surprise in-class project, tell a story or a joke, or act out a scenario. The most common technique I use is the discussion model; rather than lecture I start a discussion to get the class involved. This method does make it difficult to stay on subject at times, but I've found that the student involvement that… >>>

One class that is very unpopular to teach is Operating System Concepts. Its a very dry subject that can be difficult to get students to engage in. So how did I get the students to engage in the class topics? I taught the majority of the class not as a laundry-list of facts, but as a series of stories; the story of why the first digital computer was made is an exciting one if told properly and given some context. After teaching Operating Systems several times I eventually turned most of the classwork into stories or interactive group discussions, and… >>>

I've used some fairly unconventional methods for gaining the buy-in of my students, such as giving every student a different puppet and addressing them though their puppet persona's. That might sound like a juvenile technique, but I've gotten very good class participation in my college courses this way. Many of my students identified with their puppets and I used them as a reward for good participation. In several programming classes I had two puppets: Bananas the 'code monkey' that was a reward for correct answers, and Popo the pig of shame who was given to students with incorrect answers or… >>>

One technique I have used to get the attention of a class during the first meeting is to do something unexpected, and then surprise the class by showing how this unexpected thing actually demonstrates a key lesson. For example, in the first meeting of an Intro to Game Design class I had every student talk about why they chose to pursue a degree in game design. While they were talking I brought out a small plastic dinosaur and played with it on my desk. I kept this up for about fifteen minutes until I felt the class was about to… >>>