Full article available here. Excerpts below.
… It’s important, Gurung has found, to make help available in a variety of ways, because not every student is the same, and because the communication habits of young adults keep evolving as the years go by. During class, Gurung circulates through the lecture-hall aisles and calls on students from around the room. During breaks and after class, he’ll talk with students who line up to meet with him. Outside of class, his students are encouraged to attend office hours, which he runs both in person and virtually. He’s created a professional Instagram account as another way students can connect with him.
… More on meeting students as people:
Some large-enrollment courses rely on undergraduate learning assistants to allow for more relational interactions inside and outside of class time.
Learning students’ names requires effort, but there are research-informed techniques that can help. Michelle D. Miller, a professor in the department of psychological sciences at Northern Arizona University, has written a book on the subject, A Teacher’s Guide to Learning Student Names: Why You Should, Why It’s Hard, How You Can. She talked with The Chronicle about her approach in an interview last year.
Another way professors can show they care about students as people is to survey them before class begins. Tracie Marcella Addy, founding director of the Institute for Teaching, Innovation, and Inclusive Pedagogy (TIIP) at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, has developed a “Who’s in Class” survey that can be sent, anonymously and voluntarily, to help create a better classroom climate.
Light-touch, personalized emails from instructors can shift how some students, especially those from marginalized groups, perceive a course — and help improve their academic performance, according to a study from two professors at the University of California at Davis.