These stories describe promising approaches professors have found for getting students to buy into the project of learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to Show Students a Gen-Ed Course Matters<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n By Beckie Supiano<\/a><\/em> October 17, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n For one science professor, it\u2019s about connecting to what motivates students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n … Professors teaching gen-ed courses don\u2019t always take a step back to ask why their institution offers such courses, Duncan says. He\u2019s come to see that the courses are not really about the content, or in his case that \u201cblack holes are really important for everyone to know about.\u201d Rather, colleges \u201cwant students who are not science majors to see how science works. To perhaps even learn to think scientifically. And to distinguish between things that have facts to support them and things that are just opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n … In his course, Duncan would give his students examples that extended beyond astronomy. For example, even before the pandemic put vaccines front and center, Duncan talked about their importance, showing a picture of a polio ward and mentioning that Roald Dahl lost a young child to measles. Stories, he says, stay with them longer than statistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n … These efforts meant he had less time to get into as much content about astronomy. But Duncan saw as more important the broader goal of helping students understand how science works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To gauge whether his approach was successful, Duncan included a bonus question on his final exam asking students whether the course had affected their view of science, and if so, how? Students only rarely said \u201cno,\u201d Duncan says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Duncan analyzed the responses students wrote in the fall of 2019 and found that about a third of students said they were less likely to be fooled by bad science or pseudoscience. Nearly as many said they had improved their critical thinking or scientific thinking skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One student wrote, \u201cThis class has given me a cosmic perspective of our size in the universe, but also practice [in the] skills of thinking critically of claims and assertions needed to make good decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s important for students to recognize that they\u2019re learning more than just content in their courses, says Mary-Ann Winkelmes, the founder and director of the Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education project (TILT Higher Ed). \u201cPart of what Doug Duncan did so well, and part of what TILT helps to do is to call students\u2019 attention \u2014 their megacognitive awareness \u2014 to how they\u2019re learning something, and what skills, specifically, they\u2019re learning, and how these skills are useful, right now, in this context, and how those skills could be useful later on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This, indeed, is part of the case for having general-education requirements. When students take a mix of courses, they are exposed to thinking and learning through different disciplinary lenses. \u201cWe want them to leave with the awareness,\u201d she says, that \u201cthey have many ways to learn, they have many ways to think. And all of those ways that they\u2019ve experienced in college are going to make them more effective thinkers and learners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Teaching students to think and learn, she adds, is the best way that professors can prepare them for a future in which they\u2019ll have to think and learn about things none of us can predict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why One Professor Fosters Friendships in Her Courses<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n By Beckie Supiano<\/a><\/em> October 3, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n When students feel connected to one another, they\u2019re more likely to come to class, do the work, and even take risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n … Learning, after all, is social. When students get to know each other, they\u2019re more likely to come to class and do the work. And when they feel comfortable around each other, more engaging forms of work are also possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n … \u201cLife makes us all anxious,\u201d Mullally says, \u201cand we have to develop the tools and skills to figure out how to deal with that.\u201d A classroom can be a place to practice skills, and Mullally uses hers to work on forming the kinds of collegial relationships that help students feel supported enough to take risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It starts with getting students to interact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n … To Komguep, the biotechnology class felt like a community, one where students recognized one another\u2019s personalities and could anticipate their peers\u2019 reactions and responses. That dynamic, she says, helped quieter students like her come out of their shells. \u201cI\u2019m honestly not very comfortable with public speaking, but being in that class made me more confident, especially doing presentations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that confidence wasn\u2019t all that Komguep gained in the course. She had been a bit nervous to take biotechnology, because while she is interested in the biology part, she was less familiar with the business aspects other students knew a lot about. Because the course was so interactive, she was able to learn things from her classmates she wouldn\u2019t otherwise have known, in a way that stretched her without being too intimidating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n … There are many good reasons for professors to encourage students to interact, says Peter Felten, co-author of\u00a0Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College<\/em>. \u201cThey\u2019re going to learn more. They\u2019ll be more motivated, more likely to come to class, if they have friends in class,\u201d says Felten, executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning, assistant provost for teaching and learning, and a professor of history at Elon University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But students don\u2019t always know that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n … \u201cSometimes we forget, as we\u2019re preparing our classes and teaching our classes, we\u2019re not just teaching students content,\u201d Felten says. \u201cWe\u2019re teaching them how to be in our disciplines.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take Felten\u2019s discipline, history. \u201cIf my class is entirely lecture and all of their assessments are individual writing, I\u2019m teaching them a lot of history, and I\u2019m also teaching them that historians work alone and that all historical work is produced individually.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe same is true in a science course,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd so, as Martha is saying, if science is inherently collaborative and high-end research science is based on these collaborations, working together, then shouldn\u2019t we teach students both how to understand science and how to do science how science actually works?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Connecting with classmates, then, doesn\u2019t just give students a reason to come to class or support in learning the material in the present. It\u2019s also part of their preparation for what they\u2019ll do in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other ways to help students connect:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Francisco Gallegos, an associate professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University, has put students into small discussion groups and asked them to\u00a0meet\u00a0outside<\/em>\u00a0of class<\/a>, using a format adapted from a consulting company where he once worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Connections Are Everything: A College Student\u2019s Guide to Relationship-Rich Education,\u00a0<\/em>by Felten and several co-authors,gives students\u00a0practical advice<\/a>\u00a0on how to build relationships with professors, staff members, and peers. It can be read for free\u00a0online<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aimee Deconinck, a lecturer in biological sciences at Clemson University, puts students into small learning groups using a\u00a0cooperative-learning<\/a>\u00a0model that she learned from Mara Evans, a STEM teaching associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In these groups, students have discussions, solve practice problems, and, sometimes, study together outside of class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some professors ask students to\u00a0learn the names<\/a>\u00a0of at least some of their classmates and encourage them to exchange contact information so they can ask one another questions or meet up to study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n