Todd D. Zakrajsek from UNC-Chapel Hill and ITLC Lilly spoke about “Game Changing Teaching Tips” at the Lilly Conference Online. Zakrajsek spoke about how to engage students. The prompt was “what strategies do you use for student engagement?” Zakrajsek explained that he first lets people know that there will be breakout rooms to prepare them for the task. The breakout room number was used for participants to post on that column number on a Padlet board. Zakrajsek has used this approach with Padlet and also Jamboard. After seven minutes, there were numerous columns and posts on the Padlet board. Zakrajsek called on group 1 to share, and they use cards with student names and shuffle the cards to then call on someone. If the student doesn’t know the question, they can “phone a friend” in the room. Another group spoke about using concept maps to review, synthesize, and integrate information during the second or third week for that topic. Questions came up about respectful ways of addressing and including pronouns and printing names on both sides of a name card tent so that students in rows behind them can read. There were suggestions about a moment of reflection pause! This suggestion was a metacognitive activity. Another attendee spoke about using “popcorn” to have students select others. Stefanie spoke about optimizing activities for one modality or another. Zakrajsek shared infographics that ITLC has generated about “Think-pair-share” and “Minute Papers” among other strategies with a “level up” modification.”Power-ups” were about how to infuse technology into these activities and strategies. Scholarly Teacher is where they are being shared and they are working on text-only versions for screen readers: scholarlyteacher.com/teachingtips Zakrajsek also spoke about engagement not requiring talking to another. For example, the minute paper doesn’t require talking to someone and is engaging participants.
