Article by Kris Vespia, Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL)
Last fall, our programming focus was “Assessment in the Digital Age.” In January, we transitioned with the Instructional Development Institute (IDI) to “Moving from Access to Connection,” and many of our workshops and the keynote reflected on how we can truly connect with our students in the era of AI and other technologies. For Spring 2026, we plan to take yet a deeper dive into that topic by exploring “Making Connections Meaningful.”
There are entire books extolling the virtues of building strong connections with our students, as well as research that supports the link between these connections and student learning (e.g., Felten & Lambert’s 2020 text Relationship-Rich Education). At a time when both students and faculty are uncertain about how to manage their seemingly ever-increasing list of responsibilities, how and why should instructors work on enhancing such connections?
First and foremost, students who report a sense of belonging or a meaningful relationship with a faculty or staff member are more likely to persist with their studies and to succeed in them. They are more prone to seek help if they have trust in and rapport with their instructors. And who hasn’t heard an anecdote such as “If it hadn’t been for Professor So-and-So inviting me onto their research team, I never would have _ [fill in the blank: graduated, gotten the data processing job that started my career].” For me as an undergraduate, it was Dr. Ralph Parsons, who had the confidence to hire me as his department assistant. Doing that job and just talking casually about grad school around the office gave this easily intimated, first-generation college student the confidence to ultimately apply to Ph.D. programs. Could you be that person for one of your students simply by offering encouraging words on an assignment or coming to class 5 minutes early to visit casually with your students?
The second reason to attempt to improve our connections is that this work doesn’t have to be hard. In fact, it may not feel like “work” at all. It may increase our own work satisfaction and produce very low-effort, high-impact possibilities. Here are just a few examples:
- Ask your students to make name table tents and use them throughout the semester. Even if you don’t ultimately memorize all those names, the fact that you make the effort to call them by name and see them as individuals can be powerful. This practice also helps students to call each other by name and build a stronger sense of belonging.
- Create a 5-minute welcome video for your online class and ask your students to do the same to create a greater sense of community in what can truly feel like “distance education.” If you have pets, post a photo of them in your Canvas announcements and ask students to submit pictures of their own pet that you can share in a future week. [Do you remember pet “show and tell” during COVID times of meeting on Zoom? People still love to feature their pets (or kids or hobbies or…) today!]
- Experiment with offering audio or video feedback to students in Canvas with SpeedGrader. I find my feedback is more encouraging and also complex when I do that instead of writing comments. It also takes me less time to grade a set of papers.
- Involve your class (online or in-person) when it comes to creating policies, such as Use of AI, Discussion, or other things in your syllabus. I get a lot more discussion in my courses when students have helped create (and then enforce) the class norms or rules about participation.
This is a small handful of possibilities for connecting with your students that don’t take a lot of time, may actually save you time, and can make class a whole lot more enjoyable for everyone. This semester we are going to be asking you for some of your favorite tips and tricks that we will feature in a two-pronged blog and Teach Tuesday series.
Some of you may remember us having high school educators share their thoughts on “Who are Our UWGB Students?” in Spring 2025. This year we would like to examine that same question using data from our Factbook and brief comments from staff in offices who interact as much or more than instructors with our students. Those statistics and short stories from staff will be one prong of our blog series. The other will be instructor-submitted answers to questions such as “What is one thing you do to increase the sense of belonging in a class?,” “What is your favorite way to stimulate class discussion and keep it going?,” and “How do you keep online discussion boards from growing stale for students (and for you!)?”
Beyond this dual-pronged blog series, CATL will also be sponsoring two workshops this spring about increasing student engagement. One of these will focus on face-to-face courses, and another will tackle engagement in online classes. You can learn more about these sessions and the rest of CATL’s spring programming series in a separate blog post. Please join us for these two sessions and look forward to the tips and resources from your colleagues that will be shared here throughout the spring semester. Meaningful connections matter in higher education now more than ever, and we hope that this spring’s programming equips you with some ideas for small but tangible and impactful ways you can deepen these connections with students.