Beyond Grading

Language instructors Alejandra Barriales-Bouche and Sun-Young Kim share engaging strategies that help students connect and collaborate from the very first day of class. In their language courses, students come from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds, which can make building community both essential and challenging. Through creative icebreakers, dynamic group rotations and digital tools that promote interaction, they create spaces where students feel comfortable participating and forming connections. Participants will take away practical, easy-to-implement strategies for creating lively, supportive classroom dynamics that invite participation and foster connection across disciplines. 

In this session, Nursing instructor Anne-Laurie Beaubrun shares how she collaborates with the Online and Continuing Nursing Education Office team to provide an online course where students feel genuinely connected—to the material, to their peers, and to their instructor. Through thoughtfully crafted activities that foster interaction even in asynchronous moments, she creates a virtual environment where students experience a strong sense of presence and belonging. Prof. Beaubrun also demonstrates how she follows up one-on-one with students who appear to be struggling academically, ensuring timely support and strengthening trust. Participants will leave with practical strategies from online teaching that can be readily adapted to enhance connection and engagement in in-person courses. 

This session highlights how professors Mette Bendixen and Lars Iversen transformed a simple idea—a journal club centered on the global issue of sand scarcity—into a vibrant interdisciplinary community. Originally created to help students reconnect after the pandemic, SandClub offered a low-pressure space where participants could explore big questions, share perspectives, and engage in meaningful discussions. Over time, it expanded to include student-led presentations, collaborative research activities, and hands-on academic experiences that strengthened relationships among students and faculty. What began as an informal gathering eventually grew into a full university course that continues to model how curiosity-driven, community-oriented learning can thrive both inside and outside the classroom. Participants will gain insight into how a small, relational idea can scale into a transformative pedagogical practice. 

Teaching a class of over 300 students, Microbiology and Immunology instructor Jasmin Chahal uses regular check-ins to foster connection and care. These brief, intentional interactions invite students to pause, share, and reflect, helping to build community and normalize conversations about learning and well-being. Complementing this practice, office hours are carefully designed to balance structure and flexibility, with students scheduling appointments with a clear purpose during regular weeks, and drop-in sessions near midterms offering additional support. Students may come with content-related questions or simply to discuss broader aspects of university life. Participants will take away practical, easy-to-implement strategies for creating supportive classroom dynamics that encourage participation and foster connection even in courses with hundreds of students. 

In this session, Engineering instructor Lawrence Chen shares how a single reflective question—“When you feel that you matter in class, what am I doing?”—opened powerful insight into students’ experiences in his 120-student course. By inviting students to articulate what helps them feel seen, supported, and valued, he strengthened rapport and validated the relational practices already shaping his teaching. Prof. Chen will also discuss how he uses these responses to guide and refine future class activities, helping him design learning environments where students feel a genuine sense of mattering. Participants will leave with a practical example of how one well-crafted feedback question can meaningfully enhance connection and engagement in large courses. 

Physics instructor Ken Ragan uses interactive polling to turn icebreakers into meaningful moments of connection in a class of over 500 students. By asking non-content questions about students’ backgrounds, he helps them gain a visible sense of the diversity within the room. These simple polls normalize different levels of preparation, foster belonging, and build awareness of the varied perspectives shaping the course community. Combined with content-related polling questions throughout the term, this strategy helps students feel seen, supported, and part of a dynamic learning environment.