Part I of this article discussed theoretical aspects of student engagement, one means being the creation of an interactive community in the classroom. Suppose we are convinced that an interactive classroom could lead to increased engagement? What do we actually do? One method I use consistently in my classroom is teacher as facilitator, with participants who do not sit passively but actively generate ideas.

Students need to now they are essential to the group and do this by speaking, listening to one another, knowing that they are heard, forming opinions, taking stands, offering and receiving feedback from one another, wrestling with questions in small groups, and bringing the small group discoveries to the larger group. Through these activities, they learn that the success of the group is dependent on their contribution. When students knows this, they show up, pay attention and contribute.

But what do we do if our students don't volunteer to speak? We ask a question or throw out a provocative statement, and there is silence or, at best, the same few students volunteering. I've found a method that works without fail. If I first give students time to write in response to a discussion question (and I mean five minutes or less), they have a chance to clarify and organize their thoughts, and participation increases dramatically, both in the number of students speaking and the quality of their contributions. Before they write, I often ask them to think for one minute without writing. This helps to alleviate the freeze that can come when they face the blank page. By the end of the minute, they are usually anxious to get their ideas down in writing. And because I have given them time to think and write, I don't feel the need to wait for volunteers: I call on students.

In these circumstances, they rarely decline to speak, and their faces make clear that they sometimes surprise themselves with how much they have to say. A number of students have told me that my classroom was the only one in which they participated in discussion. A friend of mine who has been teaching college for nineteen years told me that she read that if students don't speak in the first two weeks of class, the odds are that they won't speak for the rest of the semester. This can be avoided by the conscious creation of an interactive community in those early weeks.

When we lecture in class, we reinforce for ourselves and our students how knowledgeable we are. That is valued in academia; we are hired for our expertise. But with community-based learning, it becomes less about executing our own performances, center stage at the front of the classroom, and more about choreographing our students' performances. We then support them as they learn to choreograph for themselves. I can structure my classroom time with the goal of dazzling my students with how intelligent I can be, but I would far rather they dazzled themselves with how intelligent they can be.

If, instead of lecturing, we lead experiential exercises in which students discuss material and teach one another, we have created a superior learning experience and one in which students will make a personal investment. Many of us have read articles and books about the effectiveness of student-involved learning over students-as-passive-recipients, and yet too often we stand at the lectern while our students drift away-either figuratively in that they are distant and detached or literally in that they stop coming to class altogether. We need to show them what engaged looks like, ask them to practice, and teach them how to teach one another. There is a synergy that can be created and nurtured in a classroom, where students find out they are smarter than they thought, effectively verbalize opinions they didn't realize they had, and learn from one another.

If I do all of the talking, the students have the benefit of the information one mind has distilled, and, while it's an educated and experienced mind, it is only one. If the whole class is involved in teaching and learning, then everyone (including the instructor) benefits from the breadth and diversity of the shared ideas.

That professor friend I mentioned also said that while a year after a course was over we might remember little of what she had said in the class, we would be far more likely to remember what we had said. My experience bears that out. I clearly remember some of the positions I have taken in class, both those that made my professors smile and those that didn't. Think about what you remember from the classes you've taken. It is when we put ourselves out there, give up the more comfortable role of passive recipient of knowledge and move into the sometimes awkward and frightening role of producer of ideas that we become memorable, especially to ourselves. I see our jobs as supporting our students to realize how memorable they can be.

By Shirlee Dufort