CTLE Faculty Spotlight: English Department鈥檚 Sense of Belonging DARP
April 2, 2025
DARPs are collaborative initiatives designed by faculty within a department to address specific teaching and learning goals. The English Department focused on sense of belonging in the classroom, exploring the research question: Will implementing five or more informal engagement activities increase student engagement in our class?
Engagement Strategies in Action
Zahir Small and Clay Arnold, the professional development leads on this project, shared that their DARP began with a faculty discussion on how to keep students engaged and off their phones during class. Faculty identified activities that had been particularly successful in sparking student interest and participation.
The department created a menu of activities that faculty could select from, including:
- Gamified learning (e.g., Grammar Jeopardy, Metaphor Dice)
- Icebreakers to build connections among students
- Mid-semester check-ins to assess students鈥� well-being
- Physical movement strategies (e.g., standing while teaching, arranging students in circles)
All activities were compiled in a shared Canvas resource, allowing faculty to experiment with different techniques and choose what best fit their teaching style.
Impact on Students and Faculty
The results have been promising. According to faculty reflections:
- Students are engaging more with one another, both during activities and outside of class.
- More students are completing coursework, even if quiz scores have remained stable.
- Classroom interactions feel more communal, fostering a stronger sense of belonging.
Faculty also found that the collaborative nature of the project has strengthened their own sense of community. The discussions around engagement strategies have led to ongoing revisions and improvements, ensuring that activities are not just icebreakers but also integrated into active learning experiences.
This project highlights how small, intentional changes can lead to meaningful impacts鈥攏ot only for students but for faculty as well. As Clay Arnold noted, 鈥淲e have a significant number of people just talking about what kinds of activities and assignments will get students engaged鈥� in a way that we haven鈥檛 had much of until we started this project.鈥�
For more details on the English Department鈥檚 engagement DARP, visit the .
