When students’ attention starts slipping or they have a hard time connecting with the materials, we’re often tempted as teachers to look for a shiny new toy in the form of a tech tool to rope them back in. But tech itself is rarely the problem for struggling learners, and in turn, rarely the direct answer.
The first step to re-engaging struggling students can be as simple as asking them what’s going on. If you’ve built a relationship founded on trust, you may find that they’re quick to let you know the problem. Other students may be hesitant to speak up, but there are ways to look for patterns. If you’re using an LMS like Canvas, you can go into your student’s grade book and see if they stopped participating around a certain time. Perhaps something happened in their life that pushed them off track. You can also see if there are some types of assignments that they do well on and others that they don’t. Look for commonalities in those types of assignments and consider integrating more of the types of assignments that appeal to them.
If you’re seeing larger swaths of students struggling with materials that have worked well in the past, you may need to accommodate the needs of a new generation of learners. More and more, students have expectations that their learning be customized to their personal lives, interests, and ways of interacting with the world.
Here are some ways to modernize your teaching practices to better connect with and engage this generation of students.
Let Them Have a Choice
Many teachers find it easy to provide students with a single way to finish an assignment, but often there’s no reason to limit choices. In a world where homework doesn’t need to be limited to turning in a paper, there are endless possibilities of what form students’ homework might take. Choice boards had a spike in popularity during the pandemic as a way for students to select the way they wanted to show their learning, and many teachers have since integrated them into the curriculum to keep things fresh—not only for their students, but for themselves as well.
One common technique to build a choice board is to create a 3x3 tic-tac-toe grid in a slide deck or build an HTML table on your class home page. Put an option for how students can complete the assignment in each blank space, and then link to further information and resources. For example, you can link to different types of tools, like Padlet, Miro, or Google Docs. Or you can link to short stories, YouTube videos, and podcasts, giving students the option to engage with content-area texts in a variety of modalities.
When students are given a say, they tend to feel less like a workhorse being told what to do and more like a participant in their own learning. To take this a step further, ask students to make their own class choice boards that you can integrate into future lessons.
Share Their Voice
Some students may struggle to see themselves and their lives in your assignments, and may be less likely to feel that they have anything to say about the work. In these cases, reassess your assignments to see if they truly allow students’ voices to be heard.
If you’re still recycling old content from the 2000s, a quick run through AI could modernize the topics of worksheets and reading assignments. Keep the same pedagogical value, but swap out references to the Spice Girls in favor of Benson Boone or whoever your students are drawn to. You don’t have to be sneaky about this, either; tell your students that you want to update the content to be more interesting to them. Then you can have some fun sharing and learning about what makes the class tick.
Of course, it’s not just about giving students work that appeals to their world. It’s about letting them discover how they best express themselves. Ask yourself if the assignment you’re giving has to be done as an essay or a packet of worksheets. Is there a space for students to co-create digital content, like on a blog, a podcast, or even on their own YouTube or TikTok channel (or private platforms, depending on your school’s requirements)? What might it look like for students to have a project that challenges them and provides them value beyond the single lesson or unit?
Make It “Noice”
When I say “noice,” I’m not just dropping fun slang—I mean that students can create beautiful graphics and presentations, even if art and design isn’t their first passion. Many teachers have good intentions with creative assignments, like drawing a picture or building a diorama, hoping to deepen students’ understanding and engagement. Yet for some students, the blank page or an empty shoebox and some construction paper can feel intimidating. AI tools like Adobe Firefly can serve as a creative bridge, helping students explore artistic choices and visualize ideas before putting pencil to paper. For example, a student could generate several AI images in different styles and then select one to refine or reinterpret through their own drawing. In this way, AI art becomes a scaffold for creative confidence rather than a shortcut around it.
Of course, artistic representation isn’t limited to pictures. They could build posters based on templates in Canva, write songs in different styles in Suno, and much more. If your assessment isn’t based on the iterative process of creative design, but instead on how students can interpret the connection between an artistic product and the classroom content, there are many edtech options that can get students going.
Tech is not the answer to every classroom problem, but you can use it with a little intentionality and creativity to help your struggling students find a way into their learning. You may just find that mixing up your approaches here and there can reengage students and get them back on track.
