Supporting Student Engagement Through Reflection, Confidentiality, and Time Management Awareness
Eduardo Baez Valerio, Bronx Community College
Bio
I am an adjunct lecturer in Psychology at Bronx Community College and an incoming Ph.D. student in Developmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. I also worked in the Disability Services Department at Bronx Community College, which strengthened my commitment to student support and inclusion. I am passionate about creating an engaging learning environments that foster participation, reflection, confidence, and academic growth.
Course Setting
I teach Introduction to Psychology at Bronx Community College through the College Now program. In this dual-enrollment setting, I work with high school students who are taking college level coursework while still completing their high school education. The course introduces foundational psychological concepts and encourages students to connect them to everyday life. Because these students are navigating both high school and college expectations, I aim to create a supportive and engaging classroom environment that promotes participation, confidence, and academic growth.
Problem of Practice
My problem of practice focused on how to help students improve their preparation and readiness for class so they could participate more meaningfully in discussion. Because they are balancing both high school and college expectations, some students struggled with focus, preparation, and active participation. I wanted to develop a strategy that would support time-management awareness, emotional readiness, and self-advocacy. In response, I used confidential beginning of class reflections and end of class exit slips to help students reflect on their preparation, readiness, and engagement with the course material.
Strategy
I implemented a reflective classroom strategy in which students completed confidential written check-ins at the beginning of class and exit slips at the end of class. The beginning of class prompts focused on emotional regulation, readiness to learn, and preparation, while the end of class prompts asked students to reflect on participation, understanding, and time management habits. This strategy was designed to reduce cognitive and emotional load, promote self advocacy, and help students become more aware of how preparation affected their learning and engagement.
The rationale behind this approach was that students often need a structured opportunity to pause, reflect, and regulate themselves before they can fully engage with academic content. By giving students a confidential space to express how they were feeling and how prepared they were, the strategy was intended to reduce cognitive and emotional load, strengthen self-awareness, and encourage self advocacy. The exit slips extended this process by helping students connect their preparation and time management habits to their participation and learning. Overall, the strategy was designed to create a supportive classroom environment in which students could become more focused, more engaged, and more intentional about their academic preparation..
Documentation
Artifact 1: Reflection Prompts
This compares MyOpenMath completion rates between last spring’s cohort and the current cohort, focusing on data from mid-May and the end of the semester. While students are given an opportunity to make up assignments during the last week of May and the first week of June, the original due date for these assignments is mid-May.
Figure #1. Prompts Given to Students
Artifact 2: Sample Student Work
This image presents a student response from the class. The response shows that students were willing to reflect openly on how they prepared before class. These reflections created an opportunity to discuss the importance of time management, daily planning, and how preparation can influence success in the course.
Figure #2: Student Reflection Using the Prompt
Measuring Impact
Measure 1: Quiz Data and Grade Distribution Before Intervention
This image displays class performance on Quiz #2 before the emotional regulation strategy was implemented. The results show a wide distribution of scores, a low average, and high variability in overall student performance. These data serve as a baseline for comparison when evaluating the impact of the later instructional intervention.
Figure #3: Data Before Emotional Regulation Strategy
Measure 2: Quiz Data and Grade Distribution After Intervention
This image displays class performance after the intervention was implemented. Compared with the earlier results, the class average increased substantially, the median and mode shifted to the highest performance range, and most students scored near the top of the distribution. Overall, the image suggests stronger and more consistent academic performance following the intervention.
Figure #4: Data After Emotional Regulation Strategy
Analysis
The strategy was successful in addressing my Problem of Practice, which focused on improving students’ preparation, readiness, and participation in class. The confidential check-ins and exit slips gave students a structured opportunity to reflect on their emotional state, level of preparation, and time management habits. Student responses provided direct evidence that some students were thinking more intentionally about preparation, such as leaving early, arriving on time, and recognizing how preparation affected their focus. Supporting evidence from student work also showed stronger reflection, engagement, and understanding of course concepts. In addition, class performance after the intervention was stronger than the earlier baseline, suggesting that the strategy supported a more consistent learning experience.
The strategy enhanced the student learning experience by creating a supportive environment in which students could reflect before engaging with course content. My prediction was that giving students space for emotional regulation and self-awareness would improve focus and participation, and the evidence generally supported that expectation. Reviewing student responses helped me see that confidentiality was an essential part of the strategy, because students were more open when they felt safe sharing honestly. At the same time, some challenges remain. The strategy does not prove that time management alone caused the academic improvement, and not all students may have benefited in the same way. Next time, I would strengthen the process by collecting more consistent before and after data and by tracking changes in participation and performance over a longer period.
Recommendation
My advice to other College Now or Early College professors is to use this strategy when students seem hesitant to participate, overwhelmed, or still adjusting to the expectations of a college classroom. Dual enrollment students are often balancing high school responsibilities while learning how to function in a college setting, so brief confidential check-ins and exit slips can help them pause, reflect, and become more aware of their preparation, focus, and participation.
This strategy works especially well in classes that rely on discussion, reflection, and active engagement. It can help build trust, support emotional regulation, and encourage self advocacy without taking much class time. I would also recommend emphasizing confidentiality, because that was essential in helping students respond honestly. Professors should use the responses not only as feedback, but also as a way to identify patterns in student readiness and adapt instruction to better support learning.
