A Popsicle Stick, a Puzzle and a Simple Question: How NDSU Instructors Help Students Find Their Place

A popsicle stick with a number on it. Two index cards. A puzzle waiting on a table before class begins.

None of them looks like a lesson plan. But at North Dakota State University, instructors are using simple activities like these to help students do something that can matter just as much as what they learn: get to know the people sitting beside them.

During Classroom Connections Week, Aug. 31 to Sept. 4, instructors across NDSU are sharing strategies they use to help students connect with one another. The week is the first university wide effort of its kind, bringing together ideas already being used in classrooms across campus.

The effort comes as NDSU continues to examine what helps students persist. University retention data identify belonging as one of three drivers of first-year persistence, alongside academic success and the practical business of staying enrolled. Of the students who entered NDSU in fall 2024, 78% returned the following fall. Most of the loss occurred during a single period: the summer between the first and second years.

Research cited in NDSU’s analysis, including the work of Vincent Tinto, has long connected persistence with how well students become integrated into the academic and social life of an institution. The first year is particularly important.

That makes belonging both important and actionable. Unlike some factors that influence whether a student stays enrolled, an instructor can begin building it on the first day of class.

“I am grateful to every instructor who spends part of a class period making sure students know one another,” said Provost Shari Veil. “A student decides whether they belong here in the first few weeks, long before they decide whether to come back.”

Seven instructors described methods that already work in their own classrooms, and any of them can be borrowed.

Ideas From NDSU Instructors

Nadeje Alexandre

assistant dean for student success, College of Arts and Sciences
UNIV 100: You Got Here, Now What: Tools for Epic Success

Students in this first-year experience course begin each week with a new conversation prompt and a different partner, giving them a few minutes to talk and learn about one another. Puzzles sit on the tables before class starts, so students who arrive early have something to work on together. Interactive activities run throughout the course.

Eric Berg

professor, Animal Sciences
ANSC 114: Introduction to Animal Science

Berg photographs every student during first-day introductions in his lab so he can learn their names. He says it makes students more comfortable engaging in class discussion.

Stephanie Keller

assistant professor of practice, School of Nursing, Sanford Bismarck
NURS 323: Comprehensive Foundations in Nursing

Keller threads get-to-know-you activities through the full semester rather than limiting them to the first week or two. Many class activities put students in groups of two or three, and each day students draw a popsicle stick with a number on it. Their partner is whoever holds the matching number, so they work with different classmates all semester.

Ryne Kisch

admission counselor, Office of Admission
Admission presentations

Prospective students attending an admission presentation go around the room and share their name, hometown and what they are most looking forward to about college.

Jenni Momsen

professor, Biological Sciences
BIOL 272

Momsen typically uses biology-themed “would you rather” questions: live in a hot rainforest or a cold tundra, be 10 feet tall or 10 inches tall. Students explain their reasoning and ask one another questions. The class then looks at organisms that live in rainforests and tundras and what they have in common, which Momsen says is more than students usually expect.

Sara Poe

associate director for international enrollment management and student success, Global Programs and Services
LANG 108

The course is designed for international students in their first semester at NDSU. One of the first assignments is a campus scavenger hunt, in which students locate campus sites in groups and post photos to Blackboard. Poe asks the campus community to welcome the students when they are out taking pictures.

Justin Wageman

professor, School of Education
EDUC 486/686: Classroom Management for Diverse Students

Wageman uses two activities. In Fascinating Facts, students write two facts about themselves on separate index cards, and throughout the semester he draws one at random and reads it aloud for classmates to guess whom it describes. In Noun-Name Tag, students pair their first name with an animal or food beginning with the same letter, such as Ava-Avocado or Daniel-Dragon, and the class periodically plays a recall game using the pairs.

Instructors with a method that works in their own classroom can share it during Classroom Connections Week.

The retention figures in this story are drawn from Keeping the Promise, the Behind the Numbers examination of first-year persistence at NDSU.