As an older millennial who has endured plenty of “kids aren’t what they used to be” conversations, I hesitate to oversimplify how these days of teaching and learning are harder than years past. But things have been relentlessly rough since COVID--AI disruption, political unrest, global war, economic instability, environmental disasters--and both ourselves and our students are feeling it. Even the most committed of college teachers can’t escape the challenges in class engagement--when they are successful at building class community, they have to work twice as hard to get half as much.

When today’s issues press particularly hard, I find comfort and wisdom in older texts on university teaching such as the late Ken Bain’s 2004 What the Best College Teachers Do. Based on the substantial qualitative study of 67 exceptional college teachers, Bain laid out in browsable form the principles and practices consistent across these diverse people. Among many ideas--now familiar at most universities thanks to Bain’s decades-long work and leadership--was one that struck me as fresh and necessary: “seeking commitments” (pp. 112-114). As we know from every waning new year’s resolution or good habit that stuck, a commitment is not as easy as declaring your best intentions. Solid class commitments require constant cultivation in a way that involves and sustains everyone. 

Saying It Out Loud: The Student’s Commitment

In Bain’s study, professors consistently asked students to formally commit to the course in specific ways such as showing up on time, arriving to class with ideas to share, answering questions in class, participating mutually in group work, and approaching contentious topics with curiosity and empathy. This formal commitment involves explicit articulation and recognition, sometimes as simple as stating the commitments on the first day of class to observable action such as having students fill out a form related to the commitment, writing a personal statement of how they connect to this commitment, and making a plan for how they will fulfill that commitment.

The stated commitment is powerful: for students transitioning from high school, this act communicates changing responsibilities on who is the primary driver of their success. Without a parent constantly in the loop about their education, students themselves are ultimately responsible for when and how they show up in their education. For older students, increasingly the “new-traditional” student (Costa, 2026), the commitment makes transparent the expectations needed to fit formal education into the rest of their full lives.

Of course, it’s not as easy as getting students to pinky-promise they will do the reading for every class. Our commitments have to be selective, authentic, sustainable, shared, and embedded, all of which require our mutual commitment. Consider what 1-2 things you most want students to commit to, and build these into every part of the course, including your own commitments.

Baking It In: The Professor’s Commitment

Before anything is asked of the students, the professor has to be clear on their own role in these commitments, preferably in the same breath as the student’s commitment:

• “To support a prompt start time, I will be here 15 minutes early with the opening question displayed.”
• “To ensure we get the most out of assigned reading, we will explicitly practice close reading and notetaking strategies.”
• “To get the most out of group work, we will draft group agreements, and I will provide timely check-ins.”

Long-trusted voice in teaching James Lang says, “if you care about it, do it in class.” For the commitments to be feasible for students with different learning approaches and lives, they have to be absolutely essential to the course learning outcomes, built directly into every week of the course, and framed with diverse ways for students to meet that commitment. Students have to see it spelled out in assignments, prodded in class discussions, listed at the very topic of rubrics, coming out of the way you speak and present. 

Setting Up the Commitment

Once the groundwork is set and commitments are clear, students next need to plot an environment where those commitments can take root and grow. To keep these commitments, how will they plan their schedules, organize their tasks, build in feedback systems, set routines, and make a Plan B when (not if) their best-laid plans get disrupted? Encourage them to get as specific as possible: When a student opens their web browser, what pages should automatically open to communicate a priority on course work and time management? What academic support will they take advantage of, and under what conditions? Requiring students to make such a plan supports the side of student engagement and student-centeredness that we need to re-engage, of shared responsibility and mutuality. 

While students need to do this individually, the classroom environment itself needs to be set up the same way. For example, if your commitment focuses on being present for deeply engaged learning, how does this determine the tech use parameters in class? If the commitment focuses on leaning into disagreement, what processes would help students manage the discomfort that may follow? Even if we have plans for such questions, we should get student input to reinforce the commitment as one everyone shares.

Long-term commitments require timely checkpoints: At what two points in the semester should students be prompted to review their first-week commitments in order to assess whether they are on track or need to make adjustments to get back on track? This can be done through a simple “progress report” assignment, or build into exam practice or review via exam wrappers.

Recommit to One Commitment

In the flurry of teaching tasks we’re juggling, what one challenge, opportunity, or essential course component keeps coming to the front of your mind? If you had to choose one thing for both you and students to commit to, what would it be? Which commitment would produce the greatest ripple effect in your classes? What would success look like? As you plan your courses, write this commitment in a single sentence and make it inescapable by putting it in the header of your course planning documents or as a prominent sticky note in your trusted notebook. While we can’t neglect the many responsibilities of a course, we can direct their energy to this one commitment.  

Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Harvard University Press.

Costa, K. (2026). An educator’s guide to ADHD. Routledge.

Carnegie Mellon University Eberly Center. (n.d.). Exam wrappers. 

Moore, C. (2025, October). Reflecting on course performance with the progress report journal. Teaching Tips Blog: Oakland University Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

Lang, J. (2025 December 15). If you care about it, do it in class. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

About the Author

Christina Moore is the Associate Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, and lecturer in Writing and Rhetoric. She teaches special courses for the Honors College including the University as Science Fiction and Everyday Universal Design. Outside of academia, Christina plays volleyball and practices aikibudo. 

Others may share and adapt under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC.

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