Enhance Classroom Engagement with Name Cards: A Quick Tip by Dr. Craig Engstrom (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another video on crafting communication competence. I'm Dr. Craig Engstrom, and in this quick tip video, I'm going to share with you something that I think that you will find valuable if you are an instructor or trainer consultant teaching or working in a large venue or currently in this environment where everybody's wearing masks so that you can identify people, and that is to use a name card, but I do have a trick with this and a template that you can use, so if you stick around, I will tell you about this in just a second. If you're new to the channel, I hope that you will hit subscribe as well as the notification bell to get more content just like this inside of your feed. If you like this video, please share it with others or give it a thumbs up or leave a comment so that I know, and I'll make more videos just like this one. So I did say that you can use a name card, and I have a template that you can download from my website, craigengstrom.ninja. The link directly to the download is in the description, but what I'm going to share with you you might not be thinking about, and that's where the value of this video comes in, and as you can see on the template, I have some information. It just says on the side, go ahead and leave your first name and last name, and it is oriented so obviously people can set it up as a table tent, but they can also maybe put it onto their desk, and it'll sit over it or a table, and it'll sit over it. There's a variety of ways you can use it. I would print it on cardstock. I just have it on crappy paper right now, but on the back of it, and this is where the value comes in, is you have this participation grade information. There it goes. It's focused, and it gives you 16 weeks. Of course, you can modify that to suit, or you can also do it for attendance as you can see here. So I have for you some really cool options there. Of course, modify it to how you want, and I've already set it up oriented so that when you print it, it is actually going to flip accurately. And so there's that. Basically, this is a tip that I got from the book from Harvard Publishing on teaching cases. I did talk about it in a video this summer, which was not of great quality because I didn't have a great computer at that time, but I've since upgraded, so as you know, the quality of my videos have improved. But this is just a really great tool and technique, I think, for really getting to know people. I'm terrible at remembering names myself, and so what I do is I distribute this and then collect it from students, and then the next day I come back and I distribute it back to them, and I learn their names, or in a consulting environment, I do the same thing. And it might change what I have on the back, but essentially, I give some points, a star. I do whatever it is, like if I'm giving points for attendance, I go ahead and mark that. If I'm trying to encourage participation, this is a great way to give immediate feedback on participation. Of course, you can add more rows of boxes, so if you want to meet twice a week, for example, or if you do meet twice a week, you can have a different column for two class meetings, or you can give a weekly grade, however you want to do it, but the main thing is that then when you look out to a sea of people, you actually can see their name displayed and call them by name. So just a quick tip for you, I hope that you appreciated it. I look forward to seeing you watching the next videos and commenting on them so I can have a dialogue with you. Take care.