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By Christina Swanson
Many students in higher education feel alone. They don’t know that everyone else is feeling the same fears — of failure, of disappointing their families, of not being enough. As educators, we balance course content with the added complexities students are bringing into the classroom. And we often do so without formal training in psychology, counseling, or crisis management. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
This past year, I made a point to focus on connecting with students by reframing my approach to assignment feedback to prioritize connection rather than evaluation. And it transformed student outcomes: Students began the semester intimidated, overwhelmed, and uncertain and ended it confident, empowered, and validated. Despite all that feels out of our control, I learned that connection is possible in higher education, even with large class sizes and a handful of hours a week with students.
Why Connection Matters
According to a study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the feeling of belonging is one of our three basic psychological needs.
Relationships built on safety, respect, and trust, also known as secure attachment, help us build confidence, empathy, resilience, agency, and more. Attachment theory is grounded in the parent-child relationship, according to a study in the National Library of Medicine. But the foundational ideas for developing secure relationships are beneficial in the classroom, too: understanding students’ emotional states and underlying needs, more deeply understanding their behavior through curiosity and empathy, validating their thoughts and experiences before correcting them, and problem solving together.
Leading with connection can be more work upfront. But our brains are not as receptive to logical processing and higher-level thinking when they are flooded with emotion. The question remained — how could I build authentic, secure relationships in only an hour or two a week?
Connection Through Reflection
I began to see that even with the constraints of a 50-minute class and 60 assignments a week to grade, I had choices. I could choose to use those moments intentionally. I realized that feedback on assignments could be a powerful tool for connection. In previous semesters, assignments were milestones — ways to track progress. This past year, instead of using assignments solely for evaluation, I treated them as conversations.
In sharing how their understanding of the topic had changed, students reflected on what was most meaningful to them. I wanted to meet that level of trust and vulnerability with authenticity in my responses. So I responded to each submission with personalized comments. These comments weren’t usually long, but they were personal. They said: I see you. You matter. You’re not alone.
Letting Go of Evaluation, Gaining Engagement
Replacing half of my concrete, evaluation-based assignments — that I had been using for years — with open-ended reflections was not an easy decision. Yet letting go of evaluation didn’t lead to disengagement, poorer performance, or chaos. It led to deeper engagement. Over time, students began to talk about themselves differently.
By the end of the semester, we all agreed on scaling back the total number of reflections, but there was no question about their worth. One student wrote, “I particularly like the reflections because I see how my confidence was growing with each entry.”
In my case, many of the students’ reflections and my comments were focused on growth and identity in the context of career. The content isn’t what matters, though. Starting each conversation with curiosity and a willingness to learn builds the foundation for a deep and meaningful mentorship. That can happen at any level and with any topic.
The Cumulative Impact of Small Connections
By the end of the semester, over 96 percent of my students reported feeling more confident, knowledgeable, and prepared. One student wrote, “Thank you for always leaving comments on my work! It empowers me and makes me feel that my experiences/voice is valid.”
A personalized comment on a reflection is a seemingly small act. But by making that an intentional choice rooted in how I wanted to make an impact on the world, it became meaningful. It was my chance to show the students the value they bring to the world and that their voice matters.
Every time that I prioritized this authentic connection, I felt my own agency grow. As educators, we have more control than we think. And that’s incredibly empowering.
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This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. Click here to read the original article.
