Warm Up to Cold Calling


Cold calling - we have all experienced heart-racing nervousness when a professor or supervisor calls out our name, putting us firmly in the hot seat. Similarly, your students can sometimes have strong negative feelings about being suddenly called on during class. Refraining from cold calling, however, can lead to a small handful of voices dominating the discussion or to awkward, long moments of silence with no one contributing. 

Our Faculty Success team works to provide a wide range of strategies for effectively engaging students by leveraging tech tools readily available at your fingertips, but cold calling can be one tool in your repertoire that is ready to be dusted off and used intentionally and effectively. In fact, at least one study makes the case for cold calling, finding that over time, more students will voluntarily answer questions compared to a low cold calling classroom environment (Dallimore et al., 2012). Additionally, the students became more comfortable with participating in class. Below are some tips for warming up your students to cold calling. 

Set Expectations

  • Give advanced notice in an agenda.
  • Let them know that you will be cold calling as part of the instructions.
  • Regularly use a third party tool like wheelofnames.com. 
  • Share your reasons. Perhaps your goal is to equalize participation, to reduce awkward silences, or avoid cumbersome moments when students talk over one another while muting and unmuting. It is also a good idea to use cold calling as a positive tool to empower rather than a tool to punish. 

Vary The Questions

  • Easier questions are great to start off a discussion. Based on asynchronous responses, you can also gauge who might be good candidates for getting the discussion started, and who is ready for a bigger challenge.
  • Give them time to think. For example, you can pair up students in advance. Propose a question or prompt, and give each pair a few minutes to discuss via direct message with their partner in the chat. 
  • Challenging questions can include additional time to think, and then you can first call for volunteers. If it’s only silence you get, then resume cold calling or perhaps turn to an alternative engagement strategy such as the whiteboard and annotations.

Allow For Opting Out

  • Let students “pass” once without judgment. The idea is to empower and encourage participation rather than punish for not knowing the exact answer to that specific question.
  • Use the chat for those who cannot unmute due to a noise issue in their environment.
  • Continue to use a variety of tools and pivot when necessary. 

Over time, as students’ comfort with participating increases, you may be able to rely a bit more on voluntary participation and hopefully have some lively discussions.

Works Consulted:

  • Dallimore, E. J., Hertenstein, J. H., & Platt, M. B. (2012). Impact of Cold-Calling on Student Voluntary Participation. Journal of Management Education, 37(3), 305–341. https://doi.org/10.1177/1052562912446067 
  • Rush, M. (2018, October 31). 'Cold-calling' - done right - is an effective way to build classroom participation. martharush.org. 
  • Strauss, V. (2016, January 30). 'Hand's not raised? Too bad. I'm calling on you anyway.'. The Washington Post. 

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