Teaching is often described as a solitary profession, where faculty work independently within their own classrooms, departments, or programs. This siloed approach can make it easy to assume that challenges—such as waning student engagement and distracted learners engaging in off-task behaviors such as texting —are personal failures rather than shared struggles. In reality, these issues are common across disciplines and instructional settings. When faculty begin to engage in open dialogue about these experiences, they often discover that their challenges mirror those of their colleagues. Such conversations can become powerful catalysts for professional growth, reflective practice, and innovative problem-solving.
This article will share the impetus that brought three faculty with unique expertise together to explore how the Good Behavior Game (GBG), if implemented in our college classrooms, can have a positive impact on student engagement.
Our Initiative
This initiative grew out of a collaborative conversation among three faculty members, each bringing distinct expertise to the table. As part of our College of Education’s new initiative, Supporting Our Scholarship (Ciminelli et al., 2025), the issue of student engagement surfaced unexpectedly during a side discussion. What began as an informal exchange of frustration quickly developed into a shared commitment to address the concern. One faculty member contributed expertise in instructional design and curriculum development, another offered insights into how relationship building fosters community and engagement in K–12 settings, and the third brought experience with implementing behavioral strategies in K-12 and college classrooms (like the GBG). Together, these perspectives shaped the foundation for exploring how innovative strategies could be used in college classrooms to improve participation and engagement.
One promising strategy for reenergizing the classroom and boosting engagement is the Good Behavior Game (Barrish et al., 1969), a team-based behavioral intervention that has long shown effectiveness in managing classroom behavior in the K-12 environment (Flower at al., 2014; Smith et al., 2021) and is now gaining attention as a tool for fostering participation in higher education settings (Al-Hammhouri, 2024; Cheatham et al., 2017). The GBG is a behavioral strategy that involves setting classroom expectations and rules for which students can earn points. For example, students working in teams can earn points for answering content-based questions, refraining from cell-phone use and side conversations. The students with the most points win the game, and earn the pre-determined reward (e.g., candy, extra points, homework coupons, etc.). The GBG is versatile, and has been successfully applied as a tool to improve similar behavior in K-12 classrooms. The GBG can also be adapted to fit the unique needs of individual teachers and students, and to fit within existing curricula.
Implementation
Given the overwhelming success of the GBG in K-12 classrooms, why isn’t it used more frequently by college instructors to promote student participation and engagement? We asked ourselves this question when we were discussing our concerns regarding student engagement in higher education. We thought that the GBG was a potential strategy that could be used as a way to improve student participation and engagement in college classrooms. Our collaboration to implement the GBG to address concerns regarding lack of student engagement and participation was a unique and innovative opportunity to try to transform the college classroom and shape future educators. We reviewed the courses we were teaching and decided to implement the GBG in a foundations of education course. We compared the effects on classroom participation via the use of the GBG in one section of the course to a section of the same course, with the same instructor, in which the GBG was not implemented. In the section with the GBG, the instructor delivered content-based questions that were woven into the lesson, at specific times. For example, one day the questions were asked in the beginning of the lesson as a review, followed by numerous other questions woven into the new content. On other days, the questions were woven in throughout the lesson, and sometimes the questions were asked at the end of class as review.
We measured participation by the number of hands raised per content-based question in each section. In each section, two weeks of baseline data were collected on the number of hands raised per question. Following baseline, one section was informed that they would be playing a game in which they would earn points for answering content-based questions correctly. The team with the most points at the end of each day could earn the agreed-upon reward which was one point added to their quiz average. In the other section, the GBG was not played, but the number of hands raised per question was still recorded. We found that the GBG was effective in increasing participation in the class in which it was implemented. Students in that section were eager to answer questions, were more thoughtful about potential answers, and were willing to try again to provide another answer if the first was incorrect.
Conclusion
Our collaboration was successful in illustrating the value of cross-departmental partnerships while simultaneously increasing student engagement in the classroom. As faculty in higher education, we all have areas of expertise that, when shared, can truly transform the classroom setting. When you are noticing a problem or identifying an area of concern in your class – don’t look inward and blame yourself! Don’t take it personally that students are on their phones, online shopping, or eating their three-course meal in your class. You are not alone, and it is likely that your colleagues across disciplines are experiencing these same (or very similar) issues. All it takes is communicating and reaching out to your colleagues in all fields with all different areas of expertise to share your experiences and collaborate to transform the classroom setting. By collaborating to enhance the strategies we use in the classroom to promote student participation and engagement, perhaps students will feel more empowered by their educational experience.
Dr. Karen Poland, EdD, is an Assistant Professor in the College of Education at Niagara University. She earned her Doctorate in Education from Binghamton University, a Certificate of Advanced Study in Educational Administration, and a Master’s degree in Secondary Social Studies from SUNY Cortland. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree from SUNY Geneseo. Dr. Poland brings a broad P–20 perspective to her work, with more than 20 years of experience in education serving as a social studies teacher, staff developer, curriculum designer, and director of career and technical education programs.
Dr. Jennifer M. Owsiany is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) who received her doctoral degree in Psychology with an emphasis in Applied Behavior Analysis in 2019. She has over 12 years of teaching, research, and clinical experience in K-12 and higher-education settings.
Dr. Jeff Faunce is a Faculty Fellow at Niagara University. Dr. Faunce received his PhD from SUNY Buffalo and holds a Master’s Degree in Educational Administration from Canisius University, a Master’s from SUNY Buffalo, and a Bachelor’s degree from Albright College. Dr. Faunce has been teaching at the University level from over 20 years having served as the Chair of Education department at Medaille University prior to coming to Niagara. Dr. Faunce was a classroom teacher and building-level administrator and has been in education for over 30 years.
References
Al-Hammouri, M. M. (2024). Promoting evidence-based practice in nursing education: the Good Behavior Game as a pedagogical tool for student engagement. Teaching and Learning in Nursing, 19, 545-549. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.teln.2024.03.011
Barrish, H. H., Saunders, M., & Wolf, M. M. (1969). Good Behavior Game: Effects of individual contingencies for group consequences on disruptive behavior in a classroom. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2, 119-124.
Cheatham, J. M., Ozga, J. E., St. Peter, C. C., Mesches, G. A., & Owsiany, J. M. (2017). Increasing class participation in college classrooms with the Good Behavior Game. Journal of Behavioral Education, 26, 277-292. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10864-017-9266-7
Ciminelli, M., Garland, D., Hartman, J., Poland, K., Sarchet, L., & Wild, N. (2025, June 2). Supporting our scholarship: An intentional approach for supporting higher education faculty. Academic Leader. https://www.academic-leader.com/topics/faculty-development/supporting-our-scholarship-an-intentional-approach-for-supporting-higher-education-faculty
Flower, A., McKenna, J. W., Bunuan, R. L., Muething, C. S., & Vega Jr., R. (2014). Effects of the Good Behavior Game on challenging behaviors in school settings. Review of Educational Research, 84, 546-571. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654314536781
Smith, S., Barajas, K., Eliis, B., Moore, C., McCauley, S., & Reichow, B. (2021). A meta-analytic review of randomized controlled trials of the Good Behavior Game. Behavior Modification, 45, 641-666. https://doi.org/10.1177/0145445519878670