The first and foremost approach could be just talking to the students. The idea is to facilitate the paths of communication between you and the students. Mere oral communication can be constructive. Technologies can also be used to facilitate this. For example, just a simple question in the poll everywhere like how was your day? How are you feeling today? Or where do you see it in five years? This can help relieve some of the students' anxiety and connect with the educator. As a TA, I think it is essential to build a healthy relationship with the students, so they feel comfortable communicating their interests and anxieties to improve class participation.

The next approach can be looking at the students' past school records or background knowledge, which can be crucial for their class performance. Knowing the background knowledge can help the TA understand what area his/her students need extra help. For example, A student in the class may have a strong computational background, whereas another might be a newbie who just changed the major. If a student lacks a necessary background for the course, the TA should arrange a strategy to catch up quickly. It is essential to understand the students' interests, behavior, and motivation and understand them academically to facilitate their learning.

Observation is another tactic to understand students. It is important to observe students' interactions with each other. This can help recognize places where the divides are among groups or do not seem to get along. Watching behavior is also a route to study the student's characters and personalities. Finding extrovert and introvert personalities can help to plan to seat arrangements, building groups. It will help make sure students in a group or seating close to each other will be comfortable and interested in helping and getting along.

Another strategy to know your students is to initiate in group activities. Group activities can help the TA to be more approachable and build a healthy relationship. Creating things like a bulletin board or creating badges can be a communication channel or encourage the students. Also, a strategy like reading each other's introductions and introducing each other can be an icebreaker. The purpose of this is you get to know your students, your students get to know you, and your students get to know each other. If you recognize and understand your students, the likelihood of better participation of the students. It will also promote students' acting up if they believe that the educator is interested in them.

Another strategy can be a survey that asks questions to the students about themselves. The survey should include fields like name or preferred name, class, major, reasons of taking this course, experience about the topics, personal background. The survey should be completed at the start of the semester. This can help get to know students' backgrounds, preferred interaction style, interests, and other things that you could incorporate into lessons. This can also help introvert students to express themselves as they might not be very vocal about it. Technologies like poll everywhere or google surveys can be used for this.