I've used some fairly unconventional methods for gaining the buy-in of my students, such as giving every student a different puppet and addressing them though their puppet persona's. That might sound like a juvenile technique, but I've gotten very good class participation in my college courses this way. Many of my students identified with their puppets and I used them as a reward for good participation. In several programming classes I had two puppets: Bananas the 'code monkey' that was a reward for correct answers, and Popo the pig of shame who was given to students with incorrect answers or low participation. You might think this would not work with college students, but I found that by week three my students worked hard to get the code monkey and to avoid the shame of Popo the pig. Plus it was kind of fun, and that always goes over well in any class.