Two experiments examined the effect of teaching with content relevance strategies on student learning outcomes. In both experiments, college students were randomly assigned to one of three teaching conditions in which the instructor: (1) made no effort to teach the lesson content as relevant (control); (2) taught the same lesson content in a relevant manner (treatment 1); or (3) taught the same lesson content in an irrelevant manner (treatment 2). Results indicated that teaching with relevance strategies caused students to: (1) become more situationally interested in what they were learning; (2) believe the lesson had greater task value; and (3) have more positive affect for their instructor, which in turn; (4) improved their performance on a post-lesson quiz. Overall, findings suggest that instructors can generate affect and stimulate learning by teaching in ways that relate course content to students' interests, needs, and goals.