The Teaching Top Ten (Vol. I)
The Teaching Top 10 is a collection of 10 teaching tips on specific subjects, originally published weekly. It was written and published by Bill Searle and Joseph Finckel of Asnuntuck Community College as an activity of the CT. Community Colleges Center for Teaching. This section encompasses the first 15 — a whole semester of ideas.
See Vol. II for more Teaching Top 10!
The All-Important First Day of Class
Think for minute about why you love what you teach or why you think it is important for everyone to know or be able to do. Why not use the first class to create an experience for students that welcomes them as learners into this important subject and makes them feel like they belong in your class?
Do the unexpected. When you surprise your students on the first day with an activity or approach to the course that they wouldn’t expect, you create a memorable and intriguing experience (ingredients for attention and learning). You also shatter any expectations they have about school being predictable and boring and signal to them that this course will be different.
Take the pressure off of yourself to go over the course syllabus in detail… or at all. Yes, students need and deserve to know the course requirements and your expectations, but you can highlight the important things during the last fifteen minutes of class and ask/require them to read the syllabus for the next class. Answer questions about the course and syllabus at the start of the second class. Give a syllabus quiz with prizes.
Get students hooked on your subject right away by connecting it to their lives right now. Break them into groups and have them do something right from day one. Get them discussing or experience on a question, problem, or challenge. Are students already experiencing your subject without knowing it?
Make students feel invested in the course by knowing their classmates and being known. Play a name game that can be modified according to the ability profile of your students. For example, students can introduce themselves and share something about themselves in small groups, and the groups can nominate one person to introduce the group to the class (or another group). This gives you more opportunities to hear and learn your students’ names and, more importantly, it lays the foundation for connections between them.
Resist the urge to talk your way through nervousness or to establish control. Try this: appoint three students who tell you when you have talked for 12 minutes. If they catch you, stop talking and give students something to do. You’ll use your time more deliberately, and more students will pay attention.
If you are teaching online or using an online course platform at all, post an announcement that says that any student who e-mails or messages you three interesting things about him or herself will earn X points toward Y. This gets them using the platform and communicating with you.
If you have repeat students in the room, be mindful of how you acknowledge or interact with them on the first day. Good rapport signals to new students that you are approachable and that other students like you. Too much familiarity or informality can suggest to new students that former students are trying to gain favor with you early or that you already have established favorites while new students must lag behind.
Consider carefully how you will introduce yourself to the class, what you will share about yourself (personally or professionally), what you ask the class to call you, how you characterize your availability for help outside of class, and why you teach. If you share your credentials, ask yourself which ones and why. Whether you are formal or informal, ask yourself why.
Pass out slips of paper or note cards and ask student to anonymously write down one thing about which they are most worried, wondering, or scared in terms of the course, you as an instructor, or college (especially for first-year students). Tell them you will read aloud and answer any appropriate questions. Then do it.
Take your class on a fieldtrip to your office. If students see for themselves where your office is and can imagine you sitting in it, they will be more likely to come for help if they need it.
Making Your Teaching Life Easier
Ten tips to make the logistics of teaching run with less effort.
1. Create a ‘hand-in’ folder and leave it on the table in front of the class. Tell students to hand in whatever they need to for homework, or in-class assignments at the end of class. Remind them only the first three weeks, after that tell them that is their responsibility. Saves class time.
2. Create a ‘hand-back’ folder to hand back all student work. Give a large envelope to each student and have them write their name on it. Each week, everything handed back goes into their envelope, for privacy, and the envelopes go into the ‘hand-back folder’. Leave the folder in the classroom at least 15 minutes before class starts so students can get their own work. Saves class time.
3. Arrive in class 15 minutes early to talk to students, answer questions on material you have handed back, and ‘warm up’ everyone, including yourself! Also gives you a chance to make sure everything you need is in the room.
4. Have students “buddy-up” for class notes – perhaps in groups of three. They need to share email addresses and then agree if one misses class, the others will make a copy of class notes to give the person. Keeps students from contacting you for “class notes” if they miss class.
5. Set up any quizzes or weekly homework assignments so that you throw out the lowest grade. If a student happens to miss a class for any reason, that becomes the lowest grade and does not hurt their grade for that part of the course. Saves doing make-ups!
6. Use Blackboard to post the syllabus, assignments, handouts, etc. for the course. Remind students early and often that it is available, and that you will post handouts as you give them out in class, so they can download any given for a class they miss. Saves emails and calls to get lost course material.
7. Consider posting on Blackboard an “assignment in lieu of cancelled class” and telling students about it (even better note it on the course assignment sheet you hand out to students). In the event that class is cancelled for weather or other reason, students simply go to the course site on Blackboard and do that assignment. That way, you have automatically handled any administrative concern about how you will make up class time.
8. Regularly post announcements on Blackboard and give students an incentive to read (5 points on a weekly quiz, or 10 points on that week’s class assignment). This enables you to communicate easily with the class should the need arise.
9. Take a calendar for the semester and put on it all major assignments, tests, and other activities that will require a lot of your work to complete. After putting all their work on the calendar, add in time for grading, class planning, meeting with students, etc. Spread out the work you must evaluate.
10. Start class on time and end on time – always. Make it clear that you are doing this and have activities at both the beginning and end of class that students must hand in (perhaps in small groups) – that you will NOT give at any other time. Remind students often that this is a major part of their “class participation” grade so that if they come late or leave early, it will hurt their final grade for the course.
The Crucial Second and Third Classes
Good research shows that the “stickier” courses are, the more likely students are to stay in class in college. Most of us understand that the first class is extremely important in setting the tone and “culture” of a course. However, it is really in the second and third classes when we can do things that increase the likelihood that a student will succeed. Make your course and the college “sticky” to students.
Stick them to you. Ask each and every student to meet you briefly before or after class to talk about his or her life/career plans/college plans. Have students write about why they are in class, and what they hope to learn. Arrive early to class and talk with students. Grab a couple of students after class to talk briefly.
Stick them to each other. Provide a variety of short in-class projects in which they work together. Move students around two or three times so they meet other students. Strongly encourage them to share emails/phone numbers with other good students and to stay in contact outside of class to solve tough homework problems or to answer questions.
Stick them to doing the homework. Have them complete and hand in something for both the second and third class. Make a point of reviewing it in class and identifying the material as important. These can be very short things (“the most important thing in this chapter, to me, was …” or “one thing that surprised me in the reading for this week was,” for example).
Stick them to your subject. Students who are engaged in the subject stay in class. Tell them what excites you most about the lesson for the day – and your subject in general.
Stick them to being your partner in the class. In the third class, ask them to give you anonymous written feedback on their learning and your teaching. Tell them you will review and discuss this in the next class and that this is to help you teach THEM in particular, not students in general. For example, ask “What is something I do that helps you learn?” or “what is something I do that you believe gets in the way of you learning?” and/or “what do you like best about the course so far?” Do this again about 40% through the course and again 70% through. Be sure to share their responses and indicate how you will use them within a week.
Stick them to the room. Move around as you teach. Make eye contact with students individually. Show them that the whole room is yours, and theirs.
Stick them to arriving and being ready on time. Start on time. Do significant things right at the beginning of class. For example, identify how what they are studying for this class fits in with previous material, and/or some ideas about applications in life.
Stick them to staying until the end of class. Do something significant at the end of class. For example, regularly have students write down the three most important things they learned in the past week, and give them points for “class participation” for every one they hand in.
Stick them to the college. Share a few things happening at the college. Clubs. Events. Show them how to get engaged. Give them ways to make contact with other students.
Stick them to success. Give them something to do, and make certain that, if they do a decent job, they earn an immediate – within a week – decent grade. For example, give them a question that they can answer after doing the homework, and have them submit a paragraph or two paper explaining their answer. Or assign a project in class to small groups where you give them a problem that they must answer using what they’ve studied.
Remember, students who believe they are partners with you and each other in their learning are more likely to stay.
Ways to Show Students that You Respect Them
Your students will respect you and therefore trust and learn from you if they feel that you respect them. Your goal as a teacher is not necessarily to get a class to like you, but here are a few tried and true, sure-fire ways to make it clear to students that you respect them.
Return graded work promptly with reasonable but not overwhelming feedback. Nothing annoys students more than an instructor who doesn’t return or comment on graded work in a timely manner. Nothing.
Arrive in class early, not just on time. Don’t get to your classroom on time but use the first three minutes of class to set up. A class that begins like clockwork communicates that you respect the commitment students are making to attend your class, and it makes students who arrive late stand out to the whole room.
Respect their time. Finish class on time. Every time. If you communicate an awareness of the clock and an appreciation for their time, students will feel respected and will likely forgive that one time when you absolutely must go over by three minutes. One time. Three minutes. No more. They’ll know it must be important.
Respect their time. Only let class out early under rare circumstances. Students will no doubt like you very much if you regularly end class early, but they will not respect you, the course, its content, or your institution for charging them for credit hours that, as you would be demonstrating, aren’t necessary.
Respect their time. Don’t act like the work of your class isn’t burdensome or speak in cavalier tones about “college work.” Instead, convey to students a realistic understanding of the time and effort that your course requires and then recognize and validate the time and effort that your students put into it.
When you assign readings, always use them in class. Reward students who have read using reading quizzes. If students ask themselves “What did I read that for?” your stock (and the likelihood of them reading in the future) will fall.
Respect your students’ ability to help you teach them. Students respect a teacher who is so secure that he or she asks the class for feedback about how well he or she is teaching. Use the last five minutes of class to ask students to respond anonymously to questions like these: “What am I doing in class that helps you learn,” “What am I doing in class that doesn’t help you learn,” and “What should I do the same/differently in class in the coming weeks?”
Set clear guidelines for behavior in your course policies and then follow them. You can also invite a class to partner with you to create “ground rules” for the group at the beginning of a semester, unit, or project. What will the class policy be for cell phones, personal laptops, hand raising, challenging what another person says, disagreeing with someone, etc.? When students participate in creating group expectations, they take more ownership of the entire group’s learning experience.
If your assignments require subjective grading, explain your grading through written feedback or grading rubrics. If grading rubrics feel too rigid or limiting for the purposes of your assessments, communicate to students why their work earned the grade that it earned and connect those reasons to what your assignment asked them to do.
Have a crystal clear policy in your syllabus regarding the submission of late work. During the early weeks of the semester, reiterate how clear and firm your policy is and then stick to it for the duration of the semester with no exceptions. If you accept late work for reduced grades, is there a way in which your late policy can facilitate learning rather than simply penalizing lateness? Keep in mind that most students who submit work late need more than an extra day or two, so consider an initial consequence followed by a grace period before an increased consequence. If students perceive you as inconsistent or if you accept late work without consequence from one student when others worked to complete the assignment on time, well, you guessed it…
Tips To Promote Effective Student Study Skills
Realize you may be part of the problem. Do you have great PowerPoint presentations that cover the readings? Do you carefully review the homework problems? Why study when your professor will do all the work? Instead of concentrating on providing information, spend class time developing new examples, working with students to determine ways to apply the new information, having them prepare material to “teach” what they are learning to others, or having them write and answer their own problems.
The Top 10…
In 100 level courses that use textbooks, teach students how to take their own notes from the reading. Taking notes is far more engaging for our brain than highlighting. If you do not know another system, use “3 colors”. As they take notes, tell them to put major chapter headings in red, minor headings in green and detailed points in black.
Reward students in a meaningful way for taking notes on their readings. An ‘open-note quiz’ at the very beginning of class rewards them for taking notes and encourages prompt attendance. Give 5 easy questions on topics in the chapter which, if they have notes, they should easily get a 100 on.
If you teach a course that requires readings but not in a text, teach “active reading” which encourages students to “talk back” to what they read, rather than simply receiving information. Write in margins. Jot down questions. Note disagreements.
Summarizing. Show students how to summarize and have them do this as they study. Reinforce their budding skills by forming small groups in class to share summaries on a particular concept and pick the best one to share with the full class. Explain the strengths and weaknesses of summaries that are shared so students begin to master this difficult skill. Give points for the best ones.
Key points. For each new reading have students identify 3 key points. Give class time for small groups to discuss key points and decide their 3. Lead a discussion about why the points they identified were the key points, or not. Make sure, at the end of the discussion, to be very clear about your thinking process in identifying key points – this is a higher order thinking skill that students need to practice to get better at.
Reward students who ask good questions on their homework. Have them hand questions in on index cards so you can put them in an order to answer during class. Discuss what makes a “good question” and give class participation credit for the best few each week.
Study Buddies. Strongly encourage students to work with 2 or 3 other people in class to share notes, ask questions, and connect with regarding the course outside of class. “Study Buddies” really does work, provided they concentrate on studying, not socializing!
Study Time Log. Show students how to create a log that records the minute they start studying and every time they stop studying. Caution that they must record every time their mind moves off studying. Have them review their logs with other students (or you) to discuss how to become more effective. Remind them that research shows that it takes about 20 minutes for our brain to fully re-engage after an interruption, so it is necessary to put their phones in airplane mode, shut off computer feeds, and have a quiet area when they are studying.
Be very clear about the time it takes to do well in your course. Generally we use 2 to 3 hours of time OUTSIDE of class for every hour inside class as a guide. Be prepared for students to be shocked at this, but it is the standard.
Components of a Well-Planned Class
Whether you have every class planned to the minute before the semester begins or you outline the semester but plan each class the night before, a good lesson plan should focus not simply on the material you want to cover but instead on constructing a learning experience for students for the duration of the class meeting. Here are the essential components of an intentional, student-centered learning experience.
Bridge-in. You know your discipline and course content forwards and backwards with a great memory lesson sequencing, but your students do not. Bridge them into the current lesson by establishing context and reminding them of the material, discussions, or skills practice that they experienced during previous classes. You can also use this portion of the lesson to warm the class up the focus of the lesson in a real-world way that invests them immediately in the learning experience.
Objectives or outcomes. We are often guilty of knowing what we want our students to learn or be able to do by the end of class but not sharing these goals with them, as if they were Dorothy and we were telling them to pay no attention to the wizard behind the curtain. Instead, share clear learning objectives or outcomes with students at the beginning of every class. This communicates a goal for the lesson and empowers students to monitor their own progress toward that goal.
Pre-assessment. Using a brief class discussion, get a sense of how much your students already know (or think they know) about the focus of that day’s class. Students may know more than you think, or they may have misconceptions, or they may lack skills or background knowledge that you presume they had. You can then refer to what students shared during the pre-assessment later in class to validate, correct, or involve what they already know.
Participatory learning. Simply put, create a lesson that makes students as active and involved in their own learning experience as possible. When students experience content and practice skills, they remember that content and develop those skills. Breaking the class into small group discussions, giving students a task or a problem to work on, and asking students to write in class are all forms of participatory learning. If you tend to lecture or feel pressure to cover content from textbooks, consider the “flipped classroom” technique. Google it.
Post-assessment. Did your students actually learn what you wanted them to learn? If you don’t ask immediately, you won’t find out until a formal assessment or graded assignment, which often arrive too late for you to gauge when the learning broke down and how you might address it. A quick post-assessment of learning can come in many forms, but what you’re assessing is simple: if the lesson had clear learning outcomes and objectives, simply ask students to demonstrate those outcomes. It’s as simple as that.
Summary. Help them understand the experience they just had in your class and contextualize that experience in terms of what came before it and what will come next. Reminding students of what they have just learned can be powerfully effective in terms of lesson scaffolding, skills acquisition, and fostering metacognitive skills about the learning process. Summarizing the lesson brings an experience to a close and helps students to know what they know.
If you find these lesson plan components helpful or familiar, they are part of an active learning lesson plan model known as BOPPPS, an acronym for the six steps listed above. If you want to sound cool at teaching parties (or get invited to an active learning teaching party), we recommend using BOPPPS as a verb:
“Are you BOPPPSing yet?”
“I just BOPPPSed my class, and it went great!”
You’ve probably noticed that there are only six tips in this The Teaching Top 10 installment. Whoops. We owe you four!
Observe Your Teaching Tendencies
Here’s a new take on a teaching observation but without all of the anxiety that usually comes with it: observe yourself. Bring awareness to your teaching so that you verbally and nonverbally communicate to students what you intend to.
Do you, in subtle ways, call on, validate, or convey a desire to help women more than men? Black students more than white students? Native English speakers more than non-native speakers? Older students more than younger students? Try to observe your tendencies and be willing to acknowledge what you discover. Do not judge yourself; simply bring awareness to your teaching.
Do you have a tendency to teach your classes in a way that would most make sense to you? If you do, you’re not alone, but recognize this as a well-intentioned tendency. Not every student thinks or learns the way you do. Explore some ways that you can engaged visual and kinesthetic learners, especially if you usually ask students to read and listen. Instead, what can you get them doing in class?
Do your nonverbal behaviors send the same message as what you say? When you ask a question, what is your facial expression, where are your arms and hands, and where are you looking? When you answer a question, what is your tone, where are your arms and hands, and where do you look?
Do you have any potentially annoying speech habits, such as the placeholders “um” and “uh”? Ask a student (in front of the whole class) to keep track of the number of times you say “um” or “uh” during a single class. Tell the class you are trying to become more aware of how you speak when teaching. Your students (all of them) will be freshly attentive and you will model self-awareness and a desire to grow as a teacher and person.
Do you make eye contact with one side of the room more than the other? This is far more common than most teachers think. Do you make more eye contact with students who have established themselves as active participators? Bring your awareness to your eyes, where you direct them, and how you use them to engage all students in the room.
Do you always call on the first hand that goes up? Does that hand always belong to one of the same four students? Ask yourself, especially early in the semester, if it is speed you are rewarding instead of a willingness to participate. Try asking a question and then giving the entire class a minute to write down some ideas before sharing ideas, or ask the class to wait fifteen seconds (time them) before anyone raises a hand.
Do you only “haunt” one part of the classroom? Classroom configurations including computer stations, desks, or lecterns can box you in if you let them. Keep a sheet of paper on your desk or table and keep a tally under “Left” or “Right” every time you go to each side of the room. Also note how often you go to the back of the room or down the sides and aisles. The closer students are physically to their instructor, the more they tend to be engaged.
Are you comfortable with silence, or will you be the first in your classroom to fill it? If you tend to fill silence, you train students to not to take ownership of the discussion and their own learning. The same thing happens if you always call on that one student who will always raise his or her hand. Silence can be a powerful, thought-provoking experience. Don’t avoid silence; use it.
Do do you validate students’ ideas (and invalidate others) by what you write on the board? Before a class discussion, appoint a student to call on raised hands, tell the class that during the discussion each person gets to nominate an idea that someone else has just said for “publishing” on the board, and relegate yourself to simply “publishing” nominated ideas on the board as they arrive. This eliminates the tendency to validate some ideas and not others using the board.
Do your assumptions about or experience with individual students in your class impact (perhaps unconsciously) how you evaluate them? For any assignment that requires subjective evaluations, consider having students put their names on the last page instead of the first or identify their work with a three digit number associated with them in your gradebook. If you have a good memory, go with a five digit number.
Ways to Keep Your Students Learning
Sometimes we get on a roll and our excitement about our subject gets us talking, giving examples, explaining intricate points and making wonderful connections between different concepts. But are students learning? We are talking, but what are they doing? Try some of these ideas to help ensure that students are learning, not merely listening.
Who cares? Ask students at the beginning of a lesson or module why they care about learning this? Be prepared to help them be clear and honest, but don’t offer quickly – make them think. The more they think about what is in it for them, the more they are engaging in deeper thinking that increases the likelihood of their learning!
Quiet yourself! Do not talk more than 12 minutes straight (10 is better). There is good research that the average person’s attention waivers after 10 – 12 minutes, no matter how interesting the subject or speaker.
3 Questions! Give students three questions related to the lesson that you plan to help them answer by lesson’s end. Refer to the questions as you progress through the lesson. This can be a way of presenting “learning outcomes” for a lesson, without calling it “outcomes” (remember the BOPPPS lesson planning format?).
Stop and Don’t Pop! When you ask a question, give everyone time to think for a minute or two. This will seem like a long time, but you want to accomplish two things. First, some people do not think quickly, and this gives them time to come up with a question. Second, students drop into old habits. If they usually do not answer instructor questions, they simply wait for someone else to! Disengaged. Ask everyone – emphasize everyone – who has an answer to raise their hand, so you can change who gives the first answers.
2 Questions! After students have studied something and before you have gone over it in class, ask them to work with 2-3 other students to identify 2 questions they have and hand them in to you. Putting them on separate index cards allows you to sort them in order.
Answer This! As a variation on the one above, after teams develop their questions have them trade and answer each other’s questions. Have teams report out – briefly – explaining the question and their answer.
Teach this! Assign “buddy projects” – consider something like “a friend misses this lesson and asks you to explain , write down what you will tell him/her.” Have some groups of 2 share with the class as you gently critique. The more you do this, the better students will be at assessing how much they really know about new material (an important thinking skill).
What do you know? Before automatically giving that PowerPoint or story to illustrate a concept, ask students to rate on a scale from 1 – 5 whether they think they understand (and hold up their hand as you call out numbers). If students think they understand, but you aren’t so sure, give them a “buddy project” (as above, for example).
A picture is worth 1000 words! Form student teams and have them create diagrams related to the lesson. Perhaps they can diagram key parts of a chapter, or how key concepts connect with each other, or simply diagram the components of a concept. The key is to make it visual!
Applications, applications! Ask students to identify 3 ways they can use what is being covered in the lesson. Demonstrate how to do this and have them write applications multiple times as this is a difficult thinking skill.
BONUS!
What’s important? After they have read new material and before you have identified what you believe the most important points are, ask students to determine the 3 or 5 most important points in the lesson. You will have to do this regularly to help them practice. Perhaps add in a group activity where they share key points and their reasoning why something is important.
Ways to Get Feedback on Teaching from Students
We know what we are doing when we teach, but how are students experiencing it? Does how we teach actually help students in a particular course learn? Stop guessing and start getting information from the experts: your students.
Keep it simple. Ask students no more than three questions that focus directly on how they experience your teaching. If you want feedback on your teaching in general, for example try these “One big thing that you do that really helps me learn is…” “One little thing that you do that really helps me learn is …” and “One thing that you do that gets in the way of my learning is …”
Tell students that you are using their feedback to better target your teaching to their particular needs. Targeting instruction is the mark of an excellent teacher! This also gives them a reason to give you honest feedback. For example, perhaps you need feedback on how you provide feedback on their papers, or quizzes, or team assignments. Keep the questions open-ended, such as “Your feedback on my papers is …” and “One thing that you could do when providing feedback to me on my papers is …”
Compile responses quickly, review with the class, and tell them how it will affect your instruction. Within a week compile the results and share them with the class. This demonstrates your commitment to using their information. Sharing how you are modifying your instruction based upon their feedback motivates them to provide future constructive feedback.
Keep questions open-ended unless you really need targeted feedback. Asking students “The best thing about the course site on Blackboard is …” “One thing that would make the course site on Blackboard more effective for me is …” gives you the broadest information. Follow up with specific questions later.
Stick to one subject. Mixing subjects, for example asking questions about the online discussion segment of your course along with how you assign small group projects will produce confusion and less significant input on both. Select the area of instruction that will have the most impact. Remember, quick and simple!
Ask for specific information about how they personally experience your instruction. Teach them what “specific” means. For example if you are asking about how you end a lesson, the response “I like the way you end class” is not as helpful as “having us summarize the 3 key parts of the lesson with a partner helps me focus and gives me another perspective.”
Ask at least twice during the course. You get feedback, mention how it will affect your teaching, make the changes (or at least think you do), and now you need feedback to see if your changes work! Doing this during the semester allows you to make adjustments for the students who are providing the feedback.
Consider dual purpose feedback. This feedback provides you with information and helps students think about some aspect of the course. For example, after a test ask “My biggest surprise on the test was …” “One thing that I plan to differently to prepare for the next test is …” and “The best thing about the test was …” You can ask exactly the same type of question about papers, or significant team assignments. In their responses, you are looking for patterns that indicate areas where you can help them as a group. For this type of feedback only, having them include their names is important because you can return their answers to use for personal improvement.
Consider asking about “best practices” from other instructors. Students take courses from others, and you can benefit from this. Ask, for example, “One big thing that another teacher does that really helps me learn is …” and “One little thing that another teacher does that really helps me learn is …” It is probably best not to ask for instructor names.
Improving feedback to you. Providing students with everyone’s feedback and then having small groups rank the top five comments under each question may provide surprising results. Sometimes only one student mentions something, but when all see and discuss it, many agree.
Using Short Writing to Assess Learning
Everyone agrees that college students must write better. We also know that practice makes perfect. This means all of us must include more writing in our courses because writing is a way of getting students to think through the course content. Many faculty hesitate to use writing as a learning assessment because they fear it will be burdensome or frustrating to grade. Here are suggestions for how to use short, easy-to-evaluate writing to assess learning and thinking.
Ask students to consider a career they may pursue and write about the writing that people in that career must do, and why. If your course is career-focused, ask them to write about why writing might be important for human service workers, educators, nurses, police, etc. This invests them in the importance of things like clarity and grammar in terms of career concerns and real-world implications.
Use practical examples to emphasize why good, clear, organized writing matters in real life. A nurse’s notes need to be clear. A police officer’s report influences a conviction. Many, many jobs require people to use e-mail at work. In terms of academics, choose accessible writing samples from your discipline as models for how you’d like your students to write for your class. What are biologists currently writing about? Economists? Social workers?
Consider using short, informal writing assignments half a page long or less. For directions, use a single, clear sentence that asks students to briefly explain, describe, compare, etc. The simpler your prompt sentence and the clearer its verb, the easier the writing is to assess.
Swap out multiple-choice questions for short answer or short essay questions on every test you give. Again, use a single, clear sentence for directions that ask students to briefly explain, describe, compare, etc. Short answers don’t require elaborate organization, but they allow you to assess whether your students can think about and clearly articulate course content.
Have a plan for how grammar issues will impact your assessment of the writing, and communicate that plan clearly to students and then hold them accountable to your standards. This doesn’t mean that you have to teach writing if you aren’t an English teacher, but it does mean that students will see that writing standards matter for more than just English teachers.
Get students to both write questions and answer them. Try this: break your class into groups that each write one question about the course content that another group will have to answer. Then randomly assign each question to a different group that must now answer the question in a clearly written paragraph. Every group member must contribute. If possible, project the final products so the class can discuss which answer is the best and why. This is learning through writing.
Before studying a key concept, have students write about what they believe they already know about the subject. This activates prior learning and allows you to skim their responses to inform your teaching and discover any assumptions or misconceptions you need to address.
Require students to e-mail or message you informal writing assignments about course content or any questions they might have. For example, extra credit for students who analyze one strength and one weakness about the way they prepared for the test and what they will do differently next time. 2 -3 paragraphs max. sent directly to you. When students think and write about their own learning, they build self-efficacy and self-regulation skills.
Many community college students are kinesthetic leaners or learners activated by concrete experiences and active experimentation, but that doesn’t mean that they are hardwired against writing. Asking students to write about the real-world implications of course content gives them an entry point they can relate to more and reinforces for the entire class that your course relates to their world!
Have students search the Internet (tell them nothing from the first three pages that come up in Google so they learn that there is more than that first page or two of results!) for information relevant to your subject, then summarize what they learned. Summarize, not plagiarize. It’s a basic skill.
Getting More (and Better) Student Questions
We want students to ask questions, but does our teaching behavior send a different message? Being intentional about getting good questions pays big dividends – you can do things to significantly improve both the quantity and quality of student questions.
Remember, if you talk they cannot ask questions. If you want questions you must tell students that, often. You must also act as if you expect questions. How? Ask, and then wait. Use open hand gestures, give students time to think. Ask them to come to class with at least two questions.
If you find you are not getting questions from many students, try Question Roulette. Everyone writes down a question. Upon your signal they all pass their questions to another student, continuing to do so until you say “STOP.” Randomly ask students to ask the question in their hand. This assists students who are reluctant to speak to a full class. An added benefit is that you can provide constructive criticism about how to improve a question because no one knows who asked it.
Teach students how to ask good questions. It is not true that “there are no bad questions” and students know this. Especially in lower level courses, provide model “knowledge” questions, such as “what did Lincoln say about freeing the slaves before the Civil War?” Also model “understanding” questions, such as “how does the economy impact an organization’s specific environment?”
At the end of a lesson, have students identify one question that they have on the material they studied, and tell them that you will answer at least five.
Encourage “applications” questions by modeling them. From “identify 3 ways that learning Spanish can help you in your career” to “identify exactly how knowledge of attribution theory can help you when talking with your friends,” get students thinking and understanding that what they study directly impacts their lives – if they let it!
Give constructive criticism when students ask questions, to help them strengthen their questions. This is tricky because some students will be intimidated by even the most positive critique. Counter that intimidation by having students work with 2 or 3 others to develop questions and say up front that you will be helping them improve these questions.
Encourage students to send you questions via email, or use Blackboard’s discussion application, and answer them. Some students do better with electronic communication because they are less intimidated.
Model questioning. Before introducing major topics, identify the question(s) the lesson will explore and seek to answer. This gives you another chance to clarify what a “knowledge question” is, or an “application question” for example.
Make certain students know that asking questions will not prolong class time. In fact, consider rewarding students taking an on-ground class when many good questions are asked by letting them out 5 minutes early. For an online class, consider dropping some activity if there are many “good questions” on a lesson.
Reward excellent questions. Make the reward fit your personality and their interests. Perhaps for each “really good” question, a student gets a boost in class participation grade, or candy, or locally grown apples in the fall. Use your imagination.
Mixing Things Up in Mid-Semester
Mid-semester. Students cannot quite see themselves making it to the end of the course. This is one of the “red zones” where we can lose students. Breaking the routine of even the most student-centered course freshens the course and can reinvigorate students to make that final, crucial push.
“Flip the classroom” by having students outline how they would teach key points to someone who knew nothing about the subject.
Start the lesson by having students interview each other. Depending upon the topic, questions can be about their personal experience with some key points, or their reaction to key points. Have everyone share one significant thing their interviewee mentioned so you can weave their backgrounds and understanding into the lesson.
Ask students for their ideas. Tell them that you are looking for input about different things to do to mix up the lessons. Ask them what particularly engaged them that another instructor did.
Start a lesson by asking students to work together in groups where at least one student has a smartphone. The task is to generate ideas about using the phone to learn more about what they are studying, such as creating an online scavenger hunt with course topics. After groups share their ideas have the class vote on which one to actually do in class.
Creating a script for a scene in a pretend movie which explains key concepts in the lesson engages students on many levels. Assign small groups to create a scene for a horror movie, action-thriller, comedy, musical, or perhaps using a Disney family theme.
Working in small groups, have students create a set of visuals that teach key parts of the lesson. If you have access to computers, they can use PowerPoint, but remind them to be almost entirely visual.
Ask small groups to create a superhero representing the lesson. What powers does the hero have, what weaknesses? What does the superhero fight against?
Music engages many senses. Appeal to the inner songwriter/musician in students by assigning small groups to each compose a song that explains or applies some key concept(s) in the lesson.
Ask students for feedback on your teaching by creating something that illustrates when they think you are at your teaching best. A song? A diagram? A picture? A short script? Not an essay! (And, pay attention to what they do NOT feature.)
Change the physical venue. Go outside. Switch classrooms with someone who uses a classroom set up very differently from you.
Bonus!
Have music playing when students arrive that features something covered in the lesson. The first person to correctly name the song and artist gets to privately request the song for the next class.
Give extra credit for being in class for the full period for all sessions from now until the end of the course.
Bring in an outside speaker. As an alternative, use Skype or a similar service to bring an outside expert to the class. Perhaps students can find someone to “bring” to the class via Skype?
Have students diagram key concepts in the lesson and how they link with each other. Doing this alone first, and then improving upon individual diagrams by you doing one during the lesson enables students to strengthen this important thinking skill.
Engaging Different Input Preferences
Our first instinct is usually to teach something in way that makes sense to us. However, each of us has natural preferences for how we take in information, and many of our students’ preferences are different from our own. One way to conceptualize input preferences is to consider visual, aural, read/write, and kinesthetic learning. Here are some tips for engaging these input preferences.
Visual – Learners who prefer to take in information that is presented visually.
PowerPoint presentations do not engage visual learners if slides are mostly text. Just how “visual” are your presentation slides? Try incorporating images, graphs, charts, diagrams, cartoons, and video clips into your presentations.
Incorporate short videos into your classes. Smart classroom technology combined with YouTube and libraries’ video databases give you instant, free access to an enormous selection of short videos related to your course material. These engage students who prefer to take in information visually, and they are also fun, as learning should be.
Put students in groups and task them with presenting a certain concept from your course to the rest of the class, except that they must communicate the concept entirely visually. Large sticky pads and markers help.
Aural – Learners who prefer to take in and make sense of information through listening and speaking.
The more you can build conversation, not just full-group discussion, into your class, the more you will engage students with auditory learning input preferences. If you talk for more than 10-12 minutes straight, you will likely lose the attention of even your auditory learners (others may have stopped listening after just a few minutes of sustained talking).
Have students interview each other about course content or “quiz” each other. Better yet, have students develop a technique for quizzing each other in pairs as a way of studying for an exam and have them practice and refine their techniques in class. Pairs then present to the entire class either what they’ve learned or the techniques that they’ve come up with for effective studying.
Stage a mock trial class in which a group of students (“the jury”) listen to other students who try to convince them of something about the course material. Students can explain, argue, or debate different sides of a topic, concept, or argument. Do this activity a few times on different days and vary student roles so that everyone gets to both speak and listen.
Read/write: Learners who prefer text as the medium for taking in information.
Even though most college faculty are fairly strong at taking in information through reading, comparatively few of our students prefer to take in information by reading text. Since so much college coursework integrates reading and writing and since we’ve already dedicated another Top 10 list to brief writing activities, we’re not counting this one as a tip!
Kinesthetic – Learners who prefer to take in information by physically doing and experimenting.
For controversial issues, have students literally “take sides” (as in change their place in the room) or assign them physically to “sides” for debate. For key topics, ask students to pick the one they are most interested in, and then separate the class physically to discuss/debate/question.
Ask your students to come up with 3 – 4 applications of a key concept and write briefly about it, or have them determine specific applications in their own life. The more kinesthetic learners consider practical applications and things they can do with concepts, the more engaged they will be.
Many people mistakenly assume that kinesthetic learners must not have strengths in reading and writing. This is not true. Ask your kinesthetic learners to write about an experience doing something (especially a physical activity), and they will very likely surprise you.
If you liked these ideas (and in case you don’t know already), these tips capture the essence of the VARK model of input preferences. More information and the free VARK questionnaire can be found here: http://www.vark-learn.com/english/index.asp
Helping Students Stay the Journey
What role does your course play in your students’ college careers? It is often dismaying how little students know about their own degree program or where our course fits. This causes hit-or-miss course selection, confusion about course sequencing, taking unnecessary courses – all mistakes that too often result in dropping out. We can change this dynamic by teaching our students how to take an active role in planning and managing their college careers.
Ask your students to identify what degree/certificate they are enrolled in. If there are students not formally enrolled in a degree explain why it is important to select one, even if it is a temporary decision – point out that they can always change degrees! (This is important because students in a specific degree are more likely to stay in college).
Based upon the information immediately above, bring appropriate degree/certificate requirement sheets to class. Show students what requirement your course fulfills. Next, have them check off other courses they have completed or are enrolled in. This particularly helps students new to higher education understand how degree programs work, and encourages them to be active in academic planning by identifying what else they must complete to get their degree/certificate.
Invite a college counselor, a transfer advisor or a program coordinator to visit with your students to discuss degree programs, transfer articulation agreements and the like, either in person or online.
Ask students to write down the name of the counselor/faculty advisor they talk with about courses. For all those who do not have a specific name, mention that it is beneficial to work with a consistent person who knows the student and understands her/his strengths and weaknesses.
To get students thinking about the future, ask them to identify 20 careers that robots (or other technology-based systems) will possibly wipe out in the next 20 years. Have students brainstorm ideas about how they can stay ahead of developments and the kinds of skills that will be needed to work with future technologies.
Talk with your students about course sequences and what course numbers mean. For example, we know that lower100 level courses are introductory, but many students do not. Mentioning that course numbers often relate to how students should progress through a subject/discipline and that 100-level courses should be taken first helps students avoid jumping into advanced courses without adequate preparation.
Especially if you teach a 100-level course, put students in small groups to share how to find course descriptions at the college website (mention how important it is to read course descriptions!), check prerequisites (tell them what a prerequisite is), find next term’s classes and times, etc.
Show students how to access their personal information, and get an updated unofficial transcript. If the college has a “transfer admissions page” of articulation agreements with other colleges, show them how to access that as well.
As a class identify key criteria to use when evaluating transfer institutions and the best people to get information from. Unfortunately, many students base transfer decisions upon information from unreliable sources. Make sure to provide your valuable input!
Have students identify transfer institutions that interest them, and give three reasons why they are looking at each institution, along with the degree(s) they are thinking of pursuing. Then, form student groups based upon differences in where they want to transfer to discuss their choices – focusing upon institutional strengths and weaknesses. Ask students to be skeptics, helping their classmates justify their choices. Have students not interested in transferring identify how their potential careers will change over the next 20 years, then compare ideas about how college can help them develop needed new skills.
Ways to End Your Course
How do you end your course? Most of us spend time working out the best ways to start a course because we know first impressions are crucial. Fewer of us remember that last impressions are equally important. Leaving your students with a clear focus on what you consider most important, and providing an emotional ending both leave a lasting impression.
What do you want your students to remember most about the course content? Give students 5 minutes to write, anonymously, what they consider to be the 3 – 5 most important concepts. Collect and list so all can see. Lead a short discussion, including sharing what you consider most important (if there is wide disparity, revise your course to better focus next time on what you want students to remember).
What do you want your students to remember about themselves? Perhaps you teach a course that includes affective outcomes. List those outcomes and ask students to reflect upon how much they have changed, what hasn’t changed, and why. Analyze the “why” comments for hints about how to modify your course for more impact next time.
Do you want to inspire your students to continue, do more, work hard, and change their lives for the better? Give each one an inspirational quotation, with a little “thanks for taking the course” or “thanks for contributing to the success of our class” from you.
Have students write a “letter to next semester’s students” telling them how to get the best possible grade in your course. Promise anonymity by having them hand their letters to a trusted student who merely checks their name off. Make several packets for next semester’s students and/or scan them and place them on the course site. Review what students wrote to see if there are any “holes” in your course that you do not intend!
Tell students what you have learned during the course. What better insights do you have as a teacher, what have you learned about your subject? At the same time, you might tell your students what teaching them has meant to you.
If you use consistent small groups regularly for class projects, have group members write a letter of reference for each other, highlighting what the person sees as the strengths of the other group member. The recipient gets feedback regarding their strengths as a team member, and the writer engages in critical reflection.
Perhaps now is the time to practice the higher order thinking skill of application. Have students identify 3 things they have learned that they are either already applying in their life, or will soon. This is especially important if you are teaching a General Education required course.
Have students complete a self-examination of how they performed in class, with no relation to your grading. What did they do well, what did they do poorly? Perhaps your prompt is “what would you do differently in this class if you were starting over, and what would you not change?”
Get a final feedback on your teaching by having students anonymously reply to the prompt “Two things you (the instructor) do that help me learn are”. As an alternative, ask your students to use their critical thinking skills to analyze the course (after all, if we teach critical thinking skills it is only fair to have students apply those skills to something important to them).
If you gave a pre-test, give a post-test so students (and you”) can measure their own progress. If you didn’t do a pre-test connected directly to the course outcomes, consider doing so in the future.
BONUS!
Bring in food, or even better have them bring in food. Shake everyone’s hand and thank that person for taking your course. Tell students how much you appreciate their hard work. Create a class video of “top 10 tips for succeeding in [the course]”. Ask 2 – 3 students to come to the first class next semester to talk directly with new students about how to best succeed in your course.
© 2014 Joseph Finckel & Bill Searle
Center for Teaching – Asnuntuck Community College