Helping Students Who are Performing Poorly

I recently stumbled across an article in Faculty Focus that proved to be an interesting read on how to help students who perform below average in your courses.  The author of this piece, the fabulous Maryellen Weimer, sheds some light on how to help those students who struggle in courses to become better learners and more active participants in learning.

She writes, “Unfortunately, all too often performance on the first exam predicts performance throughout the course, especially for those students who do poorly on the first test.”  This is then followed by a large variety of attempts to help those struggling students by providing opportunities for tutoring, office hours, study groups, review sessions, and more.  Although these opportunities seem like a great way to offer students extra help, often times the students who need the assistance the most are the ones who choose not to come.

Dr. Weimer proceeds to discuss the ways in which studies have shown direct communication between professors and struggling students paired with a request for students to speak with them directly outside of class provided a much needed boost in student comprehension, attention, and motivation in the course.  Students who attended these one-on-one meeting with their professors spent time talking through their performance in the course, working on goals they’d like to achieve within the course, and developing changes to implement in how and what they were studying.

These meetings tended to lead to large increases in test scores from their first to second exams, sometimes with percentage jumps as large as three letter grades.

To learn more about this process and the steps taken to help students succeed, click here.

Written By: Jessica Moser

Designing Your Course

Though the summer is just upon us, many of you are considering how to design your courses for the fall semester.  This is what we like to call over-achieving.  No, but seriously, course design is an important process that requires the consideration of several steps and processes in order to create a successful learning experience for both you and your future students.

It may seem like a daunting task, but course design is actually a great way to include and play upon your own interests and be able to further connect with students through learning.

Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching offers a comprehensive list of things to consider while designing your courses to get you started.  If you are still struggling with some elements of the master plan you have in mind, consider contacting some of UWEC’s own instructional designers to help out.

Happy designing!

Written By: Jessica Moser

Happy Finals Week! Don't Forget to Breathe

Finals week.  One of the most stressful and simultaneously relieving weeks of the school year.  By this point, your tests have been prepared and are ready to be proctored, your end-of-semester evaluations have been distributed and filled out, and your grading brain is in full-blown working mode.  You’ve been preparing your students all semester to demonstrate what they’ve learned, and now the time has finally come for them to show you.

Even though this week is a marker of the end, full of spring sunshine and soon-to-be graduates smiling from ear-to-ear, you may still be experiencing a lingering feeling of panic joined with the feeling that perhaps setting up a cot in your office may not be such a bad idea after all.

That’s why I’m here to tell you to stop.  Take a deep breath.  And remember that you are doing great.  I’m not just saying that, you truly are doing great.  You are the instructor who worked with your students all semester long, reading this blog for tips and ideas on how to become better at what you are already doing.  You’re the professor who might have extended their office hours, offered review sessions, or provided students with studying tips in order to better prepare them for what lies ahead of them.  You are a professor who should be recognized and applauded for all that you do, especially during the hectic final hours of the semester.

So, keep on wading through those mixed emotions of “Ahhhhh!” and “Whoo hoo!” and above all, don’t forget to breathe.

Happy finals week, everyone!

Written By: Jessica Moser

Teaching Professor Tips App

Would you like to receive daily teaching tips straight to your smartphone or tablet?  Download the Teaching Professor Tips App, now available for free for both Apple and Android devices.  With this app, you’ll receive one new teaching tip each day.  You can specify the time of day that you’d like to receive your tip, and you’ll even be able to share your favorites on social media or through email.  Have your own tip that you’d like to share?  Send it in to their editor straight from the app!

Tip topics include: assignment strategies, student engagement, classroom management, instructional vitality, and much more.

For more information, click here.

Written By: Jessica Moser

Using Online Writing Platforms

Online writing is becoming more and more prevalent as computers take hold of our pens and paper, making them seemingly disappear.  Whether spending time on social media, carefully crafting words of only 140 characters or less, or emailing home to let their parents know they are surviving and have even been to the grocery store this month, students are no doubt using online spaces to communicate and project their own thoughts and ideas.

With this established norm, it only makes sense to consider how best to utilize discussion boards, social media, and other online writing platforms to further extend the use of technology within your courses, as well as strengthen comprehension and conversation on topics with your students.

Before jumping headlong into cyberspace, consider the following elements that will no doubt be included in your course along with blogs, discussion boards, and the like.

First, structure your grading so that online writing is built in.  Adding online writing requirements into your grading structure not only stresses the participation in the format, but also the importance that it will contribute to the learning within your course.

Second, consider and acknowledge the time that will be spent on online writing within your course.  Just because online writing can be approached with a sense of ease and convenience doesn’t mean that it won’t add to the work load of your students.  Consider what other elements in your course to drop or modify in order to make time for the addition of an online component rather than simply tacking it on.

Third, build recognizable connections between online writing and other course content or activities.  Students respond well when they are able to make connections between the tasks they are asked to complete and other broader elements of the course.  Make it clear how they should treat this online space and that they should look at it as an extension to the course rather than a separate element.

Generally, I think you will find that the majority of students are comfortable with digital technologies, even with platforms that they haven’t used previously.  Therefore, feel free to ask students to consider the technology as a learning process in and of itself, as you work together in order to create a sustainable way to continue and strengthen learning conversations outside of the classroom.  Allowing students a way to access further discussion and information regarding class themes and concepts will allow them to be able to see how these aspects can fit into their everyday lives, even after graduating from your course or the university.

For a list of current online writing platforms with explanations, click here. 

Adapted from: Vanderbilt University

Written By: Jessica Moser

 

Benefits of Using Rubrics

Though more commonly used in K-12 classes, rubrics can work as a fantastic form of communication between student and teacher.  When rubrics are utilized for a course, students need only to glance at their rubric for an assignment for expectations and specific components of focus for an assignment.

Why use rubrics?

Firstly, rubrics help instructors do a plethora of things within their courses including remaining consistent in their assessment of assignments between students, provide feedback that promotes student learning in a sustainable way, and clarifying expectations of an assignment for students.  Some instructors have even found that rubrics help save them time when grading large amounts of work, since the grading criteria remains the same throughout.  These instructors still spend time writing comments, but they are then also able to return to the scale their rubrics are set on in order to grade more efficiently.

Secondly, rubrics also help students.  Providing students with a copy of a rubric before they being completing an assignment will help them understand overall expectations for their work, and will make note of specific components that are listed on their rubrics.  Students are also more likely to become aware of their learning process and the progress that they make throughout the class by utilizing the feedback received on rubrics to improve in the future.

How can you develop a rubric?

There are several different types of rubrics that you can choose to employ within your classroom depending on which one works best for the work you’re assigning.  If you’re new to rubrics, start small by creating one rubric for one assignment in a semester.  This will allow you to test the waters and see if rubrics work well for you within your own courses.  It may also be beneficial to ask colleagues if they have developed rubrics for similar assignments, just to get an idea of what sort of rubrics might be the most helpful. 

When creating a rubric, consider how you would outline the elements or critical attributes that will be evaluated for the assignment.  Then work on creating an evaluative range for performance quality underneath each element.  Leave comment boxes next to each section of the rubric for optional comments on specific components or to reference students back to a particular section of their work.  From there, all that’s left is to assign a numerical scale to each level.  Be sure to provide students with a copy during class and walk through the components together, asking for questions along the way.

For those of you who would rather type your comments, consider making your rubric into a fill-able PDF that can easily be sent out to students.

Adapted from: Cornell University CTE

Written by: Jessica Moser 

Five Better Practice Tips for Spicing Things Up

Daily grind of teaching got you down?  Finding it difficult to put spring break behind you?  Try these five teaching practices by Roben Torosyan to improve outcomes and liven up your classes.

Wait—Most teachers know that they should wait after asking a question in class, but they don’t accurately perceive how long they wait.  Often, teachers wait less than a second before calling on someone, pacing nervously, or rephrasing the question.  Consciously taking the time to wait three to five seconds will allow students adequate time to speak up, answer more fully, and ask better questions themselves.

Kick-start your opening; shout before you walk out—Be sure to start and end your classes with something memorable.  Drama and action can motivate learning in class and after it’s over.  Kick-start your opening with an especially dramatic example, an unobvious questions, the answer to a difficult homework problem, a relevant cartoon, or some intriguing background music.  End by having students shout out a one-word takeaway.  Or ask the question you’ll start the next class with.

Do less and do it more deeply—Imagine a list of 12 learning objectives.  Next, imagine that you need to rate each as essential, important, or of minor importance.  Now, what if you were challenged a little more to select no more than five objectives as essential and important?  Most faculty would find this difficult to do, but it is a significant thing to consider when creating your own curriculum.  With doing more things comes spending less time on each thing.  Therefore, consider the fact that each daily plan should include no more than three to five vital takeaways that students will understand, be able to do, or think differently about.

Grade smarter, not just harder—It’s no question that a large portion of an instructor’s time is spent grading.  They take the time to write comments only to discover that students continue to make the same mistakes in future assignments.  Instead, try returning problem-sets marked only right or wrong and have students find and correct their errors before points are assigned for work.  Only mark one page of a draft, noting the problems that students can look for in the rest of their paper.  Challenge students to correct their mistakes for further revisions.  Offer more clarifying feedback.  Rather than mentioning that something is “unclear,” guide the student to “expand, explain, and give examples.”  Lead and end critical comments with strengths.

Mix it up—It’s an easy thing to find yourself falling into ruts and using the same activities over and over.  Consider switching up your usual “think/pair/share” exercise with a small group activity or a large group debate.  Don’t just mix up activities, but also presentation modes (visual, aural, kinetic) so that the content comes to students in a variety of different ways.

Adapted from: Roben Torosyan for Magna Publications

By: Jessica Moser