This week I wanted to pass along a couple of interesting comments from readers. One wrote in with a tip for engaging students in a large class, another with some observations about what his graduate students seem to have missed in their undergraduate years.
Douglas Duncan, an emeritus faculty member in the department of astrophysical and planetary sciences at the University of Colorado, shared a tip he’s found helpful for getting students to talk in a large class. “I tell students that if they answer my in-class questions, or pose a good question of their own, I will give them a sticky note,” wrote Duncan, who is retired from teaching. “They are to write their name on it and stick it on my desk on the way out.”
A sticky note counts the same as a correct clicker question, Duncan wrote that students who participate a lot can raise their course grade by about 1.5 percent.
“This colorful, immediate, tangible reward is popular!” he wrote, and it has boosted participation substantially.
Matthew Haley teaches computer science to graduate students at the University of Detroit Mercy. He wrote to me recently to share some observations about the soft skills his students appear to have missed honing during the disruptions of the pandemic.
One challenge, Haley wrote, is group work. Presumably because of the time they spent in Zoom, Haley said, students approach group projects with a “divide and conquer” method, breaking assignments into distinct tasks instead of collaborating on the full thing.
Another place where students seem underprepared, Haley wrote, is in the lab — presumably because prior coursework could not all happen in person. They seem uncomfortable with trial and error, or the imperfect way theory is applied in real settings.
The bottom line, he wrote: “These are all students who ‘survived,’ and in many cases thrived, the pandemic-driven learning challenges but are not prepared for grad school.”
Haley wondered if other instructors of graduate students noticed similar patterns. I also wonder, for those teaching undergraduates — especially in labs — if his observations sound like the outcome of the way courses had to be reworked in recent years, and if you have thoughts on what might help affected undergraduates as they move forward. Let me know at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com, and your response may appear in a future newsletter.
Buoy Your Students — and Yourself
We hope you’ll be able to join us for the second session of Keep on Teaching, a two-part virtual event, on February 10, at 2 p.m. Eastern. Our panel will delve into the challenge of supporting students without burning yourself out.
This session is exclusively for newsletter subscribers, so now’s a good time to make sure that’s you — (you can check here) — and to recommend Teaching to colleagues you think might like it, too. When you register for the event, you’ll have a chance to let us know what topics you most want to hear our panelists weigh in on.
If you’re unable to attend tomorrow — or are reading this after February 10 — registering for the event will allow you to watch a recording of it.
Do you have feedback on this webinar series? Ideas of what else we might offer to help newsletter readers find community? Email us at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com or beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.
Reading List
Few topics have resonated with readers as much as burnout, for understandable reasons. Here’s some earlier coverage you might want to check out ahead of tomorrow’s event:
- A feature story Beth wrote back in the fall of 2020.
- An advice piece with practical ideas instructors could use to reduce their burnout risk.
- An article from our colleague Emma Pettit with ideas of how colleges could mitigate faculty burnout.
- A newsletter with insights from higher-education scholar Kevin R. McClure.
- An opinion piece McClure wrote with Alisa Hicklin Fryar.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com or beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.
— Beckie
Learn more about our Teaching newsletter, including how to contact us, at the Teaching newsletter archive page.
