Does this sound familiar?
- Students struggle to comprehend what they read.
- Students have difficulty analyzing, summarizing, and synthesizing what they have read.
- It’s getting harder for students to process instructions, so you have to describe in greater detail what you want them to do and how to do it.
- Students view reading as something they must do, rather than something they may enjoy.
As I note in my story, professors have long complained about students not doing the reading. But something different is happening these days, and that has to do with students’ critical literacy skills. I talked to a number of professors, teaching experts, and others to figure out why. Please read my story to get the details, but in short, changes to the K-12 curriculum, smart phones, social media, and the decline of longform reading in society are contributing to this problem.
Some professors I’ve heard from are deeply concerned for the future. “The lack of functional literacy is at emergency levels,” wrote one. Another talked about the “circularity of it all.” That is, if students aren’t reading and she has to review everything in class, that move in itself disincentivizes reading.
I wasn’t able to dig too deeply into the ways faculty members are tackling this challenge. But that’s what this newsletter is for. So I’ll be rolling out some strategies and insights from readers in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, thanks very much to all of you who wrote in to share your stories. I read every entry and every email, and appreciate your candor and insights.
This week I’ll focus on some common-sense approaches that professors don’t always follow.
Make sure that your assigned readings directly tie into what you want students to learn.
“Many faculty assign reading just to assign it, or because they think it’s important or interesting, and that’s not the way to do it,” writes Kerry O’Grady, director for teaching excellence at Columbia Business School and an adjunct professor of business communications at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “Faculty should be crafting learning outcomes and objectives and selecting readings based on which ones will help achieve those outcomes and objectives.”
“I have high expectations for preparation and completed work,” she adds. “That’s been a rude awakening for certain students who have experienced reading not being an important part of the curriculum because faculty either A) never discuss the reading in class, B) never include it in assignments, C) don’t have reading preparation and engagement as an integral part of the course/do not hold them accountable for the reading. This frustrates me, as it makes my job a lot harder when I double down on the importance of reading.”
O’Grady says that one of the most frequent questions she asks faculty members at Columbia who are frustrated that students don’t read is: “How do you hold them accountable for this reading?”
That brings us to the next strategy.
Quiz students on what they read so they know that it counts.
Susan Stearns, a professor of communication studies at Eastern Washington University, describes the approach she has developed, through trial and error, that has allowed her to get students to read.
“I start sending emails to my students two weeks before the course starts, letting them know they need to get their textbook; students cannot pass the course without the textbook — they will get an F,” she writes. “I give the full citation and tell them that by week two of the course those that don’t have a text will earn zeros on assignments because I require you quote directly from the textbook. This works for about 26 or 27 students in a 30-student class. But there will be a few students who try not to buy the book and they do not pass the course.”
(Stearns notes that for four of the five courses she teaches yearly, she uses a free online textbook. The fifth does have an expensive textbook for which she has not been able to find a good alternative. In instances where students say they can’t afford it, she tries to find workarounds but also encourages them to budget their money as the textbook is required.)
“Second, I make a point on the first day to tell students that our class activities and lectures enhance their readings from the book. It’s my job to help them learn this information. So they need to read their books prior to coming to class and I will always tell them which pages are for the next class period. I supply notes, an outline, of my lecture but I do not provide PowerPoints that cover the entire textbook.”
“Third, I have created quick, simple, true/false quizzes for every reading my students do in all my courses. I create data banks and then let Canvas randomly choose a particular number of questions to ask each student. This follows my students’ guidance that they need to see points tied to a professor request to get them to do it. And I use the flipped-class model for this so if we are talking about a particular theory on a Monday in class, then that quiz is due by the students on the evening before, Sunday.”
“This all sounds really fierce,” Stears adds, “but I do it with smiles, teasing, and love. I’m just firm and don’t budge on these issues because I want them to learn.”
Teach students the critical-reading skills they’re missing.
Many readers say that students haven’t been taught how to read actively and think critically about what they read. So those skills need to be taught.
“Many students tell me that they feel overwhelmed and unskilled when reading through primary-source readings,” writes Mary Beth Leibham, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. “So I often remind myself that I need to provide more support for these confidence issues. Rather than assuming they know how to read more-challenging text, I need to show them how to pull out the key ideas from a primary-source reading, or even a textbook.”
Leibman also talks to her students about the value of reading, pointing out how a concept they’re reviewing is discussed in depth in an article she had assigned. In her educational-psychology course she also teaches students about effective and ineffective ways to learn. “Many students have said over the years, ‘Yikes this idea of rote learning — that’s all my high-school classes or even other classes at the university consist of.’”
Chris Hakala, a psychology professor and director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship at Springfield College, has designed a series of strategies to improve students’ reading skills. They include reading in class together, out loud, with him talking about his own reading strategies. He also has them read in class and talk about the reading in small groups. He uses questions to guide their reading. And they discuss the purpose and value of reading.
This goes to Hakala’s larger point: Students will read if they know why they’re doing it and are taught how to do it effectively.
I’m going to expand on these strategies in future newsletters, including the use of reading guides and other methods that teach students how to read critically and actively.
If you have insights or strategies you’d like to share, write to me at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com and your ideas might appear in a future newsletter.
Customers in the classroom
Last week Beckie highlighted an essay by Sarah Rose Cavanagh that discusses the backlash to student-centered teaching. Faculty members feel exhausted, and sometimes minimized, by the strategies they have been asked to use in their classrooms (e.g., flexible deadlines), and those they are expected to disregard (e.g., lectures).
It’s a fascinating read, and it touches on something I’ve been wondering about: Can some of the manifestations of being a “student centered” campus harm students’ ability to learn and grow? Specifically, is treating students like customers and education like a product undermining students’ education? That’s not quite what Cavanagh was writing about, but the frustration some professors feel toward student-centeredness can sometimes overlap with the ways in which students are treated as, and sometimes act like, customers.
I have heard professors say that they feel unsupported by colleagues or administrators if they give students low grades or fail them for not doing the work. Instead they are told to lighten the workload. And I’ve written about the rise of student-conduct issues, in which students may expect their professors to be flexible beyond reason or won’t abide by traditional learning norms, like showing up regularly and on time to class. In short, the student-professor power dynamic has shifted.
These are deeply complicated topics, which tie into other teaching challenges, such as the rise of mental-health issues, snowplow parenting, and political interference in the college curriculum. But it’s a part of modern higher education I want to explore in a series we’re producing on how today’s students experience the world — and how it affects their education.
If you have thoughts on this topic, please write to me at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or fill out this Google form.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.
- Beth
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