Emerson ITG - What we're reading

Pass out course evaluations early in the semester and focus on making sure students can tell you care. If you wait until the end of the semester, struggling students may have dropped out and you won't have time to adjust your teaching style. Set clear learning objectives for each unit so students know exactly what to study and feel more in control of their learning. Without those, "We were training students not to show up for class, wait until two days before the test, and then cram," Holland said. "We wondered why students didn't retain any of the information." Create 10-minute videos for each objective that students can watch and show up to class prepared to discuss. When it comes time to review, a student can read the unit objective and watch the corresponding video. Give frequent quizzes, essays, and group work so both the instructors and students know where they stand and students stay engaged. Provide early, intrusive interventions like meeting with every student who scores below a 70 on the first test.

"The classroom-management system we use, Sakai, comes with this massive surveillance infrastructure. You can see what students clicked on, and you can see what they did. Early in the semester, I show students all of the tools that follow them around, and we talk about it. I tell them, I'm not going to look. I don't want to decide whether or not you read something based on whether you clicked on the article. I don't want to play these surveillance games. I just want to see, did you write something thoughtful in the forum? We use it to start a conversation about what it means to be a student in this day and age. They usually have no idea that their professors can see every click."