How Do You Get Students to Engage?
In one of my current classes, 4 out of 13 students are regularly missing classes and skipping many of the assignments and some of the quizzes. At this rate, they are falling behind and will have a hard time passing the class. I hope it’s still early enough for them to catch up, but I wonder if there is anything I can do besides warning them. I have mentioned to them that it’s important to come to class and do the assignments, and I even emailed them to ask whether they would come to class, turn in their work, etc. But my efforts don’t seem to make a difference. Any thoughts on how to get students like this to engage with the class?
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February 23rd, 2008 at 8:26 pm
That’s a damn fine question - all the stuff I post here (i.e. popular culture books, videos, flash demonstrations, etc) are targeted at engagement. But it is all introductory. Flashy teaching style is good for introducing students to complex ideas, but in the long term, true engagement has to come from the ideas themselves. In the end, if a student isn’t excited by the ideas we are discussing, there is little that we can do to change the matter.
(I know, that sounds like Bain’s 1st level of teaching - where the teacher is concerned with being a gatekeeper. I’m not saying this of all students. I’m saying that when a student actively or aggressively disengages despite what we do, then there is a point where we have to let them fail.)
On a slightly different note, I have had great success with the immediate problems of classroom attendance, etc. by using the ‘Reacting to the past’ pedagogy. It is brilliant. The problem is that the subject matter is fairly limited and you have to give up 5 weeks of your course to run it properly, but damn does it work well. I posted on it before, but the url is http://www.barnard.edu/reacting/.
February 28th, 2008 at 11:10 am
This is a tough one to be sure. Any idea how this percentage of people regularly missing stacks up with other courses at the school? My trusty calculator tells me 4 of 13 is about 30% so it does seem like a lot. However, some schools have higher rates of skipping than others. There’s only so much one can do. I try to set up a course that’s interesting and as fun as I can make it - I try to incorporate the ’smart room’ equipment when I can, maybe get an outside speaker; in general mix it up a bit - with benchmarks for gaging progress (like quizzes, etc., which you are doing too it sounds like). Aside from all that though, I really just step back and try to enjoy putting on the class for those who are there. Everyone has a story for why they feel they must do what they must do. I just try to be fair-minded when some of those people come to me at the end of the semester and want to make things up.
Incidentally, I make very clear that I grade them on attendance. If you are not doing that, maybe that would be something to try? If you are, well, maybe it’s just ‘one of those semesters’!