Emily, thanks again for this continued honest sharing of what you're doing.
I think that when you do these mid-semester assessments, you can/should lean heavily on Items 3 and 4 to try to get to the bottom of some of the engagement issues you mentioned in the first half of the post (attendance, late work, etc.). You might consider explicitly asking students about their attendance and timely work submissions habits -- "How would you rate yourself on regular attendance and timely submission of work? If you rate yourself low, then what are the blockers to full attendance and on-time submissions, and how do you plan to address those?" Or something like that. The assessments seem like a great opportunity to get direct input from students on what's going on that's causing attendance and work submission problems.
Thanks for this! I did have some of these conversations with students in our individual conferences, though I'm not sure how much of a difference it made. The thing I kept running into was that I would ask students, "What could you do to improve your attendance/timely submission of work?" And they would say, "I just need to try harder." I tried to keep probing and push them toward some more concrete strategies--but ultimately adopting those strategies was up to them.
But I am working on some possible solutions to the problem. I was inspired by David's recent Grading for Growth post on grade trackers, which I think could double as a way to help students keep up with their assignments and attendance. I'm drafting one for my fall class, which I hope to post about when the series on my spring class is over!
I like the self-assessment questions! I will be eager to see how their conferences go. One thing that is challenging for some (many?) students is that they’re not socialized into this way of thinking and/or into ungrading more generally.
Regarding attendance, assignments, etc: you’re not alone! I’ve been teaching for nearly 30 years and I’ve never experienced this dynamic before. Half the students missing half the classes. Only a handful of students turning in everything (and on time to boot). My sense has been that existential angst has spread —“what’s the point of college, anything, when the world is a mess and nothing is certain…?” But it’s hard to know. I’m not persuaded that there is a magic mix of fixes I can offer, Goldilocks ‘just right’ “exciting” teaching; perfect assignments, deadlines, policies, flexibility, etc. I don’t know if it’s fixable any time soon.
Thank you for this solidarity! I did feel like I ran into a lot of systemic issues this time around that I wasn't going to solve with good pedagogy alone.
Emily, thanks again for this continued honest sharing of what you're doing.
I think that when you do these mid-semester assessments, you can/should lean heavily on Items 3 and 4 to try to get to the bottom of some of the engagement issues you mentioned in the first half of the post (attendance, late work, etc.). You might consider explicitly asking students about their attendance and timely work submissions habits -- "How would you rate yourself on regular attendance and timely submission of work? If you rate yourself low, then what are the blockers to full attendance and on-time submissions, and how do you plan to address those?" Or something like that. The assessments seem like a great opportunity to get direct input from students on what's going on that's causing attendance and work submission problems.
Thanks for this! I did have some of these conversations with students in our individual conferences, though I'm not sure how much of a difference it made. The thing I kept running into was that I would ask students, "What could you do to improve your attendance/timely submission of work?" And they would say, "I just need to try harder." I tried to keep probing and push them toward some more concrete strategies--but ultimately adopting those strategies was up to them.
But I am working on some possible solutions to the problem. I was inspired by David's recent Grading for Growth post on grade trackers, which I think could double as a way to help students keep up with their assignments and attendance. I'm drafting one for my fall class, which I hope to post about when the series on my spring class is over!
I like the self-assessment questions! I will be eager to see how their conferences go. One thing that is challenging for some (many?) students is that they’re not socialized into this way of thinking and/or into ungrading more generally.
Regarding attendance, assignments, etc: you’re not alone! I’ve been teaching for nearly 30 years and I’ve never experienced this dynamic before. Half the students missing half the classes. Only a handful of students turning in everything (and on time to boot). My sense has been that existential angst has spread —“what’s the point of college, anything, when the world is a mess and nothing is certain…?” But it’s hard to know. I’m not persuaded that there is a magic mix of fixes I can offer, Goldilocks ‘just right’ “exciting” teaching; perfect assignments, deadlines, policies, flexibility, etc. I don’t know if it’s fixable any time soon.
Thank you for this solidarity! I did feel like I ran into a lot of systemic issues this time around that I wasn't going to solve with good pedagogy alone.