Today, I found out about a great example that I can share with students about the importance of variety in sentence lengths. It would go great with the example I have called “The Power of Short Words.”
It is called, “This sentence has five words.”
Archive for the Category » Classroom «
30
Nov 2010
Attendance is always a topic that generates discussion among instructors. What role do instructors play in requiring students attend class?
And someone is always quick to point out that attendance isn’t really what we mean. A student can attend a class without really attending a class (there in body but not spirit).
OK, so participation then. Students are expected to participate in class. Sometimes that participation is active listening. Other times, participation might be writing or reading or discussing with other students, the instructor or the entire class.
Special Holiday Schedules
The Friday before Thanksgiving, I heard on the news about a college student traveling home for Thanksgiving break was killed in a car accident. After my initial reaction to hearing such sad news, I couldn’t help but wonder about the timing.
Did the school the student attended break early for Thanksgiving? Or was the student, who was traveling from another state, forced to skip Thanksgiving week classes in order to make it home for the holiday? I checked and found that Dennison University breaks for Thanksgiving the Friday before the holiday giving students a full week away from classes.
Thanksgiving week always makes me rethink my views on attendance.
Ferris State University officially breaks for the holiday at noon on Wednesday, which is pretty late to be breaking for a holiday that takes place the very next day. It limits options for traveling home. How far do students have to travel to return home for the holiday? It makes me wonder about attendance on those Wednesday mornings. What is the absentee rate? Do teachers enforce the attendance? Or do they make the day more flexible? With the increase in web-enhanced courses, are teachers offering an online alternative to that turkey-week class session?
I also wonder about how my own policies impact other classes. If I make my Tuesday class options more flexible, will students be less likely to attend Wednesday morning classes?
This year, I had class the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and the rate of absent students was a bit higher than normal even though I was handing out a new assignment (and students did know this before hand). Not a single student that was absent asked for information from me before Tuesday’s class. I received only a handful of emails after Tuesday’s class.
This meant many of those absent students arrived to class the Tuesday after Thanksgiving unprepared.
The week before, I had students complete an online assignment, which meant they didn’t have to meet in person. If I had put off the assignment for one more week, I could have eliminated the need for students to attend my class in person during turkey week. Should I consider doing that in the future?
Day to Day Attendance
I teach writing, so I don’t have a lot of lectures in my class. Students write or give feedback or revise during class. Most often it requires students to interact with each other, which means it isn’t something that can be duplicated outside of the class if a student happens to miss.
My attendance policy clearly states that attendance is expected. There isn’t such a thing as an “excused” absence. This means if a student doesn’t attend, the work completed that day cannot be made up.
At the same time, I don’t want to spend a portion of my time taking attendance. I am of the mind that there is a reason Ben Stein sounds so bored in that scene from Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. He was taking attendance. OK, so he also goes on to ask questions that students don’t care about enough to answer.
Note to self: The YouTube video has a scrolling feed. You could do something like this to emphasize attendance and what isn’t attendance even if the body is present with the Ferris Beuller video in the background. Note over.
The point is, taking attendance can take up a big part of class. And if all I do is put a mark somewhere in a grade book, the student could actually end up disputing whether he or she were absent or not.
My solution? I have students sign in. I created a form in Microsoft Word. It lists the class, the time and space to write in the date. The rest of the page is a table of 3 columns and lots of rows. The first column is small and blank. The next column is the student’s name. The third column is where the student signs in.
Every semester, I create one of these for each class I teach face to face. The students are listed alphabetically. The student finds his or her name and signs in. It is also a place where I can jot notes and record things. If a student is late or not working, I jot it on the paper. I leave it to the students to take the initiative and sign in every class. I warn them that they can be marked absent if they fail to do so.
The first couple weeks of a semester, I do double check the number of signatures to the number of bodies in the room. That way, I know no one is signing in for an absent neighbor. I also make it a point to learn names quickly, so students know that I know when they are absent. The attendance sheet helps me learn student names as well.
Why Take Attendance?
Some instructors don’t take attendance. The students are adults, and it is up to the student to decide whether to attend class or not.
I agree. It is up to the student but taking attendance doesn’t take that decision out of student’s hands. It just gives the student an incentive to attend in the first place.
There have been studies that show students who attend class do better on exams.
I tend to teach freshmen students, who are new to college. I feel that by requiring students attend, I am helping my freshmen students develop good habits.
I am also helping myself. Students who attend class ask the questions when I am talking about the subject. I don’t have to try to do what I need to do plus go over such and such again with so and so who wasn’t here. Students who attend class turn in assignments on time, so I don’t have to try and track down when and where the absent student decided to turn things in.
Plus, there is a financial aid concern. Students receive financial aid to attend college, but if a student isn’t attending class, the money is being wasted.
My policy states attendance is expected. Students sign in daily, and I know students’ names. When a student is absent, I notice. I think that right there is a big deterrent to students missing class. It is easier to skip a class if the teacher won’t notice.
I keep track of the number of absences students have had using a master list. When students have missed 3 classes (10 percent of a class that meets twice a week), I fill out a “student absent report” and turn it into the dean’s office. This report generates a letter to the student (a scare letter) as well as lets me know if the student is still enrolled or has dropped the class.
I tell students that missing 5 classes means their ability to pass is in serious jeopardy. While a motivated student could recover, it is going to have an impact on their grade. It is up to the student to decide what to do from there not me. I didn’t miss the classes.
Excused or Unexcused?
When I first started teaching, I would get all kinds of notes from students who missed class. Most often those notes were about things that I didn’t want to know and had no business knowing: medical issues, jail or arrest records, court appearances, child custody or welfare issues, and of course the death of family members.
At first, I would attempt to verify the information from another source. I think that was the journalist in me. Is this student really related to Esther Prinn who died at the exact moment essay #3 was due? How do I find out? Is this a real doctor’s excuse or was it something created online? Do I really want to know my student was being treated for X? Or arrested for Y?
I don’t want to know. I don’t want to have to verify. I don’t want to have to judge whether the excuse I am being given is truthful or not.
This led me to having a “no excused or unexcused” policy. A student is absent or a student is present. A student is participating or a student is napping. It is pretty clear to tell the difference. It saves me time, and it keeps me from having a headache.
The only exception I make: I do make allowances for students attending a school-related function such as a sports event where they are a player or where a class takes a field trip or sponsors an event. In those cases, the student provides me with a school-generated note and a list of all students impacted. This pretty much has to happen, but even with this type of absence, there are some things that the student misses that I will not recreate (like quizzes and feedback).
Incentives and Deterrents
My policy to fill out the excessive absence form after three absences could be considered punishment. The letter generated by the form sometimes goes to the student’s home, which gets mom and dad contacting the student.
What I am currently missing in my policy is an incentive. I give points for participation, but some teachers increase grades (like from a B- to a B) if a student has no more than one absence in a class. This would also encourage students to attend rather than reading my policy and thinking “OK, I can miss 3,” which they sometimes do.
Still Thinking
I have more thoughts about attendance and how to handle it. I tend to get good ideas from other instructors. I believe it was Dr. Sandra Balkema that mentioned she has students sign in, and I adopted that practice soon after. A conversation with Carol Deurloo made me realize an incentive to attend would be beneficial as well.
And while most of my thoughts about this issue have to do with freshman, how would my policies change dealing with upper classmen? Would they?
Plus, there is the whole idea of online versus face to face. What does attendance mean when students can “attend virturally”?
Category: Classroom, Teaching
Tags: attendance, f2f, holiday, mandatory attendance, online, policy, Teaching Comments off
05
Oct 2010
In my English classes today, we worked on descriptive writing. We discussed the difference between objective and subjective description and Stephen King’s quote, “Sparse description leaves the reader feeling bewildered and nearsighted. Over description buries him or her in details and images. The trick is to find a happy medium.”
While my students wrote, I did some writing too. This post is just the bits and pieces of description that I wrote today.
PROMPT: Describe the following: Kate walked into a store.
Stepping inside from the brightly lit day, Kate removed her sunglasses and reached for her shopping cart. She reached for the cart she always grabbed, but before her hand reached the cart attached to a plastic truck perfect for Sam and Sue, Kate stopped and grabbed her sunglasses instead. Despite the dim light, she put her sunglasses back on, swiped at her face, and grabbed the convenience cart meant for people just grabbing a few things and people like her — people without a family.
Prompt: My dog, Zeus
Objective: heavy, dead weight, refuses to budge, brown, hairy, over 100 pounds, drool, in my face
Subjective: I had been sitting on the couch with my feet tucked under me until the phone rang. Quickly I lower my feet expecting them to hit the solid floor. My upper body is already leaning towards the phone, but my feet don’t land on solid floor. Instead, the floor lurches up like the Titanic just before it went under the icy cold water. Rudely awakened, the floor gives me a dirty look. The phone continues to ring as I sprawl across the floor. The floor stands up over me, and again like the Titanic, water drips down. Then the floor turns away from me and pads into the kitchen in search of food. The phone stops ringing.
Prompt: Describe something blue but don’t mention the item you are describing. (A dad’s blue eyes.)
My version: Normally the color of my favorite blue jeans, I knew he was upset just by looking at his face. The soft faded comfort of his gaze was absent. His mood, dark and stormy, darkened his appearance. I’d done somethign wrong. I didn’t know what until I noticed my report card gripped tightly in his hands.
Prompt: Objective – Describe a classroom
My effort: The classroom was typical. Chalkboards filled two walls and institutional white paint filled the rest of the space. Overhead the flourescent lights flickered. I sit at a desk.
15
Jun 2010
Without a set day and time, students can easily forget about an online course, but features built into Ferris Connect, and most course management systems, can help professors track down those missing students with just a few clicks of the button.
Instructors can help remind students about the online course with a variety of methods including welcoming e-mails before the class starts and again during the first week and even phone calls. But once the class is in session, tracking down students may be forgotten as instructors and (most) students focus on the current lesson and assignment.
In the past, I have used a Word document form to help me keep track of my online students. The form allows me to list all of the names of the students. I tend to print off my forms, and I write my notes in by hand.
In my online class, discussion is pretty important, and the number of messages can quickly add up. I make it a point to participate in the discussion, but I don’t try to reply to every posting. To make sure that I reply in a fair manner, I make a note of who I respond to each week. It is just a check mark in a column, but it makes it easy for me to look back and see if I’ve neglected any students. The next week I make it a point to read that student’s posts first, which increases the likelihood that I’ll reply to that student.
But the print out of my Word document is clunky, and I was sure there were other instructors with great ideas that I wanted to know about. With that in mind, I queried the Writing Program list-serv offered through Arizona State University.
Some instructors rely on the CMS tracking reports to identify missing students while other instructors create their own documents in either Word or Excel to gather information about classes as well as keep track of information about student habits and needs.
While the tracking system makes it easy to keep track of a student’s attendance, most instructors see the data offers more information than just noting if students are logging in.
A lecturer at California State University, Dave Katherine Ireland used information he gathered from introductions and tracking data to learn more about his students. The information he collects helps him structure his course. For each class he teaches, Ireland creates an Excel document where he records introduction information and access patterns noting which students work in the morning, afternoon, night or late night. From this data, Ireland identified a group of students he calls his “weekend warriors.”
“My weekend warriors are students who work full time, raise families and go to school full time,” Ireland said. “I do not structure my classes so that all the work and class interactions can be done on the weekend, but my weekend warriors always save what they can for the weekend.”
Ireland also uses the “course statistics” function to revise his curriculum. “I can evaluate whether or not I need to collapse or expand the time line for a specific assignment based on how I see the course working through the different parts of an assignment,” Ireland said.
Mary Patricia McQueeney, an instructor at Johnson County Community College in Kansas, finds tracking features have helped her revise the curriculum in both her online and face-to-face courses. “Some of my colleagues have ethical dilemmas about Big Brother tools,” McQueeney said. “I don’t because they allow me to help my students far more than they turn me into a voyeur. “
Tracking tools can help instructors determine when students are logging into class, how long they are spending, and where they are going. These tracking tools can do more than help instructors make sure students are attending their virtual classrooms. Analyzing student patterns can help instructors improve delivery and organizational methods.
McQueeney said, “I use the tools for both online and on-campus students to make sure that what they think they are doing they are, indeed, doing.” She also finds the tools helpful for her “to try to figure out how in the heck confused students are rambling around the course shell.”
An English professor at Collin College, Sonja Andrus has figured out the best times to track student participation based on research and experience. She noted the first two weeks are important to make sure everyone understands how the online course works. Andrus calls or e-mails any student who fails to sign in or has signed in only once. “[R]esearch shows that online students who feel disconnected in the first week or two will drop later at a rate of 3 times higher than those who were clued in at the beginning,” Andrus said.
“I check back in on this at about week 4 or 5 and contact any students who have missed major elements of the course,” Andrus said. “I usually check against those logging in and viewing some things but not turning anything in, too.” She notes that weeks 4 and 5 are when face-to-face and online students tend to stop coming to class. “Students tire of the class schedule or get bored or think the class is too hard/too easy and they ‘stop out’ and later drop or get an F. If I contact those students before it’s too late, I can usually get them interested in class again.”
Derek Mueller, a doctoral candidate at Syracuse University, uses a one-page Excel document to keep track of grades, attendance and missing work. “I appreciate that in the spreadsheet I can see the full roster along with email addresses, geographic locations, programs of study, and so on. In the various columns, I am able to input notes that pop-up on a mouseover action (using Excel’s note feature), and I can enter alphanumeric values and add highlights or color-coding to keep track of a particular assignment.”
While most of the respondents taught English, one instructor, Ilene Frank from the University of South Florida reported how she handles her online classes including one with a cap at 100 students. “It’s a short course on using library/internet resources,” Frank explained. She noted many of the assignments are set up to grade automatically, but she still tries to e-mail students quite often.
“I send welcome messages via e-mail to get started – and then about a week in, send a reminder of what we are supposed to be doing – and after that, send e-mail only to students where work seems to be missing,” Frank said. She relies on the statistics available for the discussion threads to help indicate who is logging on, but she said the biggest signal of a problem is when “there are no grades in the grade book.”
Editor’s Note: This article was written for and published in Ferris State University’s online writing newletter called L and L onLine, which is published by the Language and Literature department. It was published in the April 2009 edition, which is available here: http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/administration/academicaffairs/online/OTC/apr09.pdf
Category: Classroom, Digital Rhetoric, Teaching, Teaching Resources
Tags: digital rhetoric, online, Teaching Comments off
01
Mar 2007
Yesterday students in one of my classes had a paper due. Actually it was a rough draft they shared with fellow students. I had so many students approach me with variations of "I have a question." And remember, I was in a SWM, and I had warned them of that. So my response (while eventaully helpful) was a bit… not what they expected. But my favorite was the following exhange:
Male Student: I wrote my paper on technology, and I related it to me. Is that OK?
Me: Technology? And you related it to you?
Male Student: I related it to me. Is that OK?
Me: There’s a girl with blonde hair and blue eyes right outside that door waiting for you in the hallway. Is she OK for you?
Male Student: I need to know more than hair color.
Me: Exactly.
I’m off to work. Cheerio.
