Got an email from my chair today with an exhortation to make the first day count and not have your students be those who post #syllabusweek nonsense on Twitter. I feel like we've been there, done that and most people do something that day. I've tried different things over the years.
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| First Day! |
- Spending a good bit of time on course-linked, getting to know you sorts of exercises in a class that was going to be interaction heavy. Evaluation: students don't like playing silly games with strangers any more than adults at mandatory training do. It is worse when they are silly games about hamsters.
- Doing a full lecture, passing out the syllabus at the end and announcing there would be a quiz on the syllabus at the start of the next class. Evaluation: They were afraid, but in a functional way. I was the teacher to whom crap should not be given.
- Hybrid of #1 and #2. Some time getting to know, some time on lecture, syllabus at the end. Evaluation: Meh. It was an unremarkable start to an unremarkable semester. Also, I need better ice breakers.
- Variant on #2, The Paper Chase style. Looked at the little ID photos of my merry band of freshpersons that you can get with the course registration system. Started calling on people by name having never met them, asking them questions about course material (that anyone with reasonable general knowledge should be able to think about and answer). Evaluation: They were very, very, very afraid. This group was always prepared for class, but paranoid about rightness in a way that hurt creative problem solving.
- Assigning a group task to small groups that could be done with a HS graduate's level of knowledge, but related to future course material. Best solution got 5 bonus points on the syllabus quiz in the next class. Evaluation: Within the small groups, the bonding experience motivated by points did build strong relationships that carried forward into the semester. Winning/losing aspect was highly motivational. I'd do it again.
- from unknown sender
More and more I do a "what college is like" where I try to acculturate them to things many don't understand.
ReplyDeleteI do a lot of this as well as many of my students have difficulty being present (literally and figuratively) and understanding that there are consequences for not turning work in. They assume, it seems to me for the first half of the semester, that they'll be given rewrites and makeups at any amount.
DeleteI've done a variant of #2, where there is a short quiz on the syllabus. I like the results, which include a great decline in "BS arguments" by students, with the added bonus of being able to respond with "No, you can't be accommodated [some outrageous request], as stated in the syllabus, and you even answered a question in the quiz on this very topic, so you should already know that your request cannot be granted."
ReplyDeleteI like to just go in the classroom and put my head on the desk. I want them to know what they're getting.
ReplyDeleteFor the win!
DeleteUnless it's someone else borrowing her "merry band" language, I'm guessing this is from Amelia.
ReplyDeleteI've got a couple of first-day exercises that introduce key concepts in the class (and that can be left up on the LMS for late adds to work through themselves; the whole issue of how to handle late adds is a key part of my decision-making on this subject). I have to admit, though, that I'm sometimes guilty of doing a "syllabus day" (or, rather, introductions and syllabus day). Never a "syllabus week," though (and no syllabus days in classes that only meet once a week).
When I do do something more than introductions and syllabus, it's usually closest to #5, without the contest aspect (I dislike competition myself, and in fact, as a student/participant, tend to classify anything that involves an element of competition in the "silly games" category, even if it also has a substantive element, and to check out as much as I can, so I don't impose such activities on my students. Of course I know most students aren't like me, and adding an element of competition really does work for many of them, but, well, I'm not good at "selling" that kind of activity, and prefer to send the message that there are very few zero-sum/win-lose situations in my classroom, so I think I'll stick with cooperative stuff, even if doesn't work as well for as many students. Sometimes I'm stubborn. Okay, maybe I'm stubborn more often than sometimes.)
I also really like the idea of #4, but I'd need (a)an updated glasses prescription, (b) better facial-recognition skills, and (c) a registration system that spits out i.d. photos (in a size I can actually see; see (a)). I do wonder whether, in this case, the "paranoid about rightness" aspect of the class was a result of the exercise, or a preexisting feature (as we've noted before, there seem to be more and more students who are really afraid of being wrong, or even not-quite-right, in front of a group. This makes discussion difficult.)
tl;dr: I probably (almost certainly) need to up this aspect of my game. But after a week or more of updating the ever-proliferating sets of class materials that have to meet the requirements of ever-proliferating administrators, I feel very much as ELS does. I usually manage to play the role of an instructor who falls somewhere in the "enthusiastic" to "no-nonsense" range (depending on just how tired I am), but that's about it.
The first day is the best and it's all downhill from there. The students are all happy and excited. They laugh at my jokes. It's just a shame that we have to come back on Wednesday and do this all over again.
ReplyDeleteFor the freshpeople, I do a little bit of an icebreaker but only asking for volunteers to general questions. For seniors, it's more difficult. They don't put up with that silly nonsense.
I give them a talk on how important it is to cultivate professionalism. The job market is tight, and employers are picky. I then show them the Millennials in the Workplace Training Video as an example of how not to behave.
ReplyDeleteHah! That's a different version of making them very afraid, although some of the smarter ones may start applying critical thinking to the whole "millenial generation" mythologizing (while some of the weaker thinkers will probably stick to saying that their feelings are hurt as if that alone is a significant fact).
DeleteI have a class discussion in which every single person must participate. I call on them from the class roster. Of course, that takes a whole hour -- or it did, when my cap was 25. Now they raised it, quite quietly, to 30. The syllabus is posted, and they have a quiz on it at the beginning of the next class. In lecture classes, I lecture, full speed ahead. I find it sets the tone nicely.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever encountered a student who simply won't/can't speak? I've had one (officially identified as on the autism spectrum, though that took a while, since his communication issues extended to difficulty with getting the relevant form to me, or authorizing the disability office to do so).
DeleteSympathies on the quietly-raised course cap. For those of us who still assign papers (or any kind of work that must be hand-graded), that can quickly add up to the equivalent of another section (or two).
20 minutes on the syllabus, then introductory lecture "setting the stage." And I make sure to ask some questions on the first test from that class.
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