What About 79.2?

  

Knowing that teachers at all levels of instruction struggle with the same issues that I do keeps me sane. Because we teach in the United States, we all come across students with a feeling of entitlement. You know who I’m talking about, right? The student who feels that he deserves a good grade, an EXCELLENT grade, because, well, just because. He always has made A’s. Plus, he really tried. And he only missed four classes. Then too, he produced some extra credit work during the last week of the semester.

Does this happen in other countries, or is it unique to America? As Kelly wisely stated in an earlier blog comment, “Society in general seems to be teaching kids that instead of working hard the first time they will always have a second chance to try to fix their mistake.”

As I mentioned in an recent blog, the era of Ms. Nice Gal is over, finis. I will no longer offer study guides or extra credit. However, since these two offerings were still in place for the summer semester, I couldn’t very well renege on them. Wish I could have because the extra credit caused an issue.

 Here’s the scenario. A student with a solid B average asked about extra credit during the last week of class. When I responded that posting on the psychology blog was the only extra credit option, he asked if there was a limit to how many he could post. There is no limit. Students are free to post their hearts out, and posts are something that I look at when a student is so close to the next letter grade that he could touch it with a little tap.

Students and teachers have a vastly different view of what extra credit is all about. They think it’s to pad grades and to compensate for adequate, okay, or inferior work. They think it’s meant to bring a C grade up to a B grade…or even a failing grade up to a C. Teachers see it differently. We see it as something that might or might not give the necessary nudge to the next letter grade.

If a student is conscientious, has consistently high grades, and appears to be putting forth the effort necessary to be successful, then MAYBE some extra credit would help. But maybe not. In fact, probably not. If an average is 75, no amount of extra credit will bring the average to 80, a B in most college settings. What about 79.2? Maybe. Depends on several factors.

The above mentioned student posted 24 responses on the psychology blog in one day, a remarkable number, especially when you consider that he had made very few posts on the course online discussion board throughout the entire semester. Why then, he demanded to know, didn’t he get an A for the course. By his calculations, his average was 90. Huh? How’d he come up with that calculation? Easy. He gave himself a point for each post. I was astounded. He had assumed my role as instructor, granted himself the points, averaged his grades, and told me his average. By my calculations, his average was 88 AFTER extra credit was added.

I kind of like having the psychology blog as a forum for students. It keeps them in the digital era in a way that doesn’t involve texting or game playing. It motivates them to think about the issues and concepts we discuss in class and to share ideas and opinions with their classmates. I want to keep it going, but I don’t want to grant extra credit. Dilemma. Maybe I could announce upfront that a maximum number of EC points (say, 10) could be earned. Or maybe I should do away with it altogether.

I like what Dr. Haynes tells her students. “When you are having trouble excelling in the work you already have to do, I don’t think I should add to your burden by giving you extra things to do. Instead you might put extra effort into the assignments you already need to prepare for your courses.” But I don’t want to give up the psychology blog. Suggestions???

Whining and Wailing

89 is a B. Period. It’s one point away from an A, but it is not an A. You can do all of the unsolicited extra credit your heart desires, but 89 is still a B. You can cry, whine, go to the dean, and wail that you need an A to get into the nursing program, but it’s not going to change the numbers.

Something crazy has happened in America over the past couple of decades. Increasing numbers of people feel that they’re entitled to raises, high grades, promotions, big houses, and fine cars JUST BECAUSE. And they don’t mind harassing teachers, bosses, bankers, and whoever else will listen in order to get what they want. What’s this trend all about? What started it? How and when will it end?

Diligent teacher that I am, I checked email last week even though I was technically on vacation. Wish I hadn’t. One email was from a young woman who was sure that she deserved an A in my class and didn’t understand why she had received a B. I should add that this query was for the spring semester that ended the first week in May. She remembered one C grade, but since I dropped the lowest grade and since, according to her recollection, the rest of her test scores were A’s, she wanted to know how she ended up with a B.

Here’s how. Only two test scores were A’s, and the others were a C and a B. Her assignment grades were A’s, but they comprise only 20 percent the final grade. She reminded me that she had even written and submitted an additional assignment for extra credit. Unfortunately for her, I don’t accept, read, or grade unsolicited work for extra credit, and I made that crystal clear at the beginning of the term.

Why do students think that padding their work with “extras” is going to help them?  I think it’s because somewhere along the line, such behavior has been reinforced. Last week, a high school teacher confessed that sometimes parents will even write them (the teachers) and implore them to please please please accept an additional paper from their child in order to boost a grade.

I think what might be particularly galling in this instance is being challenged on a final grade when I know that my colleagues and I are painstakingly careful about grades. Since we know all about competition and hard work, all of us double check our work, and some even triple check it. Plus, we have the ability and experience to assess student progress, and we can spot A work mile away. It’s superior across the board.

Ah, I feel better now. Last week I decided to do away with extra credit and study guides. Now I’m seriously considering not dropping the lowest grade.  On second thought, I want to keep that option available and somehow figure out how to get students to realize that extra work, especially unsolicited, does not entitle them to superior grades.

No More Miss Nice Gal Part II

 

My nephew Greg is a quite a character. Quick witted and articulate, he can tell a great story, the kind that make you chuckle and chortle a bit. His mother, my sweet sis, told me about one of Greg’s conversations with a professor during his first semester at college.

It was the class period before the first test, and Greg wanted to know what was going to be on the test so that he could prepare well for it. Never shy about speaking up, he asked the professor what was going to be on the test. According to the story I heard, the prof gave him a steely look and replied, “Everything we’ve studied.”

“You mean everything we’ve gone over?” Greg asked.

“Everything in the unit,” the professor said.

“That’s a lot of material. Should we concentrate on our notes or the text or what?” Greg persisted.

“Everything,” the teacher replied, seemingly incredulous that he was being asked such questions.

Greg’s a good student and learned an important lesson during his first semester of college. Read and study and read and study and read and study. College is not high school, and your teachers are not going to spoon feed you the material that will be on the test(s). Yes, they’ll probably go over the important points in class and will provide course syllabi with essential information, but most aren’t likely to provide a detailed list of each fact that will be on the test.

I recall a history course in which the professor gleefully told us that if we knew everything in our text and everything in the stack of books on his desk that we might pass. He laughed. We didn’t. We were terrified. But still, we studied our cans off because we wanted to pass, and as well as I recall, my chums and I made B’s.

This semester, the one suggestion that surfaced from my student evaluations was that the tests needed to more accurately align with the study guides provided online. Kind of surprised and kind of not since I know all about rationalization for poor grades, the comments bothered me nonetheless. I want my students to do well, and yet, well, there’s a fine line between giving away the farm and simply making expectations abundantly clear.

In “real life” and in the classroom, I think people need to know what it takes to excel. An employee shouldn’t have to guess what it takes to earn an exemplary evaluation, and a student shouldn’t have to guess what it takes to earn an A or B.  At the same time, diligence and discipline on the part of the individual are required in both situations.

I have study guides posted online at the beginning of each semester for every unit in every class I teach. That’s because before the semester, I carefully construct tests that cover the concepts we’ll be covering, thus making creating study questions a breeze. Now, however, I’m thinking of discontinuing this “gift.” The good students don’t need them, and the others don’t benefit from them.

While chatting about the situation, my supervisor said he used to get the same type of comments. No more, however. He discontinued using study guides, and if anything, his students seem to be doing better. Now instead of relying solely on the study questions, they study what Greg’s professor recommended: everything.

What’s your practice? What’s your opinion? What are your experiences with study aids?

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

No more Ms. Nice Gal! This past semester I was reminded of a saying of one of my former department chairs. “No good deed ever goes unpunished.” Actually, I think she borrowed it from Claire Boothe Luce, but CCB is the one who shared it with me.

There are a couple of good deeds that I’m thinking of eliminating from now on, giving extra credit and providing study guides for tests. I’m going to address the extra credit option today and will tackle the study guide one tomorrow…or sometime soon. Neither of these two practices really helps the poor students, and the good ones don’t need them.

It pains me to use the word “poor” in connection with students, but truthfully, some are. They don’t have good study skills. Nor do they understand the concept of what it takes to be a good student. They think showing up on a somewhat regular basis and “working hard” should merit a good grade (A or B). By regular basis, I mean that they don’t overcut and that they’re usually there on time.

Here’s the scenario that led to eliminating extra credit. In the spring, one of my students had a final average of 77, a C. He had one B grade, and that was on a research paper that counted for 20 percent of the final grade. The other four grades were test grades, the highest of which was 74. Because of extra credit such as quizzes and blog posts, the student’s final average ended up being 77.  Although I felt a little “iffy” about it since the highest test grade was 74, I knew I could live with it because of the research paper grade.

The student thought otherwise and was quite upset with the C. Claiming that he had “really worked hard” and had even done some extra blog posts, he didn’t understand why his final grade was a C and not a B. I was a little surprised to receive an email demanding an explanation for the C, but I wrote back (we always respond to emails) with a clear explanation and listing of his grades and final average.

Still not satisfied, the student went to my dean complaining that he had been treated unfairly and that I hadn’t given him any extra credit. In addition to stating that the grades I had sent him via email were not accurate, he complained that I had given him some pointers on how to write emails using proper netiquette. I had to! His email was replete with text talk, misspellings, lack of punctuation, and improper grammar. Plus, it had neither salutation nor closing.

Fortunately for me, all of my student’s tests are taken online in D2L. That means that there’s an electronic record of every test, when the test was taken, how long it took the student to complete it, which questions they missed, and how they stacked up against others in the class. Not only do I have access to that information, but so do my “bosses” and the D2L administrators. In other words, test scores are easy to verify.

I provided a hard copy of this information to my department chair, and she passed it along to the student. I also provided my Excel document of grades that included the extra credit points. As an aside, Excel is one of the technological wonders that make my job much more efficient. All I have to do is put in a formula, and voila, final averages are instantly computed. And about the netiquette aspect, I’m thankful to work for an institution who takes writing across the curriculum very seriously. I’m also thankful to have a dean who pointed that out to the young man.

Because of this unfortunate incident, I’ve decided to do away with extra credit. Some students just do not understand that extra credit is just that: extra after everything else is done. Nor do they understand that working hard does not constitute a good grade. The truth is that people work hard every day of their lives, and some of them barely eke out a living.

Just curious. How do some of you other teachers handle the extra credit issue?

i need 2 c u

I recently submitted a story to a magazine. Before I hit “Send,” I read every guideline that the website gave, and I followed them to the letter. I was a little annoyed that I had to save my document as a .doc file instead of .docx, but the instructions clearly stated that failure to do so would toss the writer’s story right out of the running. I sighed and did it their way. There were several other strict guidelines, but that was the only one I had a challenge with, mainly because I didn’t know how to do it. Still, I didn’t want the story returned unread so I did it their way.

This little experience made me think of my students and a question that I’ve been wrestling with. How much responsibility does a teacher have to identify errors in student writing, especially when that teacher’s field is psychology or history or biology? Often students become angry and frustrated and ask, “Is this an English class???” No, definitely not. At the same time, every teacher worth her salt should point out glaring errors, not to embarrass but to help. Isn’t part of our job preparing students for the future?

Almost daily I receive emails that look more like text messages than emails. They’re often without salutation or closing, and if not for the student’s email address, I wouldn’t know who the sender was. Sometimes I still can’t figure out who the message is from. I’m saving one from “mysticwolf” in the hopes that he will at some point identify himself. Often, I’s aren’t capitalized, words are misspelled and/or abbreviated, grammar is pathetic, and punctuation is either incorrect or missing. “i need 2 c u” is not an uncommon request.

Here’s part of an email that I found particularly disturbing. “I wanted to know is their anyway i can get an extiniction on my test 3  and my paper until nov 13 or 14 . death decided to visit my door twice in one day my aunt past on thurssday its not that i didnt study or did do a rough draft on my paper already its just that so much is going on all at once and i cant really focuse right now and I want have the time to do it….”

What would you have done? I replied with one word: “Okay.” I cut the student some slack, figuring that she was experiencing extreme stress. But the problem is that I’m seeing this type of message more and more frequently, and I’m not sure how to address it. A colleague said she was considering putting a condition on the reading of emails. If they aren’t written in Standard English, she isn’t going to read them.  I’m thinking of sending a similar statement to my students…for their own good.

What do you think? Should psychology instructors give a hoot about English skills? Should they insist that students pay attention to grammar, punctuation, and spelling?

For Tilara

My friend Tilara thinks I’m calm and in control. She also thinks that I have nothing to be stressed out about. Ha Ha. As I wrote yesterday’s post, I couldn’t help but recall a few of the events that took place at the end of the Spring semester, events that tried my soul and tested my mettle.

These are happenings that you’ll have to visualize to make them more meaningful. I worked on my seven classes pretty much off and on during Spring break in April. “Inch by inch, life’s a cinch” is one of my mottoes. Another one is “yard by yard, life is hard.” In other words, it would’ve been crazy for me to squander the whole week sleeping late, reading for pleasure, and catching up on my movie viewing. I worked on my classes a little every day.  And I went to a circus too.

When I got home from Myrtle Beach, I realized that I’d left my tiny green flash drive there. No problem, I thought. I’d get my daughter Elizabeth to send it to me. The problem was that Elizabeth wasn’t planning to go to Myrtle Beach that week. She was working. By the time she could’ve retrieved it and sent it by mail, the week would be up. So I bribed her to scoot down, retrieve the flash drive, and send the files as attachments. It was relatively easy since all were in one folder, all except for one, that is. She never did locate that one so I recreated it, a time consuming task.

Days went by, and I saved additional grades and attendance on my trusty pink laptop. Then one day I got the bright idea that it’d be more efficient to save everything on a flash drive so I went to the book store and bought a brand new one with tons of memory. Grades were due on a Thursday at noon, and I worked all day Wednesday reading and recording assignment and journal grades and inserting exam grades in the seven Excel documents on the new flash drive. Before leaving campus late that afternoon, I decided to print copies of each class roster just in case….

Later that evening I realized that the flash drive was missing from my purse. No problem, I thought. It must be in my book bag. Not so. When I rummaged through it bright and early the next morning, there was no shiny gold flash drive anywhere. It wasn’t under the car seat, in my jacket pocket, or in the computer I’d been working on at the outreach campus the day before.

“No problem, no problem, no problem,” I kept telling myself. After all, I had the hard copies of all rosters and using them as a guide, I could simply fill in the missing blanks of the rosters on the pink lap top. Are you confused already? It seems like an incredulous tale, doesn’t it? But it’s  true…and was downright stressful. This is a good place to add that although I have occasionally misplaced flash drives and other electronic devices, none have ever permanently disappeared. I even called the Mexican restaurant where we had eaten the Wednesday evening after the marathon day of entering grades. I thought perhaps it had fallen out of my pants pocket. No such luck. “Lo siento,” I heard.

Before I left main campus last week, I bought a new flash drive, and I’m guarding it with my life. In some ways, the teaching profession is more efficient in this technological era, and in other ways it’s more challenging. During the final week of exams, the week that culminated in the largest graduation the college has ever had, I developed some unpleasant symptoms: a couple of scaly red blothes on my face, a stomach virus, and an all-over malaise.

Today I’m singing and humming and laughing again.  My husband says it’s good to have me back.

Being a Successful Student

How’d it happen so quickly? Seems like yesterday my colleagues and students were excitedly anticipating Spring Break, and today the summer semester began! Graduation was week before last. What happened to April? Where was the down time?

I’m ready for my classes, and I hope my students are too. By that, I mean that I’m always going to be prepared for class, and that unless some really serious unseen emergency arises I’ll be there. The implied message is that I expect my students to do the same. When class meets each day, I expect for them to have read the material and to be prepared to join in a class discussion. I also expect them to attend every class period. (lot of expecting in that paragraph)

Last week, the faculty attended a financial aid workshop that was quite informative and interesting. It was kind of amusing too. The presenter had a great sense of humor and somehow managed to infuse a somewhat boring topic with enthusiasm and energy. What first caught my attention is that she said at some point taxpayers have a right for people to earn their degrees and start contributing to the tax base.

She then talked about withdrawal deadlines and procedures and said that she and her staff told students that they needed to see their instructor(s) if they need to withdraw. Some students seem a little perturbed at this and ask where they can find the instructor. This is the part I especially liked: The presenter said that she tells the student something like (paraphrasing here), “Go the classroom where the class is being held. I can guarantee you that that’s where your instructor will be at least twice per week.” The reason I liked that statement so much is because IT’S TRUE and because there’s a lesson inherent in it. To be successful in life, people need to be where they’re supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there and doing what they’re supposed to be doing. 

I think one of the reasons I enjoy teaching so much is that there are always new beginnings. There’s always the chance to start afresh with a new group of people with academic and career goals in mind. I want them to do well and have been thinking of some things they need to know/do to make it happen. In no particular order, here’s a list of things I want my students to know, and hey, it’s not just me. These are standard guidelines for every student in every class in America. Hmmm. That could be an overstatement since I haven’t attended every single class or interviewed all teachers. I am, however, basing my list on a pretty representative sample.

1. Attend all classes and be prepared ahead of time.
2. Forget excuses.
3. Submit your work in a timely manner. All courses have calendars; check them often.
4. Follow instructions for written assignments. If the instructions call for double spacing, don’t say that your computer automatically puts in a space and a half. If your instructor asks for APA formatting, don’t argue that your English instructor said MLA was okay for every course.
5. Grammar, punctuation, and spelling are important.
6. Don’t plagiarize. If you’re confused about exactly what this means, ask your teacher.
7. Be prepared to work hard. If college were easy, every Tom, Dick, and Harry would have a degree. So would every Mary, Lucretia, and Jennifer.
8. Don’t cheat. While that seems obvious, I’m amazed at the number of students who admit to it.  Last semester, one of my students (a good one who ended up with a B) admitted that he wrote some information for a biology course on his desk/table. He used a pencil so that he could easily erase it when the test was over. “HUH???” I asked. “Oh, don’t worry, Mrs. Bowers. I’d never do that in your class.” Yeah, right.
9. Show respect to your teachers. It’s a two-way street, and you can be assured that the instructors who work where I do are going to respect you. They sincerely want you to do well and will do everything in their power and within their conscience to make it happen.  
10. When writing emails, use standard English and follow email etiquette (netiquette). For starters, use our names instead of saying, “Hey” and avoid abbreviations like 4 for four and r for are. That stuff drives us crazy!
11. Check your instructor’s policy on make-up tests. Most are pretty stringent and require documentation.
12. Stop complaining and be grateful that you live in America where an education is available to all who are willing to pay the price.

Reading over those 12 items makes me want to say more, to elaborate on them with examples and anecdotes. That’s it for today, though. I need to check my online courses to see if anyone has followed the instruction to shoot me an introductory email.

Spring Break?

 

While I can’t say that teaching is a 24/7 job, it’s pretty close. We sleep, of course, but there have been times when I’ve awakened in the middle of a dream about a student, a concept, or a situation. Earlier today I was chuckling about a question asked by one of my younger students.

“Miz Bowers,” she said, frowning, “What’s wrong with your book?”

“What do you mean, Brittany?” I asked.

“It’s so messed up,” she replied.

I took a look at her book, clean and unused in appearance and said, “Sweetie, this is what you call a used book!”

And well, here it is Sunday afternoon, and I’m getting ready for tomorrow. Part of my preparation is psychological, and part of it is the nitty-gritty stuff, the reading and grading and planning. I love it! I just wonder why people don’t realize that teachers spend as much time preparing for class and recovering from it as they do in class. Everyone knows that lawyers do as much outside of the courtroom as inside of it and that ministers do a lot more than preach for 30 minutes on Sunday morning.

Why am I thinking of all this? Probably because although I’ve been on Spring Break this past week, there were very few hours when I didn’t have some sort of work related scenario on my mind. One morning I spent three hours grading drop box assignments for HGTC. On at least three occasions I jumped into the discussion boards of my internet classes, not because I’m a fanatic but because postponing this type of work will land a teacher in trouble. There’ll be double or triple the posts to read and respond to later!

I’m not alone in this. My young friend Melissa spent quite a few  hours grading essays and felt relieved that she had ample time to get it done. I think all of my English teacher colleagues spent some time reading short stories, poetry, or novels; some of them probably did some writing of their own. As for yours truly, I re-read parts of Breakthrough: How the 10 Greatest Discoveries in Medicine Saved Millions and Changed Our View of the World  by Jon Queijo.

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter Nine, the chapter about medicines for madness, sadness, and fear: “Both facts highlight a nasty little secret about mental illness: We still don’t know exactly what it is, what causes it, how to diagnose and classify it, or the best way to treat it….descriptive symptoms can be subjective, imprecise, and not exclusive to any one disorder. Even the DSM-IV-all 943 pages of it-states that ‘It must be admitted that no definition adequately specifies precise boundaries for the concept of mental disorder.’” I also learned that depression now ranks as the fourth most serious disease in the world and that in another 20 years it will be in the second place, after HIV/AIDS. Wow!

I read Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography and have highlighted lots of it to share with a human relations course that I teach online. Truthfully, I listened to most of this book on my Kindle as I drove to and from various destinations, but still, I learned much valuable information. Before you start thinking, “What a nerd,” just know that most teachers do the same thing: read and think and devise new ways to share the information with their students. 

Teachers are always learning new things, always questing after information to improve their performance, and always rethinking methodology. At least that’s true for the ones I have the privilege of working with.  We work outside of the classroom as much as inside of it.

Crabby Teachers

In one of my classes last week we were discussing intelligence. What is it? Is it more the product of nature or nurture? Are there things in the environment that can enhance one’s intellectual abilities? If so, what are they? One of the bulleted items on power point was “Educational Experiences,” and when I asked the class to share something they thought might fit that description, I got several examples, none of which I was looking for. Truly, I was surprised and a little bothered.

I had expected the students to say “standard” things that I’ve heard a thousand times before, things like reading to a child, taking him to a zoo, or actually engaging him in a two-way conversation . These students, however, interpreted educational experiences to be only those that took place inside of a school, specifically a classroom. I’m sorry to report that none of their examples were uplifting ones.

One young woman told of a teacher hitting her in the stomach with a ruler because she wouldn’t stop talking. Another shared how one of her teachers laughed at her when she couldn’t solve a math problem on the board, making her cry and instilling a lifelong fear of math and the teachers who teach it. Still another confessed that only now has he developed enough confidence to speak up in class IF called on. Otherwise, he keeps quiet.  His third grade teacher seemed to have selected him as her target for particularly scathing remarks that year.

Why don’t teachers like the ones who taught these students at an earlier time of their lives just pack their book bags and go home?????  There surely comes a moment when you know, “Uh oh, this is not for me,” and when that happens, walk out. Don’t wait for the bell to ring or the grading period to end. Just go. There are enough mean spirited people in the world without you adding to the problem.

My students’ comments reminded me of something I recently read in Same Kind of Different as Me.  Ron Hall, co-author and millionaire, is giving an account of an inglorious moment that remains seared on his “brain like the brand on a longhorn steer.”  The year was 1952, and in those days, all schoolchildren had to bring urine samples to school, which public health workers would then screen for diseases. As a second grader at Riverside Elementary in Fort Worth, Texas, he took his Dixie cup directly to Miss Poe, “the meanest and ugliest teacher I ever had,” instead of to the school nurse. Big mistake!

In Ron’s words, “My error sent her into a hissy fit so well-developed you’d have thought I’d poured my sample directly into the coffee cup on her desk. To punish me, she frog-marched me and the whole second-grade class out to the playground like a drill sergeant, and clapped us to attention.”

“Class, I have an announcement,” she rasped, her smoke-infected voice screeching like bad brake on an 18-wheller. “Ronnie Hall will not be participating in recess today. Because he was stupid enough to bring his Dixie cup to the classroom instead of the nurse’s office, he will spend the next thirty minutes with his nose in a circle.”

It gets worse. “Miss Poe then produced a fresh stick of chalk and scrawled on the redbrick school wall a circle approximately three inches above the spot where my nose would touch if I stood on flat fee. Humiliated, I slunk forward, hiked up on tiptoes, and stuck my nose on the wall. After five minutes, my eyes crossed and I had to close them, remembering that my mama had warned me never to look cross-eyed or they could get locked up that way. After fifteen minutes, my toes and calves cramped fiercely, and after twenty minutes, my tears washed the bottom half of Miss Poe’s circle right off the wall. With the strain of loathing peculiar to a child shamed, I hated Miss Poe for that. And as I grew older, I wished I could send her a message that I wasn’t stupid.”

To all of the Miss Poes in the classrooms of America, go home. You’re hurting our children and making the rest of us look bad! Ron Hall is an exceptional person, smart and accomplished. He had the confidence and social skills to become a successful adult despite a crabby, bad-tempered teacher. Not all children are so fortunate. Go home Miss Poe.

The Other Side of the Lectern

Any decent teacher is going to be an advocate of lifelong learning. That might sound like a strong statement, but I believe it to be true. As the saying goes, “When you stop getting better, pretty soon you stop being good.”

So what have I learned lately? I’ve learned quite a bit of useful information to help me build and teach my online courses, AND I’ve been reminded of what it’s like to be a student. As a consequence, lately I’ve been more mindful of the anxiety my students face when taking tests and submitting papers. Since I can now empathize with their angst, I can do my part to better prepare them for tests.

At the college where I’m employed, most of the faculty have been involved in training that better equips them to teach online courses. The system we use is called Desire2Learn, or D2L, and its capabilities are awesome. One of the things I really like is that the server seems to have an indefinite amount of storage space. In the past, we used WebCT, and although I like that system too, we were limited in just how much information we could store on the server.

Time and space prevent me from extolling all the virtues of D2L, so I’ll just concentrate on two of the most important “teaching tips” I picked up from taking the certification course. Truthfully, I already knew these things, but I needed to be reminded of them. The number one “tip” is that teachers need to make their expectations abundantly clear. Students shouldn’t have to guess whether certain material is important or not. And they shouldn’t have to wonder about how their work is going to be assessed.  All of that should be clearly spelled out, either in a rubric or in crystal clear, instructions. Our instructor did an excellent job of this.

The number two thing is that teachers need to remember how it is to be on the other side of the lectern, so to speak, especially when it’s time to take a test. I took three unit tests and a final during this course, and each time I opened a test, my heart began beating faster, and by the time I clicked “Submit,” my chest was tight. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but I did feel a bit of anxiety, especially when I saw the question, “Are you sure you’re ready to submit your quiz?”

I’ve been teaching online classes for over a decade, and we’ve been using D2L for nearly two, so it’s not as though this was totally new material. Still, I was nervous. It’s not as though I had to excel in this to keep my job. Still, I felt a bit of trepidation. When I think of how my students who are studying brand new subjects must feel, I know they must experience much more pressure.

So how am I going to put my newfound knowledge into practice? For starters, tonight I spent 15 minutes reviewing before the test. Hoping to alleviate their anxiety, I also told the students to let me know if they were confused over a question.  I’m not sure whether I’m on the right track or not. Some might argue that college students don’t need a review, and I must admit that it felt a little weird doing it. But hey, I was recently a student, and until that “fresh” feeling fades, I’m going to do whatever it takes (within reason) to lessen the students’ anxiety and enhance their confidence.