Hi On Thu, 1 Nov 2001, Payam Heidary wrote: > My experiences have not been similar to yours. You say > that you give very clear and specific instructions and > that you find students following them. This is NOT the > case with my students. You may have upper division or > graduate students who have learned their lessons > through more experience but if you teach freshman and > sophomores like I do then I am certain you will not > have the same experiences.
But then instructors also need to temper their expectations for these students. Students at lower levels do not need to learn everything all at once; they will go on to be students at higher levels, where they can learn more. Each course is part of a whole, and instructors just need to move people along to that final end point, not get them there all at once. Priorize what they get in your course, and leave the rest for later, or for never is some trivial cases. Remember too that many students at the lower level will never in their lives be submitting an APA paper, so emphasis on the more global (and important) aspects of writing (a la Don's comment) is more beneficial. I also think that apathy > has a lot to do with it because if students did not > understand anything but cared enough to want to > understand then you would expect them to seek more > assistance such as coming to office hours, attending > the tutoring and writing center on campus, etc. But > clearly most students do not do this. Just go to the > tutoring and writing center on your campus and ask > them how many students they actually assist per day > and how many come in for help and compare that to the > number of students needing help and you will see what > I mean. You cannot be all things to all people. That is the road to depression, burn-out, and any number of other negative consequences. Focus first on ensuring that you are being realistic about your expectations for the class, then that you are doing everything that you think is appropriate for students at that level (e.g., outlines or not). Then try to engage ever more of the students, perhaps by emphasizing how aspects of what you are teaching are of general benefit (e.g., writing clearly, learning to apply some writing guidelines [which might differ in other areas that they ultimately end up in]), or by targetting certain students who appear to be trying, but are having difficulty getting it. With the rest, certainly experiment with different sorts of persuasion and pedagogical aids, but recognize that there are undoubtedly limits to what you can do, other than teaching them that there are consequences for their actions (or lack thereof), namely grades and perhaps even failure. Best wishes Jim ============================================================================ James M. Clark (204) 786-9757 Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax University of Winnipeg 4L05D Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 [EMAIL PROTECTED] CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark ============================================================================ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
