Blog Entry #6

The readings for this week were chapter 7 (One-on-One Interaction with Students) in First Day to Final Grade, and chapter 14 (Dealing with Student Problems and Problem Students (There's Almost Always at Least One!)) in McKeachie's Teaching Tips. There were several aspects of this week's readings that were interesting and could be implemented in my own teaching.

On page 111 of First Day to Final Grade, Curzan and Damour emphasize that it is important to keep email records. Although they do not go into much depth regarding why this is important, I assume it is because email records provide evidence of communications between the instructor and students. For example, consider a student who asks for a time extension on an assignment via email. The instructor replies, granting the student two extra days. The student then turns in the assignment one week later and thanks the instructor for the time extension. Based on the email communication, the instructor can easily justify not accepting the late assignment. Personally, I delete emails as soon as possible. This allows me to find important email correspondences more quickly. Considering the advice of Curzan and Damour, it may be useful to keep emails for a duration of time.

Also on page 111, Curzan and Damour discuss attendance problems. One of the recommendations they make is to allow students a certain number of absences without penalty. They suggest that this reduces the liklihood of instructors having to decide whether absences should be excusable or not. I see an important limitation to this strategy. If students are allowed a certain number of absences, they may be especially likely to miss the allowed number of classes (even more so than if no attendance policy were implemented). In psychology, research suggests that anchor values (e.g., allowing up to 5 absences) encourage people to adjust their behavior toward the anchor value. To use an example outside the classroom, consider pricing schemes in marketing. A business may advertise a product as 5 for $20 to encourage people to buy 5 of the item. Each item costs $4 regardless of whether or not it is purchased in bulk, but research indicates that simply providing these anchor values encourages consumers to buy more of the product. I do not plan to implement an attendance policy in my own course. However, I will seek other ways of motivating students to attend class. For example, I may remind students that not all test material comes from the textbook.

On page 172 of McKeachie's Teaching Tips, McKeachie states "...before focusing on changing the student's behavior, take a few moments to look at what you are doing that might be related to the student's behavior." If one spends most their time with instructors, they will hear lots of stories about what is wrong with students. If one spends most their time with students, they will hear lots of stories about what is wrong with instructors. Both students and instructors can cause problems. I agree with McKeachie that instructors should consider both the behavior of students and their own behavior when attempting to solve problems.

Additional resources:

Encouraging attendance

Managing conflict between instructors and students