Quick Tips – Final Thought on First Day Preparations

I realize two weeks ago, I said I would provide a two-part series of tips to help with the first day of the course. We discussed faculty-student engagement, student-to-student engagement, and how to get to know your students. However, we have not discussed ideas on what to actually do on the first day of the class.

As the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University reminds us,

“What happens between you and your students in your classroom or lecture hall depends largely on what you want to happen. How you treat each other and how you and your students feel about being in that place with each other is modeled and influenced by you.”–From the chapter “Classroom Contracts–Roles, Rules, and Expectations” in David W. Champagne’s The Intelligent Professor’s Guide to Teaching https://iucat.iu.edu/catalog/966238

Some faculty cover the syllabus with the students and then quiz them over the points in the syllabus. While it is important that students learn the course expectations and classroom policies (especially as we continue combat Covid), the first day is also an opportunity to provide students with insights on of your teaching style, an active experience how the course is structured, and a clear roadmap for what you aim to cover/help them accomplish during the semester.

Our CITL agrees: Set the tone by engaging students the way you intend to throughout the semester; that is, if you expect to engage actively in class, do that on the first day–telling them about how they will be active learners is counterproductive. In other words, let them practice learning the way they will throughout the semester. (see also group work, team-based learning, student response systems, lecturing, discussion techniques)

A few great activities that come from Carnegie Mellon include:

• Directed reading-thinking activity. Lyons et al. (2003, p. 87) suggest the following exercise:
  1. On your own, list everything you can think of that might be in a book entitled [your textbook, or the name of the course if you don’t have a textbook].
  2. Get with a partner, share your ideas, and then put the ideas you both generated for step 1 into categories.
  3. Give each category a name.
  4. Get with another pair and together combine your ideas. Then arrange the categories as a table of contents for this book and write it on the chart paper each group has been given.This activity gets students talking to each other, makes them realize they bring relevant knowledge to bear, and it makes them think about a possible overarching structure for that knowledge. If that structure is appropriate, you can capitalize on that, otherwise this exercise will expose some of the misconceptions students possess, giving you a chance to correct them. The activity typically takes about half an hour.
• Collect data from the students about issues related to course content. This exercise gives you knowledge about the students and is relevant in social science courses that involve research. A statistics instructor always collects data on the first day and uses the survey and the students’ responses to illustrate points about survey sampling.
• Have students generate hypothesis about a typical problem in your course. This exercise can be used to foreshadow different positions and camps in your discipline. When appropriate, you can push the students to think about how they would test their hypotheses, getting deeper into methods of inquiry appropriate for the discipline.
• Connect course content to current events. Bring in newspaper or magazine clips that relate to your course. Whenever you can connect your field to current events, or pop culture, or student interests, you demonstrate relevance, which increases student motivation.
• Common sense inventory. Nilson (2003; we have a newer version in our library: https://iucat.iu.edu/catalog/16660002 ) describes a “Common Sense Inventory” where students need to determine whether 15 statements related to the course content are true or false (e.g., in a social psychology course, “Suicide is more likely among women than men,” or “Over half of all marriages occur between persons who live within 20 blocks of each other”). After paired or small group discussions, you can reveal the right answer. This works particularly well in courses where students bring in a lot of misconceptions (e.g., Introductory Physics).

Lastly, One Way to Show Students You Care — and Why You Might Want to Try It  demonstrates how one instructor encourages her students to reach out: “When life happens … send me an email.”  The article discusses what level of engagement should faculty be prepared to provide students. It is an interesting read and encourages thoughtful consideration of your comfort levels when it comes to engagement.