Recently I had students in a class I’m teaching fill out some informal surveys about the course — what they’ve liked and not liked, what they found difficult or interesting, what they would change, how they would compare our class to others, etc. As I was reading through them I came across several things that I realized would ahve been great to know about a couple months ago, things that no one ever mentioned in class but were close to universally agreed upon.
I’m thinking that if I use a blog in the future I will try to include a component for general comment on the class, hopefully making anonymous comment possible, so that I don’t get to the end of the semester before finding out about details of how students are experiencing the class. It’s always a humbling reminder to discover things that, despite all your best intentions, you as a teacher had been blind to for three months, sometimes things that would have been really easy to address or adjust along the way. Even when as a teacher you try conscientiously to be attentive to what students are thinking a challenge remains because students are often to hesitant to say say something. I’m hoping maybe somehow a class blog could help to cultivate a more free-flowing exchange of ideas from the beginning of the semester.
This is intriguing—can you be more specific about the kinds of things the students revealed that surprised you?
When I was as a writing fellow, one of the professors I worked with wrote letters to her class and asked me to do the same. Her first letter of the semester included a syllabus, and talked about her own path in academia, mentioned how she came to be a professor and how she herself struggled with writing. She talked about why she is teaching this particular class, how she hopes it will affect their lives and carrier and how she envisions them learning in this course. She then invited them ( well, required) to write her back , in the form of a letter, and talk about themselves as it relates to the course- their fears, hopes, prior experience. My letter also talked about learning to be a writer, struggling with language and continuing to learn as I approach my dissertation. The students wrote separate letters to me as well.
This was a great start of a semester. This unusual format of the syllabus sparked a lot of interest among students. The letters we both received were really interesting and helped us understand what particular issues the students had to deal with, understand what their experience with writing and the material of the course is. It is important to mention that this was not a writing or English course.
We ended the semester with another letter assignment—this helped us see what worked and what did not work in the course and what the students thought was most helpful or not helpful, what they thought they accomplished this past semester.
I don’t think this would work in a blog. Many letters were very personal and I doubt the students would want their content revealed in such a public way. But it did address what Ryan writes about—helped us understand how students experience this class.
Reply to Agnieszka