As an instructor, you know better than anyone that good class attendance is essential for students’ success. Convincing students to attend class, however, is not always easy. Here are a few strategies for improving student attendance:
Giving Unannounced Quizzes
Administer a few (3 – 5) unannounced quizzes throughout the semester and make them worth a potion of your students’ overall grade. This will prevent students from missing class — they won’t want to miss out on the quiz grade. Make it clear that these quizzes cannot be made up if a student is absent.
Contact Students Who are Absent
If you have students who are missing class more than once in a while, send them an email. Express concern about their poor attendance, and encourage them to attend more often in order to improve their performance. Knowing that you’re aware of their absence is often enough to drive them back to class.
Don’t Post Handouts Online
Pass out handouts that explain helpful concepts, but don’t post them online. This way, students must attend class in order to obtain this vital information.
Keep Class Interesting and Morale High
If students like attending class, they’ll keep coming. Almost any topic can be made more interesting by including discussions in classes and making an effort to relate the concepts to daily life and real world situations.
Once an office staple, PowerPoint has gained new respect in the classroom. More instructors are incorporating it into their lesson plans because lectures can quickly be updated and additional multi-media features like video, images and audio can easilybe added.
Students are much more sophisticated than in the past due to rapidly changing technology. No longer are they satisfied to learn by rote. They want and expect to be challenged and engaged, therefore, when teaching with PowerPoint, it is paramount that PowerPoint lesson plans be carefully thought out.
Getting students interested in a lecture from the opening sentence can easily be achieved using a PowerPoint presentation. Including highlights of the lecture at the beginning gives students a visual aid as to what they will be learning. Building off that by asking open ended questions allow students’ prior knowledge to be gauged and lesson plans adjusted.
The body of the lecture should be broken down into short 10-15 minute segments. Often instructors get so wrapped up in what they are teaching that they forget this important tip. Remember to design a PowerPoint presentation to include active learning strategies so everyone can take a break and redirect their focus.
When teaching with PowerPoint, the conclusion is just as important as the beginning. Determine how effective the lecture was by including a slide requesting students write down what they felt was unclear or hard to understand.
For additional information on adding PowerPoint in your classroom, please contact Labyrinth Learning today.
Remember The Jetsons? As kids, we watched The Jetsons in delight, looking forward to the days when flying cars and meals-in-an-instant would be the norm. Well, some of the Jetsonian technologies have become reality – like microwave dinners – but others have yet to come to fruition. The same is true for predictions made regarding technology in education.
Instant travel. Back in 1912, an Iowa newspaper predicted that the distance required to transport students to school would be eliminated via pneumatic tube shuttles, monorails, and gyroscope cars. Alas, the mileage from students’ houses to school has remained the same. The only improvement is the speed and fuel efficiency of school buses.
Radio Books. During the 1920s radios became a mainstay of American entertainment. Thus, it didn’t require a stretch of the imagination to think students would all be connected to radio books in the future. Granted, these predictions were somewhat accurate in the sense that audio books are the preferred method of reading for students with vision impairment, as well as those who are predominantly auditory learners.
T.V. Teachers. By the late-30s, forward thinking educators imagined a world where teachers were no longer necessary in the classroom. Instead, students would watch and listen to lectures via the television. Instead, computers have dominated the scene and online learning is more popular than every before.
Contact Labyrinth Learning to stay in touch with real-life advancements of technology in education.