Focus on Your Students

Before you begin designing your course, it is helpful to think about your students and ask yourself what might be going on in their lives. What roadblocks may they be facing that you haven't considered? This is especially true during the Covid-19 pandemic. If you have taught this course or similar courses before, you may have noticed moments in your class where you suddenly lose some of your students or their work takes an inexplicable nose dive. Often, taking a moment to consider what might be going on in their lives can help you determine more feasible deadlines and scaffold the coursework into manageable steps that build out over time. This focus on the student as a whole person is a concept that comes straight out of Ignatian pedagogy; the idea that before we can teach effectively, we need to understand the context of our students' lives.

During CDLI's Course Design program, we often do an empathy mapping exercise before we begin creating activities and assignments. You can do something similar by simply focusing on a student who seems to struggle with the course after a promising start and then ask yourself some of the questions below.

Engagement

  • What do you sense is the student's personal engagement with the subject coming into the course? Is it something that they appear to be excited about learning, something central to their field of study? Or do you sense they feel the course is more of a requirement? If so, you may have to explicitly communicate the subject's relevance and your own passion for the subject. (See Tapping into Your Real Course Goals on the next page.)

Confidence

  • What do you sense is the student's confidence level coming into the course? Does the student seem to arrive with confidence in their ability to master the course material? Or do they appear nervous? Maybe they have they attempted this course before and failed. On the other hand, you may sense that they are overconfident and not prepared for the amount of work they will have to do. Clear expectations and open office hours could go a long way in either case.
  • What about the student's ability to ask questions? Do you sense the student might be too shy to ask for help when needed? Are there any language barriers? Is it possible they would be more comfortable in smaller group settings?
  • What about their comfort with technology, (especially any new technologies you are introducing)? Could you pair up people to help each other or include help forums in your course?

Resources

  • Does the student have stable internet and a quiet, private place to work? Or are they sharing space with other people and with competing claims for internet bandwidth? These are issues you might be able to explore in an early course survey.

Competing Commitments

  • Do you sense that the student is taking a reasonable course load with few other commitments beyond school? Or could they be trying to balance multiple obligations that include family and jobs? You might consider surveying the students to find out the rhythm of their weekly workload and—if you are requiring group work—put students with similar schedules into the same group.

Location

  • Are there students in different time zones? If so, is there a a way you might set up work groups for students in similar time zones?