A Teacher Suggests Retention Activities Based on 39 Years Before the Board

Teaching for Retention, Part 2
Dan Riordan
April 2008

In another article I listed a number of attitudes and actions that teachers can follow to create classes that positively affect retention. That article was based on and phrased in the parlance of research. This article is based on and phrased in the experiences of 39 years in the classroom.

Creating a retention-positive class:

1. The basic attitude is “I care that you learn.” Make that attitude permeate your work.
   
2. The basic activity is “Set up relationships.” The key one is developing the I care attitude between you and students. But develop a meaningful one between students.
   
3. The basic classroom must be “safe.”
   

What should, or shouldn’t, you do in the “I care, We relate, Safe class”?

• Learn students’ names and use them respectfully.
  
• Explain who you are, what your standards are, and how you see this class fitting in, if not to their lives, at least with the rest of their college courses.
  
• Don’t belittle (and be aware that there are quite a few ways to belittle) them for what they don’t know or how they act, particularly how they act at question/discussion time. Get curious. Figure out why they are reticent.
  
• Teach “Courageous Curiosity.” Assume that very probably your students only ask questions to find out what they need to know in order to succeed in your class. Think for a minute about how you want to know what you have to do to get tenure, get promoted, get a good evaluation. They are like you. If answering questions is important, figure out a professional, I-care-about-you way to tell them that.
  
• More on Courageous Curiosity: Most students (actually most people) are not going to speak out in a class of fifty. Neither are you. Think about question sessions after a speaker. The questions are hard to come by and often are directed at the speaker in order to take issue with or probe the speaker; they aren’t a group dialog. To speak out takes courage; to participate in a group dialog with 25 people is actually a pretty rare event. Students don’t think to put curiosity—“What happens if we try…?” “Why would that be true?” Etc.—to work, and, if they do, they won’t bring it up in a class of 50. You need to teach them how.
  
• Don’t play “50 questions.” If you ask and ask and ask and you get that awful silence, use another tactic. Make them write answers and hand in what they wrote and grade the answers. Or go back to lecturing.
  
• Quit talking to just two people. If everyone just sits there and you call repeatedly on one or two students, something is "off." People in the class can easily think “Why should I talk when whoever will be sure to answer? Beisdes I am neither courageous or curious. And if I am curious, I will keep it to myself.” Use another strategy.
  
• Don’t ask questions you know the answer to. Quit asking fill in the blank questions. Is your discussion session an exploration or a test?
  
• Decide what you mean by a “good discussion” and act accordingly. Is it that 10% talk? 50% talk? Volunteer? Without prompting comment on someone else’s answer? Be serious—how likely is that? If that is what you want, how will you get it? And why do you want it in the first place? Figure out how to make discussions work. More, figure out why you want students to enter them. How is the discussion supposed to help them? What are they supposed to get out of a discussion? Tell them. Be clear about how you see discussions helping them learn. You won’t get better discussions by getting sarcastic, by asking more and more questions, or by leaving the room. If you analyze how and why you are engaging students, you can figure out other strategies that will get the discussion going.
  
• Assign points to what is important. If arriving in class with the reading finished and understood is important, find a way to give points both for being ready or subtract for not being ready. But you have to find a way to do it without being mean or petty. Talk to colleagues. Ask the students. If you don’t want to give points, be careful. You send the message that even though you moan about it, a student won’t lose or gain anything by reading or not. If misspelling is something that makes you annoyed, give points for it. If spelling is a big deal, make it worth lots of points. If you are annoyed but only take off 3-5 points out of 100, the reaction is “Big deal. Twenty spelling mistakes is no worse than two, so who cares?”
  
• If you use groups, they should be more than a bunch of people sitting around talking. Devise a way to find out if the goal for the group was achieved and give points for that.
  
• Don’t trash your students to your colleagues. Be a professional. If things aren’t going right, what can you do about it?
  
• Give meaningful feedback quickly. Explain your comments in enough clarity so that a person can either change or continue to act/think that way. Responding quickly helps set the tone that you care about their learning.
  
• Explain to people what they did well. It is easier to get people to repeat the good, than correct the wrong. And it is a lot easier to accept a correction if it is in the context of “let’s build your learning--you have this done, now work on that.”
  
• Be passionate about your subject. But understand that no doubt you are the person in the room most passionate about it. Students will respond to your passion, though maybe not as if they were at a rock concert or a political rally.
  
• If you use technology, figure out how it works. The ports on your computer and the buttons on the workstations are not medieval instruments of torture. An hour of using the scientific method of working through possibilities will pay enormous dividends. And use the technologist’s mantra—“Test, Test, Re-test” before you perform.
  
• Assume that students have to invest themselves to learn. Some of them know that and act accordingly. Others don’t. Praise the former. Help the latter.
  
• If you use laptops in class, assume that they function as a distraction unless you create specific uses for them. And assume that in any group of people, of any age or level of responsibility, some members will be distracted by them. The students in your class are no different than any other group. You have to take charge of this new dimension of classroom presence. But find a meaningful, I-care-about-your-learning way to do it.

Activities That Teachers Can Use to Enhance Retention

Activities That Teachers Can Use to Enhance Retention
April 2008
UW-Stout Teaching and Learning Center

What teaching attitudes and activities might affect student retention (or 'persistence') at UW-Stout? Essentially all good teaching positively affects retention. Two key concepts are to treat the class as a learning community and to develop relationships that encourage a feeling of being 'safe' in that community. Research done at the Teaching and Learning Center, suggests a number of attitudes and activities.

Background

1. Each classroom should be a "learning community" argues one of the foremost theorists of retention in colleges, Vincent Tinto. Students should be involved in shared learning experiences with their peers and with their teacher. Engagement and active learning are two broad areas that must exist in such a class.
   
2. Six key areas were identified by UW-Stout students during a two-year research project that investigated what they meant by engagement. The six areas are
   

• Relationships. Develop relationships by demonstrating respect and trust. (teacher student, student-student, student instructor)
  
• Empowerment. Make students active participants in the learning process.
  
• Application. Explain how course content relates to students' personal futures; and give “hands on” experiences.
  
• Instructor Passion. The passion of the instructor both for the material and for student learning affects engagement.
  
• Question Asking. Students are more engaged when they feel comfortable asking and answering questions.
  
• Openness. Openness to experience also affects engagement. Students feel more engaged when they perceive that they and their instructors are able to “go with the flow” of whatever occurs in class.
  

3. Students feel safe in class if they feel supported, respected, and encouraged to learn by their instructors, and students want to belong to a community in which the instructor, and by extension, the institution, care about them and their future, proposes Angela Provitera McGlynn, another theorist and author.

Let's translate Tinto, McGlynn and the students' ideas into attitudes and activities

Attitudes

• Work on the relationship aspect of your course. Let students know one another; get to know students by name; be willing to interact in class.
  
• Demonstrate to students that you respect them. This appears to be the most important feature in their being engaged in learning. Insist on it from yourself and your students.
  
• Create a "safe" classroom environment—one in which students feel that they can speak out and can ask questions.
  
• Insist on attendance. Show that you care that students come to class.
  
• Be clear that you believe in students as learners and want them to learn.
  
• Be clear about when you are available and be attentive to students during those times.
  
• Show your passion for your subject.

Activities

• Set high but reasonable standards, and explain them.
  
• Learn students' names.
  
• Tell students what you prefer to be called.
  
• Spell out course learning objectives.
  
• Give appropriate feedback, as quickly as possible.
  
• Develop facilitator or "guide on the side" strategies. These are "active learning" strategies, such as think-pair-share, one-minute papers, requiring small groups to focus on specific questions or issues.
  
• Give students "hands on" experiences.
  
• Find methods that allow students to leap from hearing information to analyzing what they hear.
  
• Add in "reflective learning" exercises to cause students to verbalize what they learned, the process by which they did it, and connections they see to other topics.
  
• Use "interactive lectures." Periodically stop and ask for a one-minute paper, or a small group discussion of a question you pose.
  
• In questioning students, give them time to answer. Find a way to respond to their answer that makes them feel the answer counts, even if it is wrong. One tip is don't ask questions that they know you know the answer to.
  Periodically show how course content relates to students' personal futures.
  
• If possible, give students choices about how they can demonstrate their mastery.

Resources
This list of activities and attitudes that enhance student retention (or, to put it another way, that cause students to want to stay at Stout) was developed

• from research conducted by the UW-Stout Teaching and Learning Center in cooperation with the UW-Stout Office of Budget, Planning and Analysis http://www.uwstout.edu/tlc/engagement.htm
  
• from reviews of scholarly research, including
  
• McGlynn, Angela Provitera. Successful Beginnings for College Teaching. Atwood, 2001).
  
• Starke, Diane. "Professional Development Module on Active Learning" Texas Collaborative for Teaching Excellence. 24 April '08 http://www.texascollaborative.org/activelearning.htm
  
• Tinto, Vincent. "Linking Learning and Leaving: Exploring the Role of the College Classroom in Student Departure" in Reworking the Student Departure Puzzle, ed. John M. Braxton. Vanderbilt U, 2000. 81-94.
  

Activities That Students Can Use to Enhance Retention
April 2008
UW-Stout Teaching and Learning Center

What learning attitudes and activities might affect student retention (or 'persistence') at UW-Stout? Essentially all good learning positively affects retention. The key concept is to develop relationships. Here is what the research shows.

In General

• Get involved. Students should be involved in shared learning experiences with their peers and with their teacher.
• Do your part. Students feel safe in class if they feel supported, respected, and encouraged to learn by their instructors, and by other students. Help out with the "safety quotient" in your class.
• Work on the relationship aspect of your course. Get to know other students; get to know their names; and be willing to interact with them and with the teacher in class. Develop relationships by demonstrating respect and trust. (teacher student, student-student, student instructor)
  Demonstrate to teachers that you respect them. Insist on it from yourself and your student colleagues.
• Create a "safe" classroom environment—react carefully to other students so that they feel that they can speak out and can ask questions.
• Affect the "engagement quotient" in your class. Be are willing to exhibit passion for the material, your learning and others' learning.

You as a Learner

• Be clear that you believe in yourself as a learner and that you want to learn.
• Become an active learner. That means think about the process. Learning starts when you are struck by curiosity or by a problem. Then you investigate and manipulate content, relate to what you already know, and reflect on what you have learned and how you did it.
• Take as much control of your learning as you can. Become an active participant in the learning process, especially in class if the teacher uses active learning strategies.
• Figure out how course content relates to your personal future. If you aren't sure, ask the instructor or your advisor.
• Ask questions. The classroom should be a comfortable place to ask questions and volunteer information.
• Set high but reasonable standards for yourself.
• Reflect on your learning. Keep a journal or a blog. Or just think about it carefully. Verbalize what you learned, the process by which you did it, and connections you see to other topics. Research shows that reflection is a key part of the process of "really learning."
• Find a method that allows you to leap from hearing information to analyzing what you hear. If you don't know how to do that, ask your classmates or your instructor.

You in Class

• Insist on attending. Show that you care by coming to class.
• Learn other students' names, and your instructor's name.
• Tell classmates and the instructor what you prefer to be called.
• Find and think about the course's learning objectives.
• Give appropriate feedback. If the teacher is doing well, or poorly, offer some advice, in a nice way.
• If your teacher uses facilitator or "guide on the side" strategies, get involved with them.
• Research shows that classes run in this fashion help you learn more.
• If you have opportunities for "hands on" experiences, make the most of them.
• If the teacher uses "interactive lectures," get involved with the actions he or she proposes during interruptions in the lecture. This is a common strategy that instructors use to help students grasp the material in more manageable chunks.