6.1 Understand Your Students

In some cases, the students are coming in with some background in the subject. How do you deal with these students? How can you engage them, get them to learn what they think they already know, and to do this without turning them off or ruining the class for the other students? Part of the puzzle is your own interest and passion for the topic. You need to be able to voice it and express it in speech and action in the class room. If you do not, figure out how to fake it convincingly. Another part is your own expertise and knowledge in the topic. Hopefully, you have had more than a single undergraduate course in the subject and are somewhat of an expert in the topic. Your knowledge and skill must also come across, not as an ego thing, but as someone with depth and breadth that can answer questions, interpret the class text, provide insights beyond the text.

It is important to remember who you are teaching; that is, everyone in your course and not just the top few. You should be careful about picking specific sections of the class to teach to; not just those struggling, not just those with natural skill and ability.

You need to understand the students' perception of success, their objectives, and drivers. You might not agree or teach to these expectations (they might not be well founded), but you still need to understand them and work with them.

General thoughts...

• Be willing to give steps and be patient. Provide a big picture for context and then proceed with the fundamentals. Always remember that what you find easy and obvious might not be so for others.
• Be willing to understand that students have different motivation for different things in the course. It is possible to teach someone how to appreciate the subject even if they don't want to practice it or use it themselves.
• Often, people who have training in something are baffled since they don't see how one can appreciate the topic without having in depth knowledge. Can you appreciate well played music without being a musician? A painting without being an artist? The value of a concept applied in context without being a specialist in that field? The answer is yes.
• It is your job to provide the students with sufficient knowledge in the moment to know what to appreciate and value. Perhaps even enjoy.
• We have found sometimes it is best to start off with the context or situation where the idea will be used, explore the situation, and then introduce the concepts to better understand. This seems to work better for us; instead of presenting the concept out of context to glazed eyeballs trying to guess why you are introducing such a new method or concept.
• Think about the challenges and puzzles that exist in your field. Welcome students as beginners. You need to put them in your shoes for a bit and then you need to be in theirs.
• Remember, you can be explicit in doing this and that you want to make things interesting for all.
• Be sure to indicate where you have simplified the example or context for teaching and every once in a while, bring in a real example.
• You need to explicitly help the beginner see the connection between the classroom examples and the real world.

Some observations about the students in the class…

• Those knowledgeable in the field.
• They have gained the knowledge elsewhere, so you will have to figure out how to keep them passionate about the subject while you are effectively reviewing things for them.
• When answering their questions in the classroom, you may want to give a short version of the answer, suggest they talk to you afterwards, and label the answer as being outside the scope of what will be tested.
• The other students who are less advanced can get concerned because they may not understand the answer at all; if you are writing or sketching something related to the advanced topic, specifically label it as an aside.
• There are those who appear knowledgeable in the field.
• This student has gained the vocabular of the field but doesn't have knowledge in depth. The challenge is trying to separate them from the previous one.
• Getting to know students will help; watching for how much understanding seems to happen when you give the answer.
• You might have to adjust the content and delivery a bit if necessary, but save details for the after class chat/office hour chat.
• Those who are keen but are a novice.
• They will ask lots of questions and it is great to have these students in your class.
• They can help with pacing; their questions will help you to go over particular points again; even if the question seems trivial, it is likely that many others are asking about the same point - students are a few minutes behind you in the classroom, and they are seeing things for the first time.
• Some questions are because a point is harder to grasp for a beginner - things that seem obvious to you are not, or because it was missed.

• If you know there is a key point, don't be afraid to repeat it several times during the lecture; be understanding.
• Sometimes it is good to label something as challenging before you do the repetition; students will know they don't have to grasp something on the first try and they are going to put some extra work into it.
• Note, your entire course should not be labelled as challenging, it either isn't or you need to structure it differently. A course that is constantly challenging is likely to be a poorly designed course.
• You should be willing to break things up into small steps; reflect on a time when you started something absolutely new to you that did not just come to you immediately.
• Think about how many steps were needed and consciously reflect on what needs to be explicitly spelled out. You might be making assumptions which are invalid.
• Be particularly careful to explain notation; often with many years of knowledge in a field you will not even think about the notation you use. This is important if you not including everything and omitting some of the process or specifics.
• If necessary, spend some time on notation, or provide a handy summary to read.
• Over time, you can gradually move from being specific to just verbally putting in the symbol to using as it is done in your practice.
• Sometimes it can help to do an example that is not pre-solved; practice this a bit first before you are in the classroom; the goal is for you to make each step explicit and explain your decision-making process as you go through it.
• We find that the cognitive load of solving, writing, speaking, monitoring classroom slows down solving the problem so steps become more explicit. You might need to think like a good chess player that is still focused on process so that they can explain that to beginner, not like grand master where things are intuitive.
• And, there are those who don't want to be there.
• Some students will hate your course and this can be for many reasons, some or most of which don't have anything with you specifically.
• This can be hard because you don't understand how someone could not like the subject, and they may blame you for their dislike (pesky course critiques rear their head).
• You should not take it personally if it is not about you. You might need a peer review to determine if you are at fault or not.
• You want to focus on making sure that as many students as possible gain a reasonable facility with the subject so that they will be able to practice, comprehend, understand, and be able to apply the ideas; there should be a reason why they are taking the course.
• For these students you will have to focus on the basics; knowing that they will be more grade focused than the average student.
• You are going to give out strategies for using the subject in some useful way that they can relate to, and importantly, you are also going to give out strategies for completing your assessments with a passing grade.
• All students should have the tools to pass your exam (or equivalent) even if they don't find a love for the subject.
• If they hate your course because of the topic, don't be defensive. Believe it or not, some people will hate your subject area. Try to put this in context; think of some topic you disliked when you were a student and re-imagine what it was like, having to learn that material just because it is required. You need to find a way to motivate them.

Further reading

• Popovic, C., and D.A. Green (2012). Understanding Undergraduates: Challenging our preconceptions of student success. Routledge Press.