Faculty Focus

HIGHER ED TEACHING STRATEGIES FROM MAGNA PUBLICATIONS

student success

Footnote, Endnote, Thank-you Notes

Footnote, Endnote, Thank-you Notes

Thank-you notes make people happy. For as much joy as they give me, I don’t send them enough. In fact, I think writing thank-you notes is a dying art. They’re overlooked forms of positive closure. Gratitude on its own is powerful, and when it’s exchanged, it feels amazing. After I thought about what notes of gratitude could accomplish, I started emailing thank-you notes to my students, waiting until well after the semester for the most impact.

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Setting Students Up for Success

There’s an assumption that students arrive at college with some idea of how to study. They have, after all, completed four years of high school prior to their arrival, earning a seat in a college classroom.

But college is different. And we all know what happens when we assume.

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Three Tools for Supporting Student Success

One of the three key tenets of metacognitive engagement in the classroom is teaching students heuristic strategies specific to the subject matter (Pintrich, 2002; Bembenutty, 2009). The other two are teaching students when to use the strategies and how to self-assess the successful use of those strategies. When considering critical thinking classes, this might involve teaching specific problem solving strategies, like the difference between permutations and combinations, as well as when each should be applied. However, other types of strategies could be beneficial, such as templates for assignments, video instructions, and detailed rubrics for self-assessment.

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A Data-Driven Approach to Student Retention and Success

Higher education institutions generate a wealth of data that can be used to improve student success, but often the volume of data and lack of analysis prevent this data from having the impact it could have. “I think it’s hard for the general faculty population or administrator population to really have a handle on the data that is really driving decisions,” says Margaret Martin, Title III director and sociology professor at Eastern Connecticut State University. “They don’t get a chance to see it or they just get very infrequent information about it. So there may be too much data, but it’s often not communicated effectively to people in ways that are both understandable and useful to them.”

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