Issue link: http://ncumarketing.uberflip.com/i/964632
TEACHING TIPS Strategies to Help At-Risk Students Succeed In recent months, I've noticed that more and more of my students have been struggling with timely assignment submission and producing quality work. In fact, each week approximately 15-20% of my students submit assignments late with a few of those students failing to submit assignments at all. Unfortunately, with a full student load, it can be difficult to give these struggling, or "at-risk," students the extra attention they require. Thus, I'd like to focus my teaching tip on some potential strategies faculty can use to help at-risk students succeed. A student may be considered "at-risk" for many reasons. If we look to NCU's At-Risk Notification form (now located in the University Services Module of NCUOne), it lists many factors that affect a student's ability to perform well in a course: from personal issues, a general lack of responsiveness, timeliness and academic performance challenges to an emergency situation or disability-related issue. I'd like to focus my discussion on those students who are struggling with timely submission and academic performance issues because these issues have been most prevalent amongst students in my courses. The first thing I've noticed is that it isn't as easy to keep track of at-risk students as I thought it would be! I, like many of you, use a spreadsheet to track student information (e.g., due dates, submissions, contact info); however, my current spreadsheet does not contain grades and with a large number of students scattered across a sizeable number of courses it can be difficult to keep track of those students whose performance is beginning to slip. I needed a way to help ensure at-risk students weren't slipping through the cracks -- especially before it's too late to offer support. In order to try and remedy this, I've made some small alterations to my tracking spreadsheet. Specifically, I've added some additional Lisa Teeter, PhD Full-Time Faculty, Department of Psychology columns in order to track whether the student should be identified as at-risk, why they are at-risk, and any follow-up action to be taken. There are many other tracking options available including highlighting at-risk student cells or keeping more detailed information about at-risk students in a separate sheet or tab. I try to take a few moments at the beginning of each week to look for patterns of poor performance (e.g., missed assignments, multiple late assignments, multiple low grades) and track them in my spreadsheet. This slight change in my approach has been helping me to become better at identifying struggling students earlier on so that I can be more proactive in providing assistance. Once I have identified a list of at-risk students that require attention, I've found that it's been a bit easier for me to set aside a small block of time to implement various strategies to reach out to these students on a more consistent basis. Currently, I use a few basic strategies (many of which most faculty likely employ), for example: • Weekly email check-ins – I've set up a few different email templates for weekly check-ins. I have templates for late assignments, missed assignments, general performance improvement, writing skills improvement, and a general progress check-in. When sending these emails, I typically CC the student's Academic and Finance Advisor (AFA) to keep them apprised of the situation. • Delivering feedback via audio or video format – If the student is submitting assignments but struggling with a particular concept or formatting issue, I have been trying to leverage the different feedback options available via NCUOne in order to provide a personal or specialized message. • Synchronous meetings – I often reserve this approach for situations when I've reached out to a