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Guest Essay

My College Students Are Not OK

By Jonathan Malesic

Mr. Malesic is the author of “ The End of Burnout .” He teaches first-year writing at Southern Methodist University and lives in Dallas.

In my classes last fall, a third of the students were missing nearly every time, and usually not the same third. Students buried their faces in their laptop screens and let my questions hang in the air unanswered. My classes were small, with nowhere to hide, yet some students openly slept through them.

I was teaching writing at two very different universities: one private and wealthy, its lush lawns surrounded by towering fraternity and sorority houses; the other public, with a diverse array of strivers milling about its largely brutalist campus. The problems in my classrooms, though, were the same. Students just weren’t doing what it takes to learn.

By several measures — attendance, late assignments, quality of in-class discussion — they performed worse than any students I had encountered in two decades of teaching. They didn’t even seem to be trying. At the private school, I required individual meetings to discuss their research paper drafts; only six of 14 showed up. Usually, they all do.

I wondered if it was me, if I was washed up. But when I posted about this on Facebook, more than a dozen friends teaching at institutions across the country gave similar reports. Last month, The Chronicle of Higher Education received comments from more than 100 college instructors about their classes. They, too, reported poor attendance, little discussion, missing homework and failed exams.

The pandemic certainly made college more challenging for students, and over the past two years, compassionate faculty members have loosened course structures in response: They have introduced recorded lectures , flexible attendance and deadline policies, and lenient grading. In light of the widely reported mental health crisis on campuses, some students and faculty members are calling for those looser standards and remote options to persist indefinitely, even as vaccines and Covid therapies have made it relatively safe to return to prepandemic norms.

I also feel compassion for my students, but the learning breakdown has convinced me that continuing to relax standards would be a mistake. Looser standards are contributing to the problem, because they make it too easy for students to disengage from classes.

Student disengagement is a problem for everyone, because everyone depends on well-educated people. College prepares students for socially essential careers — including as engineers and nurses — and to be citizens who bring high-level intellectual habits to bear on big societal problems, from climate change to the next political crisis. On a more fundamental level it also prepares many students to be responsible adults: to set goals and figure out what help they need to attain them.

Higher education is now at a turning point. The accommodations for the pandemic can either end or be made permanent. The task won’t be easy, but universities need to help students rebuild their ability to learn. And to do that, everyone involved — students, faculties, administrators and the public at large — must insist on in-person classes and high expectations for fall 2022 and beyond.

In March 2020, essentially all of U.S. higher education went remote overnight. Faculties, course designers and educational technology staffs scrambled to move classes online, developing new techniques on the fly. The changes often entailed a loosening of requirements. A study by Canadian researchers found that nearly half of U.S. faculty members reduced their expectations for the quantity of work in their classes in spring 2020, and nearly a third lowered quality expectations. That made sense in those emergency conditions; it seemed to me that students and faculties just needed to make it through.

That fall, most students were learning at least partly online. Simultaneously, colleges gave undergraduate students more autonomy and flexibility over how they learned, with options to go remote or asynchronous.

Faculty members and students across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where I live, described a widespread breakdown in learning that year. Matthew Fujita, a biology professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, said the results of the first exam in his fall 2020 genetics class, a large lecture course, reflected “the worst performance I’d ever seen on a test.”

Amy Austin, who teaches Spanish at U.T.A., began calling her students her “divine little silent circles” — a reference to Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy” — because she would typically see only their initials in a circle on her computer screen, none of them speaking.

Students’ self-reports track with these observations. A June 2021 survey by Inside Higher Ed found that more than half of students said they learned less that academic year than they did before the pandemic.

There is much evidence that students learn less online than they do in person, in part because online courses demand considerable self-discipline and motivation . And some lessons just don’t translate to a remote format. “You can’t learn how to use a microscope online,” said Melissa Walsh, who teaches biology and environmental science at U.T.A. “You just can’t.”

It’s no surprise, then, that in one of the first studies to examine broad-scale learning outcomes during the pandemic, researchers found that the switch to online learning resulted in more course failures and withdrawals in the Virginia community-college system, even despite more lenient grading. Students nationwide reported a greater willingness to cheat, too.

It’s bad enough that so many students had to take classes through a medium where they don’t do their best. More disconcerting is that when classes returned to mainly in-person in fall 2021, student performance did not bounce back. The problem isn’t only that students learn poorly online. It’s also that when they go through a year or more of remote classes, they develop habits that harm their ability to learn offline, too.

Dr. Austin said the quality of her students’ work had not recovered after the return to campus. On grammar tests, students continued to score lower than they did before the pandemic. Now, she told me, the students in her classroom often met her questions with blank stares. “This is like being online!” she said. That was my experience, too. In my classes, it often seemed as if my students thought they were still on Zoom with their cameras off, as if they had muted themselves.

Many students got out of the habit of coming to class at all. Dr. Walsh estimated that in her biology course for non-majors this spring, just 30 percent to 40 percent of students attended class, and only a handful watched her recorded lectures. The students who don’t attend class are missing out on the best of Dr. Walsh, who recently won a campuswide teaching award.

“What makes me an effective instructor,” she said, “has a lot to do with my personality, how I engage in the classroom, using humor. I’m very animated. I like to walk around the classroom and talk with students.” Doing so is a way not just to get them engaged but also to test their learning and adjust her teaching on the fly. “I’m not able to do that with students who don’t come to the classroom,” she said.

Dr. Walsh added that if students aren’t in the classroom, she can’t recruit them to collaborate with her on research, an invaluable learning experience. She also has little to go on when writing recommendations for medical school.

The problem is bigger than any one professor’s class. It’s hard to insist on in-person attendance when colleagues are demanding flexibility or, as Dr. Walsh noted, when non-tenure-track faculty members like her are evaluated for contract renewal and promotion based on student evaluations. If students expect recorded lectures — even ones they won’t watch — then instructors will feel pressure to provide them.

It’s true that some students thrive with the flexibility and freedom afforded by Covid-era policies. Jeffrey Vancil, a sophomore at the University of Texas at Dallas (where my wife teaches and where I taught last year), said that in his first year, he could study more efficiently by watching lecture recordings on his own schedule and at faster speeds. He didn’t have to waste time moving from building to building. And with the extra time, he could work for political groups and as a volunteer firefighter.

After his classes went mostly in-person, he said, he had to pull back on his extracurriculars, and his grades suffered. The best approach, in his view, would be to “let people choose” how to take their classes, “because we now have the infrastructure in place that we can record lectures and have in-person ones for people who learn best each way,” he said.

Remote and recorded classes can also enable students who work or care for children to fit school into their schedules. Ahlam Atallah, a senior at U.T.A., said that online courses allowed her to take classes while her two children were at home. She also didn’t have to commute to or find parking on the vast suburban campus.

But she found that taking classes at home divided her attention. “You can’t talk about this novel you’re reading when you have a 2-year-old running around, asking, ‘Mom, Mom, can I have a snack?’” Ms. Atallah said. This past academic year, with both children at school in person, she went to nearly all her in-person classes, even those with recorded lectures. In the classroom, she said, “I can give my full attention to the class, to my professor and my fellow students.”

For most students, including those with children, being in person helps them focus and excel. Mr. Vancil told me he had already developed good learning habits by the time he got to college. In my experience, most students haven’t. And so it’s worrying to hear students call for more remote classes and more flexibility. They are asking for conditions in which they are, on average, more likely to fail.

Some instructors are taking on extra work to offer students chances to close the learning gap. Dr. Walsh described her workload as “astronomical, exhausting.” Dr. Austin allowed students to rewrite papers in the past, but she extended the policy to exams. She found that many more students needed to rewrite their assignments. She estimated that grading the rewrites “doubled” her workload. But, she added, “If I didn’t do the rewrites, I’d have more people failing my classes.”

Because it is students whose educations are at stake, they bear much of the responsibility for remaking their ability to learn. But faculty members and administrators need to give students an environment that encourages intellectual habits like curiosity, honesty and participation in a community of inquiry. These habits aren’t only the means to a good education; to a large extent, they are the education.

To build a culture that will foster such habits, colleges might draw lessons from what may seem an unusual source: the University of Dallas, a small Catholic university with a great-books curriculum and a reputation for conservatism . Several of its faculty members told me the nationwide learning breakdown simply wasn’t happening there.

As everywhere else, University of Dallas classes went remote in March 2020. But most were in person again that fall. Returning so quickly was an unconventional move, though one that people at the university said was consistent with the institutional culture. In September 2020, a student wrote in an op-ed in the campus newspaper, “The anticipation of returning to campus this August made me wonder, ‘Is this how Odysseus felt as he returned home after ten years?’”

Anthony Nussmeier, who teaches Italian at the university, praised its response to the pandemic as exhibiting a holistic understanding of care for students, balancing “the immediate health imperative with other imperatives that are no less important: the importance of mental health, the importance of friendship, the importance of physical proximity to other human beings for most of us.”

As a result of the school’s decision, its students didn’t have as much time to develop the habits of disengagement that their peers in Zoom U. did.

Gabriella Capizzi, a junior at the University of Dallas, said the accountability of attending classes in person pushed her to work harder and learn more. In person, Ms. Capizzi said, a positive sense of anxiety motivates her to prepare for class discussion, because some professors cold-call students. “You go in with yourself, and you have a notebook, but you either know it or you don’t,” she said. “There’s a rush of adrenaline when you get something right. You’re actually moving forward and learning.”

Last month at the school, I visited Scott Crider’s Literary Traditions II, a required first-year English course that reads Dante, Milton and Shakespeare. The 16 students — two were absent — sat in a rough circle, their wheeled desks backed up to the walls. No laptops or phones were visible. (Dr. Crider said he prohibits both — a common custom at the university.) Students intently marked up their spiral-bound notebooks and copies of sonnets.

Two students debated the syllabic rhythm in the last two lines of “Paradise Lost.” Others craned their necks to watch their classmates work at the whiteboard. Parsing out poetic meter is not everyone’s idea of a good time, but the students looked anything but bored. They laughed at Dr. Crider’s humor. Just about everyone spoke up, sharing observations, questions and even a complaint about a William Carlos Williams poem. I didn’t want class to end.

To the people I spoke with at the University of Dallas, the personal, relational character of education is inseparable from high intellectual standards. Ms. Capizzi recalled a literature course she took with a professor who was known as a hard grader. She visited his office at least once a week to talk about the material, and even more often when there was a paper due. “Him having a high standard for each of us was good, but then we have the standard for ourselves,” she said. “It’s difficult, but you want it to be difficult, and you want to be a part of it because it’s difficult.”

Ms. Capizzi’s comments echo those of the sociologists Daniel F. Chambliss and Christopher G. Takacs, who in their 2014 book, “ How College Works ,” found that students learn when they’re motivated, and “the strongest motivation to work on basic skills comes from an emotionally based face-to-face relationship with specific other people — for instance, the one-on-one writing tutorial with a respected professor who cares about this student’s work.”

Those relationships are much harder to forge remotely, and students who don’t discover early on that they learn through relationships will never know to seek them out. Even Mr. Vancil, who wishes he could take all his classes remotely, said he learns a great deal from his frequent visits to his professors’ office hours.

Professors must recognize that caring for students means wanting to see them thrive. That entails high expectations and a willingness to help students exceed them. Administrators will need to enact policies that put relationships at the center. That will mean resisting the temptation to expand remote learning, even if students demand it, and ensuring that faculty workloads leave time for individual attention to students.

“Young people are the hope of the world,” Dr. Crider told me. Current students, he added, “are capable of rising to the same standards as before, and we do them a disservice when we presume they’re too mentally ill or too traumatized to function.”

A mantra of teaching, at any level, is “Meet the students where they are.” But if education is built on relationships, then colleges must equally insist students meet their teachers where they are. The classroom, the lab and the office are where we instructors do our best and where a vast majority of students can do their best, too. Our goal is to take students somewhere far beyond where they meet us.

Jonathan Malesic is the author of “ The End of Burnout .” He teaches first-year writing at Southern Methodist University and lives in Dallas.

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9 Ways to Finish Homework in College Even When You Don't Feel Like It

• Student Success

Do you put the “pro” in procrastinate?

In truth, we’ve all experienced how difficult it feels just to start. So we tend to ignore it and focus on something more fun instead. But then, before we realize, a project that at first seemed manageable now appears next to impossible to complete. 

So we go into a deadline-induced panic. 

Even if you think you work well under stress and pressure in college, you probably still feel the overwhelming sense of anxiety that accompanies procrastination, whether or not you meet that looming deadline.

But if you want to break your procrastination habit, you can. It’s fixable. All you need is a solid support system and a few clever productivity tactics to keep your self-discipline and focus in check.

So instead of falling into the frantic last-minute cycle again , use this list of tools and strategies to push ahead and finish what needs to be done.  

1. Play That Music

Music boosts your energy and keeps you alert. So if you are distracted by the slightest of sounds in a usually quiet atmosphere, music can drown out any spontaneous interruptions. It also has a powerful effect on your mood and recall. When you select the right song to play while studying, writing a paper or posting in the discussion board, the tune can trigger your memory.

2. Find a Study Buddy

If you find it difficult to sit down and create a study guide for your next exam, team up with a few classmates to draft a master study guide. Assign each person a section to work on. Perhaps one of your teammates has a better understanding of the material in a specific section and can help you better grasp the concepts. Then, combine everyone’s work for a complete and comprehensive guide.  

3. Grab Your Phone

Use your smartphone to your advantage. Make use of those awkward segments of time throughout the day when you may have a 10-minute opening. Waiting for your kid to finish soccer practice? Have a couple minutes before your meeting starts? Study anytime by loading your notes onto your phone or turning them into digital, on-the-go flashcards.

4. Make It Fun

It’s ok to face it - we avoid tasks because they seem boring. The easiest way to fix this is to make those tasks fun. For example, if you are writing a paper, invite a friend who might have their own work to do to join you at a coffee shop. Or recruit your kids to quiz you on your study material. Your kids will love helping (and they’ll learn something too!).

5. Take Advantage of Web Apps

Writing apps like Hemingway and Grammarly can ease the process of writing papers by helping you write more clearly. Think of these apps as your own personal writing coach. As you write, the app identifies hard to read sentences, as well as awkward phrasing, and promotes better word choices.

6. Set an Alarm

Not just any alarm. One programmed to tell you what you need to do and how it will impact your day. Think, “start working on your paper now and you’ll be able to go to a movie.” If you ignore that one, then set another saying, “if you start your paper now, you can watch an hourlong drama,” and so on. This type of self-reward system can help you better manage your time and still fulfill your wants later on.   

7. Recruit a Supervisor

Being accountable to someone is often the drive we need to kick us into gear. Use a similar tactic to ensure your schoolwork is done on time. Ask someone to check on your progress periodically to assure you’re staying on task. This someone can be your spouse, a friend or even your children. Choose wisely, though. You want someone who is serious about helping and won’t try to bother you while you are working. Your teenaged son or daughter will probably be very good at checking up on you and keeping you on task. Maybe even too good.

8. Do Your Least Favorite Work First

When you do your least favorite work first, you will increase your confidence and decrease your stress levels. And, naturally, avoid procrastination later on. Finishing the largest item on your to-do list will give you the productivity boost you need to do other assignments you may have pushed aside.

9. Change Your Perspective

Are things just not right in your usual study space ? Or do you just not like it anymore? Maybe it’s too loud, too quiet, too dark or just too hot. Consider making a change. Try working in your local coffee shop, in a community library or a nearby park. The change in scenery and perspective will impact your productivity for the better.

Written by Thomas Edison State University

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The Bookshelf

Exploring edtech and cognitive psychology.

• NSF Funds Work on Flagging Bad Online Behavior
• Testing AI Fairness in Predicting College Dropout Rate
• Pandemic Lockdowns Boost, Democratize Online Education
• Study Reveals Key Course Features that Draw Diverse Students
• Study: No Single Solution Helps All Students Complete MOOCs

How to Ace Your College Assignments

College can be tough. You’re juggling classes, homework, a social life, and maybe a job on the side. It’s no wonder that sometimes your college assignments don’t get the attention they deserve. But did you know that there are tricks to acing your college assignments? Here are some tips and strategies that will help you get better grades in school!

For many students, college is a big learning curve. It’s a time in your life that involves a lot of change and getting used to many new things. When it comes to college assignments, many students find that things work differently from when they were in high school. The format and types of assessments are different, the criteria for passing can feel unfamiliar, and of course, the level of learning is a step up from high school too.

But getting good grades has a direct impact on your success at college, so it’s important to do as well as you can. So what can you do to get to grips with college assignments so you ace them? Here are some tips.

Read The Instructions

Start by reading the assignment instructions carefully. This may seem obvious, but it’s important to make sure you understand what the task is and what your lecturer or professor is looking for. If you’re unsure about anything, ask for clarification from your instructor. They are there to help you, so you should never feel unsure about going to ask for clarification, or for a little extra direction. You could even ask them what they’re looking for in order to give good grades. For example, is it more about research, or a good writing style? Any tips you can glean from the people marking your assignments will help.

Use Past Papers And Study Materials

When you have a better understanding of what’s required, it can be helpful to use past papers and college study materials to give yourself an idea of the sort of thing that might be expected. Study materials can also give you an idea of the level of detail required and the standard expected by your college. If you’re not sure where to find these things, ask your instructor or librarian for help. Getting hold of some of these past materials will help to give you a framework for your learning, understand the types of assignments your college sets, and what success looks like to them.

Create A Plan And Work Schedule

Once you have a good understanding of the task at hand and what’s expected of you, it’s time to create a plan. This should be a detailed document that outlines everything you need to do in order to complete the assignment to a high standard. Your plan should include a timeline and deadlines for each task, as well as what resources you’ll need and any other information that will help you to complete the assignment.

Work In Short Bursts

One of the best pieces of advice for college students is to work in short bursts . This means setting a timer for a certain amount of time and working on the task at hand for that amount of time, before taking a break. This method is often recommended for students because it’s a more effective way of working than trying to power through for hours on end. It’s also a lot easier to stay focused when you’re working in short bursts. When you take a break, make sure you get up and move around, have a snack, or do something to take your mind off of your work so you can come back refreshed and ready to focus again.

Take Regular Breaks

It’s important to take regular breaks when you’re working on an assignment. This will help to keep you from getting too bogged down in the task and will allow you to come back to it with fresh eyes. When you’re taking a break, make sure you get up and move around, have a snack, or do something to take your mind off of your work so you can come back refreshed and ready to focus again.

Set A Deadline For Yourself

As well as any deadlines set by your instructor, it can be helpful to set a deadline for yourself. This should be a date or time by which you will have completed the assignment. Having a personal deadline will help to keep you on track and motivated to get the work done.

Don’t Leave It To The Last Minute

One of the worst things you can do is leave your college assignment to the last minute. This will only lead to stress and will likely result in a rushed and poorly done piece of work. If you start the assignment early, you’ll have more time to do it properly and you’ll be less likely to make mistakes. It will also give you time to deal with any unexpected circumstances, such as some additional research you decide you need to do, or dealing with a cold that leaves you feeling under the weather for a few days.

Start With The Easy Stuff

When you’re starting an assignment, it can be helpful to start with the easy stuff. This will help to get you into the flow of working on the task and will give you a sense of accomplishment. Once you’ve completed the easy stuff, you can move on to the more challenging tasks. This will help you to stay focused and motivated, and will make the whole process less daunting.

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“It’s a lot to take in” – Undergraduate Experiences with Assigned Reading

By maura a. smale, new york city college of technology and graduate center, city university of new york (cuny ).

Interviewer: Tell me about some things that frustrate you about your course reading.

Student: I feel like, especially core classes, professors take the reading way too seriously, like they want you to know everything and memorize everything, and I’m just like, this isn’t even my major, like I have other things that I need to focus on.

Assigned texts play an important role in college coursework, and students are required to read for their classes during their college careers – in textbooks and other volumes, on websites, in journal articles, and elsewhere. Yet faculty across all disciplines report that many students do not complete all of the reading for a course, and some do not do the reading at all.

Concern with reading compliance is not new, and researchers have examined student completion of reading in college courses over the past several decades. Burchfield and Sappington studied the results of student performance on surprise reading quizzes in Psychology courses; the quizzes were administered to 910 undergraduate and graduate students at a small Southeastern university between 1981and 1997. Their results indicated that the amount of course reading students completed decreased over the time period of the study; they referred to this as “a disturbing trend of noncompliance with reading assignments” (2000, p. 59). Other studies have also shown that students often do not complete their assigned course reading (Baier et al. 2011). In her research on reading in a first year seminar at a small regional university, Hoeft found that a greater percentage of students completed their assigned reading than did students in the foundational Burchfield and Sappington study; even so, less than half of the surveyed students reported that they completed their required reading (2010, p. 12).

In a review of prior research, Starcher and Proffitt suggested several reasons that undergraduates do not complete their reading, including struggles with reading comprehension, lack of motivation, misperception about the importance of reading for the course, and challenges in finding time to read (2011, pp. 397-399). Hoeft concurs and characterizes the reasons that students she surveyed gave for not reading: “schedules that didn’t allow time for reading, social life that comes before reading, dislike of reading of any kind, lack of interest in topic, and laziness” (2012, p. 11). Though most studies have focused on students – measuring reading completion and suggesting strategies to increase compliance – Brost and Bradley (2006) examined the role that course instructors play in students’ academic reading practice. While time and motivation are cited in most studies as reasons that students may not complete their reading, few have explored the reasons why students may not have adequate time for their assigned course reading or why they may not feel motivated to complete it. Further, many studies of undergraduate reading involve research at primarily residential colleges and universities, and do not adequately consider the experiences of commuter students, who make up a large and growing percentage of undergraduates, or institutions with highly diverse, non-traditional student populations.

What stands in the way of students completing their course reading, and how can faculty and staff support students’ academic reading practices? Students who do not complete their assigned reading may have difficulty completing their coursework; exploring the reasons that students do not do their reading can inform strategies to support their academic success. To learn more about students’ experiences with their required course reading, I undertook a study of undergraduate academic reading habits.

Research Methods

Building on previous research on the student academic experience at the City University of New York (CUNY) (Smale & Regalado, 2018b), this project employed qualitative methods to explore undergraduates’ attitudes toward and practices around their required course reading. The research questions for this study were:

• What reading materials are students assigned in their courses, and how do they acquire or access them?
• When, where, and how do students do their assigned course readings?

This research was conducted at three CUNY colleges: Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), Brooklyn College, and New York City College of Technology (City Tech), selected to represent a range of schools at the university: a community college, a baccalaureate college, and a comprehensive college that offers two- and four-year degrees. In fall 2016, undergraduate enrollment at Brooklyn College was 14,406, at City Tech 17,282, and at BMCC 26,748; BMCC has the largest enrollment of any CUNY college (CUNY OIRA, 2018). While there are differences between the student populations of each of the three colleges in this study, they are not substantial, especially as many students transfer between CUNY colleges during their academic careers. CUNY is a highly diverse institution: across the university student self-identified race/ethnicity was 0.3% American Indian/Alaskan Native, 20.8% Asian, 26% Black, 31.9% Hispanic, 21% White. Most CUNY undergraduates are of traditional age and take a full-time courseload, though 26.5% are over 25 years old, and 33.8% are part-time students. Nearly 53% percent of CUNY community college students and 37% of comprehensive/baccalaureate college students lived in households with incomes of less than $20,000/year (CUNY OIRA, 2017).

During the spring 2017 semester semi-structured interviews of about 30 minutes were held with 10 students at each of the three colleges, for a total of 30 students interviewed during this project. After obtaining approval for this study from the college Institutional Review Boards, students were recruited via flyers posted on each campus to produce a convenience sample. Students were interviewed on their own campus, and all interviews were recorded with a digital audio recorder; interview questions are available in the Appendix, below. All students interviewed received a $10 transit card or gift card for their participation. After the completion of the interviews, the audio recordings were transcribed, and the Dedoose qualitative data analysis platform was used to code the interview data and develop themes to facilitate analysis.

The students interviewed during this study were in a range of majors and programs at the three colleges, from first-year students through seniors. Most were attending college full-time during the semester I interviewed them, with only two part-time students. All but five of the students interviewed were between 18 and 24 years old, and about one-third of them were working at least part-time or participating in internships. With a sample of only 30 students it is not possible to correlate reading practices with academic performance or demographic data; thus I did not collect information on GPA, gender, or race/ethnicity from the students interviewed. The results of a study of this size are not generalizable; however, as has been found in previous research on the student experience at CUNY, students reported strong similarities surrounding their experiences across the three schools despite the academic differences between community and baccalaureate colleges (Asher et al., 2017). The results of this research are thus discussed here in aggregate for all three colleges.

Undergraduate Course Reading Narratives

The students shared information about their reading process that is likely familiar to many academic faculty and staff, though they also revealed detail that is less visible about their practice, priorities, and challenges with their required course reading. Three narratives of CUNY students’ course reading, students pseudonymously referred to as Tamara, Sana, and Isabella, illustrate the experiences that surfaced in this research. While each narrative comprises the responses of one individual student to my interview questions, these three students are not outliers; each reported experiences that were broadly representative of the responses of many students who participated in this research, and revealed themes that were common across multiple student interviews.

Tamara was a traditional-aged student in her second year of college when she was interviewed. She was working part-time in addition to attending school, and taking a full-time course load that included both required General Education courses and classes in her major, Psychology.

That semester Tamara was assigned course readings from both print (textbooks, handouts) and online sources. Tamara described a tension between reading online and in print: she noted the constraints of the free printing allocation at her college and a desire to be “ecofriendly,” though she also had limited options for reading online. While Tamara had a laptop computer she did not bring it to campus, and doing the reading on her phone was “a little bit of a distraction because I have text messages coming in, and it’s a very small screen.” Tamara also preferred to annotate her readings on paper, revealing that “it’s a lot easier to jot down notes on the side.”

Tamara was a commuter student, like the vast majority of CUNY students, and often used her commute on the bus or subway to complete her course reading. She said that she sometimes did her course reading, “right before bed, [because] a lot of people are asleep already” in her household, which included a parent and several siblings. However, Tamara also shared that “it’s a lot easier to do it on the bus or train.” She found that annotating or taking notes on her reading could be a challenge while on public transit – “it’s difficult to maneuver” – and she would often wait until getting to her destination to take notes; occasionally she would take notes on her phone.

I mentioned to Tamara that she was brightening and smiling when she discussed the reading for the two Psychology classes she was taking that semester. She replied that the reading in those classes was “interesting, really interesting.” Tamara characterized the readings for her major courses as “the real stuff,” and their place in her academic priorities was clear when she declared “those are the readings I tend to do first.”

Tamara was also taking several required core courses during the semester that we spoke, and her prioritizing strategies for the reading varied. Sometimes she set a timer to read for 10 minutes each day to try to get through her assigned reading, though she would go beyond that time if she found the reading interesting. Overall, she prioritized based on “the weekly agenda,” whatever homework or assignments were coming due that week, though she sometimes had to make choices among what she could do in the time she had, and noted, “I feel like I’m juggling in a circus.” She felt that her Psychology courses were most important, and said, “I like being able to engage in the conversation and to have input.” For some of her other classes in which she wasn’t always able to complete the reading she told me “I usually just stay quiet.”

Tamara’s main frustration with her required course reading was the amount, and she shared that “there’s so much to read and it seems like so little time, and it’s annoying because don’t these professors know we have other classes and other assignments and other things to do?” Sometimes she wished that her course readings were easier to understand, and when she found herself struggling her most frequent strategies were rereading and taking notes in her own words. She did sometimes review particularly challenging readings with a classmate or ask her professor for clarification after class, but with multiple classes, a job, and family responsibilities, she did not always have the time to seek help with her reading.

Sana was a traditional-aged student in the second semester of her first year of college when I interviewed her. She was majoring in Nursing and taking a full-time course load.

Sana was mostly taking required core courses during the semester we spoke, and only one of her courses was part of her major. She characterized herself as “a slow reader,” and tended to do her homework after classes ended for the day or on the weekends, preferring to do her reading at home where she had quiet space to concentrate rather than her college library, which she described as “kind of a hangout place for most people.” Sana tended to do her readings in print, printing out online readings whenever possible; she told me “I like to highlight so I know the important parts” when studying for tests.

That semester Sana was taking classes full-time but did not have a job, and she was conscious of the resulting impact on her time. She told me that she felt that her reading load was heavy but that she always found time to do it, though she acknowledged that she probably wouldn’t have time to do all of her required course reading if she had a job. Even without a job, Sana did sometimes find her reading load to be too heavy, and she let me know that sometimes “if I don’t have time I’ll try to skim through, but if I do have time I’ll read the whole thing.”

Sana prioritized reading for the one course she was taking in her major “because it’s the most important.” She also mentioned prioritizing reading for her English course, because her instructor gave the class a quiz on the reading each week, and she was pleased to share that she had passed each quiz so far. For her Sociology course Sana revealed that she no longer did the reading “because it doesn’t benefit me,” explaining that her professor “goes over what’s in the readings in class.”

When asked about strategies she used to deal with readings she found to be challenging, Sana replied that she did not have a specific strategy. She mentioned that she often found both the amount and the topics of her course reading to be difficult, telling me that she was frustrated that “sometimes it’s hard to understand, and it’s a lot [slight laugh] of reading.” Sana sometimes asked her classmates for help clarifying the reading, though she did not think it would be helpful to ask her professors about the reading, saying, “I don’t think they would have time for that.” She also did not know of any offices on campus that could help specifically with reading; she had visited the writing center in a prior semester but found it to be very crowded with a long wait and had not returned this semester. Sana astutely identified a challenge for students in reading subject matter that may be new to them, and told me “if you don’t understand the whole topic then it’s hard to ask a question, like you don’t know where to start.” She also expressed a wish for more reading support at the college, “a reading center on campus for students who are having trouble reading.”

Isabella was a student in the final semester of her Associates degree program when we met for our interview; she planned to transfer to a four-year program to complete her Bachelor’s degree. She was majoring in Business and taking a full-time course load as well as working outside of college, and she was a few years older than the traditional-aged college student was.

When asked to describe her reading practice, Isabella shared that she preferred to do her course reading at school, characterizing both her home and her commute as too busy and distracting. Isabella studied in the library, empty classrooms, or other quiet areas on campus because “I kind of focus more that way.” She told me that she took handwritten notes when doing her course reading, which she described as “kind of, like, old-fashioned [though] it works better that way for me.” Isabella did not mention a preference for reading in print or online, though she did note that her practice of taking detailed notes on the reading meant that she could bring her notes to class instead of her heavy textbooks.

While at this stage of her degree program Isabella mostly took courses in her major, she was also taking required General Education courses during the semester that I interviewed her. Isabella told me that she felt it important to do the required reading for her major courses because the topics could be complex, and she wanted to maximize her opportunities to learn them thoroughly in class. She prioritized her reading assignments based on their due dates and homework, and she did try to complete all of her reading if she had time.

Isabella felt that her course reading was most difficult when it covered subject matter that was not of interest to her. She mentioned that the English composition course she took in the previous semester was more interesting than her current English course, and she wished she could have known the topical focus of the current course before enrolling. As a student whose first language was not English, Isabella told me that “because it’s my second language, sometimes the language, and especially, like, when I’m not interested in the topic, I just kind of give up, but, that’s when I feel frustrated.” When struggling with reading, Isabella tried to “read little by little” and reread texts until she understood them. Some of Isabella’s professors recommended online videos – she specifically noted YouTube and Khan Academy – in order to help explain difficult topics and subjects. Isabella appreciated those resources, and said, “it’s really helpful because it explains like, the process of if we actually do a problem wrong.”

Isabella shared that she typically did not have time in her schedule that aligned with opportunities to meet with her professors or classmates to seek additional help with reading, though she did sometimes ask for help with reading at the college’s writing center. She often came to campus even if she didn’t have class on that day, and would visit discipline-specific tutoring for assistance with course material that she found challenging. Isabella told me that she valued the tutors because “even if I think I know how it works, I just like to double-check that I’m doing the right thing.”

The similar but not identical experiences of Tamara, Sana, and Isabella were shared by many of the CUNY students who were interviewed about their assigned course reading. Student responses – from these three students as well as many others interviewed during the study – centered around three themes for further analysis: their reading practices, their criteria for prioritizing reading assignments, and their perceived successes and challenges in reading for their courses.

In this context practice is defined as the way that students complete their course reading, including preferences for – or resigned acceptance of – the format of their assigned texts (i.e. print or digital), and methods of engagement with the text.

Most of the students interviewed preferred to do their required course reading in print rather than online; this is consistent with the results of other studies (Foasberg, 2014; Mizrachi, 2015). A recently published multiyear survey of more than 10,000 undergraduates around the world revealed that the “majority of participants report better focus and retention of information presented in print formats, and more frequently prefer print for longer texts” (Mizrachi et al., 2018, p. 1). The most common reasons for preferring print cited by CUNY students interviewed were the ability to annotate easily and the lack of distraction. One student noted that they felt frustrated by ebooks specifically: “it’s harder to read online…I like the physical book more because you can go easier back to another page.”

However, several students did acknowledge that readings available online could potentially be completed more easily during the commute. One student shared that they preferred to do their readings in PDF on their tablet if possible, and that they highlighted the PDF as well. Students balance multiple factors when acquiring course readings, including cost and format preference. Student strategies for accessing their required course reading in multiple locations can be complex: on and offline, and at times that are most convenient for them. This tension has also surfaced in research with CUNY and other commuter undergraduates (Smale & Regalado, 2017; Regalado & Smale, 2018a).

Like Tamara, Sana, and Isabella, the CUNY students interviewed shared a variety of criteria they used to prioritize their required reading assignments. Most students tried to use their syllabus and the assignment due dates to plan their reading, and most intended to complete their reading before class. Students acknowledged the many constraints on their time, and most felt that the reading for their major courses was more important to complete than that for their core or General Education classes. A few students mentioned that as they moved into upper-level courses, they realized the necessity to allocate additional time to complete their now more detailed and complex readings, which could affect their academic priorities overall.

As other studies have shown (Baier et al., 2011; Brost & Bradley, 2006), students often do not complete their course reading if they feel it is not an integral component of their success in the course, and many of the CUNY students I spoke with concurred. Some students said that their instructors reviewed all of the reading thoroughly in class, which obviated their need to read the textbook. Others shared their frustration when instructors assigned but did not refer to or use the reading during the course, which made students feel like their time and funds had been wasted. Given students’ time constraints with their multiple academic, family, and job responsibilities, it is not surprising that many students decide it is not worth their effort to complete the assigned readings for every class if it will not affect their performance in the class.

All students interviewed shared challenges they encountered when completing, or attempting to complete, their assigned course reading. Both interest in and prior knowledge of the course topic affected students’ motivation to read; students who found the subject uninteresting or who were encountering an unfamiliar discipline often found their reading to be difficult. A few students mentioned that they struggled with reading because of learning disabilities, though some also made use of student support services on campus. Like Isabella, several students for whom English was not a first language shared their frustration with reading scholarly material; this frustration could be compounded if the material was uninteresting or unfamiliar to them.

Some students identified support strategies for the reading challenges they encountered, including asking for assistance from their instructors, either after class or during office hours, or from their classmates. Other students understood that their professors were available for help, but did not have the time or availability in their schedule to obtain help in this way. Several students referred to the writing center on campus but did not know whether there was an office at their college specifically to support reading, and were not sure whether the writing center was an appropriate place to seek out reading support.

  Conclusions & Interventions

What can faculty, staff, and administration do to support students’ success in their academic reading? While this research with CUNY students was limited in size and scope, interviews with students about their assigned reading demonstrate the value of considering students’ lived experiences in their past and current academic contexts. It is easy to assume that undergraduates come to college having mastered strategies for academic reading during high school. Many students have not, and even those who were explicitly taught how to read scholarly texts in high school are likely to encounter far more difficult texts in college. Some of the students I interviewed seemed embarrassed when asked whether they sought support with challenging reading assignments. Students too have internalized that reading is something they should know how to do already; as one student told me, in college “reading is your problem.”

An assessment of what is a “reasonable” reading load for students must also take into account their life circumstances; often research on reading compliance takes as a given that faculty assign “reasonable” amounts of reading in their courses (Brost & Bradley, 2006, p. 105). In addition to their work as students CUNY undergraduates are not unique in their multiple time commitments, and many hold part- or full-time jobs or have substantial family or community responsibilities. At commuter colleges and universities, the time required to commute also affects students’ available time to devote to their coursework.

Some researchers have acknowledged several of the challenges in completing required course readings that CUNY students shared. Fujimoto, Hagel, Turner, Ka iyapornpong, and Zutshi (2011) also report on the difficulties students face encountering academic subject material that is new to them and switching between disciplines; they mention the additional challenge for students for whom English is not their first language. Brost and Bradley discuss the need for faculty to ensure that the link between assigned reading and coursework is clear to students. They recognize that many students will not read if they do not see the value in reading, and they suggest that “faculty members deserve our share of the responsibility as well” (2006, p. 106).

However, most literature on reading compliance follows Burchfield and Sappington, who encouraged “a renewed emphasis on compliance with required reading assignments and an incorporation of appropriate consequences” (2000, p. 60). Other suggested actions include implementing reading journals or surprise reading quizzes, assigning students to read for a specific amount of time, or using other homework or assignments to test students’ completion and comprehension of the required course readings (Carney et al, 2008; Hilton et al., 2010; Hoeft, 2012; Kerr & Frese, 2017). The overwhelming focus on assignments that measure students’ reading compliance seems to leave unanswered the question of why students do not complete their required course reading.

Alternatively, a focus on explicitly teaching undergraduates strategies for reading disciplinary texts and supporting them in practicing those strategies could increase students’ motivation to complete their course reading. A student I interviewed who had found success in her course reading explained that she had taken an Advanced Placement English class in high school. She told me, “I learned from my AP class to look for important keywords,” and she had learned effective notetaking strategies in that class. Faculty may consider building in time during the semester to support students’ reading practice in their courses. Fujimoto et al. describe a structured reading assignment in which students are given an academic reading along with a set of criteria to identify in the text; they are also asked to identify important themes in the reading, and placed in groups for discussion (2011). Fisher shares details on workshops she has taught on the reading apprenticeship model for scaffolding undergraduate reading skills across the disciplines (2018).

Faculty and staff can also advocate for providing additional reading support on our campuses. While creating a Reading Center may not be feasible for all colleges and universities, it is likely that the campus Writing Center also provides assistance with students’ reading. Making that aspect of Writing Center services more visible to students might help them more readily find their way to that source of support. Faculty can also make sure that all students are aware of student support services and of any support that is available for students for whom English is not their first language, regardless of whether they have identified themselves as a student in need of additional support.

Our undergraduate students arrive on campus with varied experiences prior to their academic careers; their preparation for and facility with required course reading also varies. As this research demonstrates, it is worthwhile to consider both our students’ constraints and challenges in reading as well as possible strategies to address these constraints and challenges in our classrooms and on our campuses. Faculty should seek out ways to learn more about their students’ reading experiences, and to incorporate specific discussion of reading practices into their courses. Understanding our students’ reading experiences can help us identify the most appropriate ways to motivate our students to read, and support their opportunities for success in their coursework and degree programs.

Undergraduate Reading Attitudes & Practices

Semi-structured Interview Questions

• Let’s start with a few questions about you:
• What’s your program of study/major?
• How many semesters have you been in college?
• Are you going to school full-time or part-time?
• Did you start off at this college or transfer from another college?
• How many courses are you taking this semester? What are they? Are they required for your major? Let’s talk about the reading you have in those courses specifically, though if you have other experiences with course reading you’d like to share that’s fine too.
• Tell me about the reading that’s assigned in each course. Is it in textbooks, online, or in other formats?
• How do you do the reading you need to do for your courses?
• When and where do you do the reading for your courses?
• How do you decide what reading to complete for your courses?
• What are your plans for after you graduate; is there a career or future schooling that you have in mind?
• What frustrates you most about the reading you’re assigned in your courses?
• If you could change one thing about your course reading, what would it be?
• Is there anything else you’d like to share with me about reading for your courses?

Works Cited

Asher, A., Amaral, J., Couture, J., Fister, B., Lanclos, D., Lowe, M. S., Regalado, M., and Smale, M. A. (2017). Mapping student days: Collaborative ethnography and the student experience, Collaborative Librarianship , 9 (4), 293-317. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.du.edu/collaborativelibrarianship/vol9/iss4/7

Baier, K., Hendricks, C., Warren Gorden, K., Hendricks, J.E., & Cochran, L. (2011). College students’ textbook reading, or not! American Reading Forum Annual Yearbook ,31 . Retrieved from http://americanreadingforum.org/yearbook/11_yearbook/documents/BAIER ET AL PAPER.pdf

Brost, B. D., & Bradley, K. A. (2006). Student compliance with assigned reading: A case study. Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning , 6 (2), 101-111. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ854930

Burchfield, C. M., & Sappington, J. (2000). Compliance with required reading assignments. Teaching of Psycholog y, 27 (1), 58-60.

Carney, A. G., Fry, S. W., & Gabriele, R. V. (2008). Reeling in the big fish: Changing pedagogy to encourage completion of reading assignments. College Teaching ,56 , 195-200. doi: https://doi.org/10.3200/CTCH.56.4.195-200

CUNY OIRA (Office of Institutional Research and Assessment). (2018). Total Enrollment by Undergraduate and Graduate Level, Full-time/Part-time Attendance, and College.   Retrieved August 3, 2018, from https://www.cuny.edu/irdatabook/rpts2_AY_current/ENRL_0019_UGGR_FTPT_HIST.rpt.pdf

CUNY OIRA (Office of Institutional Research and Assessment). (2017). A Profile of Undergraduates at CUNY Senior and Community Colleges: Fall 2016 . Retrieved August 3, 2018, from http://www2.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/page-assets/about/administration/offices/oira/institutional/data/current-student-data-book-by-subject/ug_student_profile_f16.pdf

Fisher, Z. (2018). Reading for success: How to integrate RA routines with your college success course [Google slides] . Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1e13112uGt-RXM_bOI–J6h3XnwV0fpZUI30Iz74IP_Q/edit?usp=sharing

Foasberg, N. (2014). Student reading practices in print and electronic media. College & Research Libraries ,75 , 705-723. doi: https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.75.5.705

Fujimoto, Y., Hagel, P., Turner, P., Ka iyapornpong, U., & Zutshi, A. (2011). Helping university students to ‘read’ scholarly journal articles: The benefits of a structured and collaborative approach. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice , 8 (3). Retrieved from http://ro.uow.edu.au/jutlp/vol8/iss3/6

Hilton III, J. L., Wilcox, B., Morrison, T. G., & Wiley, D. A. (2010). Effects of various methods of assigning and evaluating required reading in one general education course. Journal of College Reading and Learning ,41 , 7-28. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/10790195.2010.10850333

Hoeft, M. E. (2012). Why university students don’t read: What professors can do to increase compliance. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning , 6 , Article 12. doi: https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2012.060212

Kerr, M. M., & Frese, K. M. (2017). Reading to learn or learning to read? Engaging college students in course readings. College Teaching ,65 ,28-31. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/87567555.2016.1222577

Mizrachi, D. (2015). Undergraduates’ academic reading format preferences and behaviors. The Journal of Academic Librarianship ,41 , 301-311. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2015.03.009

Mizrachi, D., Salaz A. M., Kurbanoglu, S., & Boustany, J. (2018). Academic reading format preferences and behaviors among university students worldwide: A comparative survey analysis. PLoS ONE 13 . https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197444

Regalado, M., & Smale, M. A., eds. (2018a). Academic libraries for commuter students: Research-based strategies . Chicago: American Library Association.

Smale, M. A., & Regalado, M. (2018b). Undergraduate Scholarly Habits Ethnography Project . Retrieved August 3, 2018, from http://ushep.commons.gc.cuny.edu

Smale, M. A., & Regalado, M. (2017). Digital technology as affordance and barrier in higher education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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How to write the best college assignments.

By Lois Weldon

When it comes to writing assignments, it is difficult to find a conceptualized guide with clear and simple tips that are easy to follow. That’s exactly what this guide will provide: few simple tips on how to write great assignments, right when you need them. Some of these points will probably be familiar to you, but there is no harm in being reminded of the most important things before you start writing the assignments, which are usually determining on your credits.

The most important aspects: Outline and Introduction

Preparation is the key to success, especially when it comes to academic assignments. It is recommended to always write an outline before you start writing the actual assignment. The outline should include the main points of discussion, which will keep you focused throughout the work and will make your key points clearly defined. Outlining the assignment will save you a lot of time because it will organize your thoughts and make your literature searches much easier. The outline will also help you to create different sections and divide up the word count between them, which will make the assignment more organized.

The introduction is the next important part you should focus on. This is the part that defines the quality of your assignment in the eyes of the reader. The introduction must include a brief background on the main points of discussion, the purpose of developing such work and clear indications on how the assignment is being organized. Keep this part brief, within one or two paragraphs.

This is an example of including the above mentioned points into the introduction of an assignment that elaborates the topic of obesity reaching proportions:

Background : The twenty first century is characterized by many public health challenges, among which obesity takes a major part. The increasing prevalence of obesity is creating an alarming situation in both developed and developing regions of the world.

Structure and aim : This assignment will elaborate and discuss the specific pattern of obesity epidemic development, as well as its epidemiology. Debt, trade and globalization will also be analyzed as factors that led to escalation of the problem. Moreover, the assignment will discuss the governmental interventions that make efforts to address this issue.

Practical tips on assignment writing

Here are some practical tips that will keep your work focused and effective:

–         Critical thinking – Academic writing has to be characterized by critical thinking, not only to provide the work with the needed level, but also because it takes part in the final mark.

–         Continuity of ideas – When you get to the middle of assignment, things can get confusing. You have to make sure that the ideas are flowing continuously within and between paragraphs, so the reader will be enabled to follow the argument easily. Dividing the work in different paragraphs is very important for this purpose.

–         Usage of ‘you’ and ‘I’ – According to the academic writing standards, the assignments should be written in an impersonal language, which means that the usage of ‘you’ and ‘I’ should be avoided. The only acceptable way of building your arguments is by using opinions and evidence from authoritative sources.

–         Referencing – this part of the assignment is extremely important and it takes a big part in the final mark. Make sure to use either Vancouver or Harvard referencing systems, and use the same system in the bibliography and while citing work of other sources within the text.  

–         Usage of examples – A clear understanding on your assignment’s topic should be provided by comparing different sources and identifying their strengths and weaknesses in an objective manner. This is the part where you should show how the knowledge can be applied into practice.

–         Numbering and bullets – Instead of using numbering and bullets, the academic writing style prefers the usage of paragraphs.

–         Including figures and tables – The figures and tables are an effective way of conveying information to the reader in a clear manner, without disturbing the word count. Each figure and table should have clear headings and you should make sure to mention their sources in the bibliography.

–         Word count – the word count of your assignment mustn’t be far above or far below the required word count. The outline will provide you with help in this aspect, so make sure to plan the work in order to keep it within the boundaries.

The importance of an effective conclusion

The conclusion of your assignment is your ultimate chance to provide powerful arguments that will impress the reader. The conclusion in academic writing is usually expressed through three main parts:

–         Stating the context and aim of the assignment

–         Summarizing the main points briefly

–         Providing final comments with consideration of the future (discussing clear examples of things that can be done in order to improve the situation concerning your topic of discussion).

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Lois Weldon is writer at  Uk.bestdissertation.com . Lives happily at London with her husband and lovely daughter. Adores writing tips for students. Passionate about Star Wars and yoga.

7 comments on “How To Write The Best College Assignments”

Extremely useful tip for students wanting to score well on their assignments. I concur with the writer that writing an outline before ACTUALLY starting to write assignments is extremely important. I have observed students who start off quite well but they tend to lose focus in between which causes them to lose marks. So an outline helps them to maintain the theme focused.

Hello Great information…. write assignments

Well elabrated

Thanks for the information. This site has amazing articles. Looking forward to continuing on this site.

This article is certainly going to help student . Well written.

Really good, thanks

Practical tips on assignment writing, the’re fantastic. Thank you!

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Student Engagement

Is student absenteeism a growing problem at colleges, too, by rebecca koenig     may 16, 2024.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of children regularly miss elementary, middle and high school .

Is the same pattern of absenteeism playing out at colleges, too? If so, what’s driving the trend? And what can professors and higher ed leaders do about it?

To find out, EdSurge interviewed Terri Hasseler, a professor in the Department of History, Literature, and the Arts at Bryant University in Rhode Island. She’s also director of the Center for Teaching Excellence there, which provides faculty with support for instruction, edtech, course design, classroom management and grading.

That vantage point gives her insight about what’s keeping students from feeling fully invested in showing up for class ready to truly participate in the learning process. She believes contributing factors may include a lack of ‘academic stamina’ among today’s students, changing parenting practices and inadequate explanations from faculty about why showing up actually matters.

The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

EdSurge: Why is student disengagement or absenteeism something that you’re thinking about?

Terri Hasseler: One of the things that I spend a lot of time with faculty on is things that they're seeing in the classroom. And over the last year, as we see things that are happening nationally in other institutions as well, we're seeing higher levels of absenteeism [and] greater elements of disruption and distraction in the classroom that are manifesting in all sorts of different ways. And in my position, I've been working with faculty to find ways to navigate those problems.

Is absenteeism a problem in college as well as at the K-12 level?

In terms of measuring absenteeism in college or university settings, it's harder because most schools don't have university-wide policies on absences. Some schools do, but a lot of schools generally leave absence management up to individual instructors. And so, much of the information that we find about whether people are engaging in classes … is primarily anecdotal — though I will say we hear this pretty broadly across the United States, but in my own institution as well, we hear that students are absent from class.

And then when we talk about absence or distraction — and I would argue that distraction and disengagement is still very much an issue, and we can talk a little bit about why that may continue to be the case post-pandemic — but distraction, absenteeism manifests itself perhaps differently.

So a student may not come to class or a student may come to class and then walk out of class five minutes into class and then be gone for 20 minutes and return sometime within the midst of that. They may disengage by being physically in the classroom, but on their phones or their laptops feigning attention , feigning participation in class, but they're really in their Amazon cart or they're in their email or they're someplace else.

So this kind of absenteeism may not be just not being physically there. It might be also the disengagement we're talking about, of not being mentally or emotionally available or present in the classroom.

Do you find that professors take attendance? Do they count that as part of a grade or is it more like if you choose not to show up, you're not going to learn?

It depends. I think some professors have very clear absence policies. I have an absence policy in my class. Though I think many people's absence policies are more lenient of late because of what the pandemic did for thoughts about health and well-being in the classroom. We don't want students in the classroom when they're not physically well. We don't want them getting other students unwell or getting us unwell. So the definition of being in the classroom, or the leniency of coming into the classroom because of health, has I think changed a lot. The pandemic did a lot in that way — in some ways in a good way — because I think people dragged themselves to places they didn't belong because they were unwell. And now we have more humane guidelines around that.

To your point though, more broadly, I think one of the issues is that we can no longer assume that it's a shared belief structure that we all think being in the classroom is the thing to do post-pandemic.

I mean, from the pandemic we've learned, ‘Oh, I can get lecture notes, I can get slides, I can get a video of the classroom, I can get all of the content that I need outside of the classroom, so why do I go to class?’ And a lot of that material that you can get outside of the class is really important for lots of reasons. It's good to support learning, it's important for accessibility, it's important to address accommodations for students. So that stuff is really important.

But faculty have to do a much better job of articulating why do you show up in the classroom now? What is the reason that you come to the classroom?

And for me as an educator, I always really subscribe to Paolo Freire's thoughts on the idea that you build knowledge together in the classroom with students. And the idea that 50 percent of the knowledge, 50 percent of the content enters the classroom when the students enter the classroom.

Students may not necessarily see it that way. It has to be articulated to them. They have to learn that a lot of the learning happens in context. A lot of the learning happens in relation to peers, the exchange of ideas, the importance of practicing ideas in a classroom and trying them on with your peers, with your instructor, the immediate access to the instructor that you get in the classroom and hearing ideas articulated in new ways that may be different from the external materials that you might get [from] the lecture slides or the PowerPoints. You can hear those articulated in different ways in the classroom. The iterative process of learning; the fact that you can't just read one thing once and know it, you have to go through it over and over again.

And I think some other things that we need to be better at communicating with students are the intangibles. Just showing up somewhere, practicing being present, practicing being on time, establishing a sense of responsibility to your peers that you are there being with other people.

Can you say more about that?

So I asked my students. I was thinking a lot about this kind of work and related to the question of how does physical absence affect other students in the classroom? If your classmate doesn't show up, how does that affect you?

And some of the things that I was thinking about and observing and seeing in my work and having a lot of faculty talk with me about this too, is that if students are distracted or physically present but not mentally present — they're on their laptop, for instance, and they're shopping in Amazon and you're sitting next to them as a student and you see this other student is clearly not there — that's very distracting. It's hard to focus if the person next to you is distracted, it distracts you. And it takes a while to get yourself back into the conversation. And there may be feelings about that, like ‘this is unfair, and why do I have to be there?’

And there's also a permissiveness about that. If it happens, it gives other students permission to think, ‘Well, maybe I should be on my Amazon account,’ or ‘I should be shopping.’

And I asked my students about that just recently. What do you think about students who don't show up? And it was really interesting because they got into a conversation about it, and they're very aware that others are not there, and they're very aware that some students who show up aren't there either.

And they immediately wanted to write those students off. They were frustrated with them, they wanted nothing to do with them. Some of the phrases were, ‘I'm glad when they don't come because they don't participate, and they just make it worse.’

And as I reflected on that, I thought it was sort of an interesting reaction because it seems to me it's almost a sense of betrayal, that their classmates have betrayed them in the learning environment. And if you're going to betray me, I don't want you here, just go away.

So students recognize this social contract — of the importance of being in space and learning together. But they're still trying to learn to articulate why it's important. And I think that's why faculty need to be better at articulating: You come to class for these reasons. This is why we spend time together in a room.

For students who don’t show up or who don’t engage, do their grades suffer?

My previous position was as an associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, and I will say that our DFW numbers [the percentage of students in a course who get a D or F grade or who withdraw] do increase across areas where students aren't engaging. But I can't put exact numbers on that.

Logically it follows that if you don't come, you're more likely to fail. You're more likely to not do well. You fail to establish your relationship with your instructor that could be your support system. If you're not doing well in the classroom, you lose access to the information that would prepare you.

Presumably higher education is voluntary. You've signed up to go to college. You've paid money to be there. You think there might be an economic prompt, if nothing else, to maximize this experience, but it sounds like that's not the case for everybody?

You would think. Certainly my background, where I came from, a lower-economic, rural farming community, I thought about the money that was invested and involved in the process of going to college. And I think our students do too. I mean, I think they're very aware of the economic reality. They see the student loans and the financial obligation of all of this.

And at the same time, we have students who are still disengaged.

Now, whether this is also something that can be tracked socioeconomically, I think that's an important question to ask.

Is disengagement a product of privilege? Possibly.

People who have more access to wealth, more opportunity to fail because financial support structures are there to help them if they fail, they may be more disengaged because of the product of that privilege. I have no evidence to support that, but it's certainly a reasonable question to ask.

Parenting practices have changed across time, too. … We've talked about helicopter parents for a long time. Now we're in that phrase of talking about snowplow parents, too — parents who remove all obstacles for students. And we're talking about that in my own Center for Teaching Excellence right now. We talk about that within the framework of the problem of kindness. How do you build a kind environment but don't interpret kindness as doing the work for them — doing the snowplow that removes all the obstacles — and still keep the necessary stress and discomfort of learning in place in ways that are supportive for students to manage that stress and discomfort? And I think that there's some arguments out there that because there's been so much work to remove some of those obstacles for students, they're less equipped to manage them.

A colleague in the CTE that I work with, Mary Boehmer, she uses the phrase ‘academic stamina.’ They haven't built the academic stamina because of the pandemic, because of, perhaps, parenting structures that move obstacles out of the way of students. And so we've done a disservice to students in not giving them the opportunity to fail. … And I think schools see that at this time of year especially, they really start losing that ability to get themselves through to the end.

Is there also an uptick in people not doing their academic work, not turning in assignments and expecting infinite extensions?

That could be a product of that sort of snowplow a conversation we just had. And also the necessary part of teaching during the pandemic, which is giving people multiple opportunities, making space for them to do it at their own pace because who knows what trauma they're dealing with in their family or in their home, and trying to build a space that gives them the time to do what they need to do.

And I would add that, we talk about being outside of the pandemic, but we're not outside of this heightened state of unrest, right? We are dealing with declining enrollments, the precarity of the world, the sense of people questioning the utility of education. So it may be that we're outside of the more formal frameworks of the pandemic, but we're still in discomforting times, and that's a part of the angst that students are in and that faculty are in, and people who work in academic settings are a part of the world, and they're experiencing that too.

So there is definitely noticeable anecdotal evidence to suggest that students are not coming to turn work in.

One of the things we noted in the fall is that we saw students coming back, they were more engaged, they were really excited. We thought, ‘OK, maybe we've turned the tide.’ Students were participating in much more events on campus, so we saw an increase in activity.

But then as the semester went along, that academic stamina issue arose. Less papers coming in. Students not following up. They would disappear. So there was sort of this performance of engagement that diminished as the semester went along because the stamina wasn't there to keep it.

Rebecca Koenig (@becky_koenig) is an editor at EdSurge. Reach her at rebecca [at] edsurge [dot] com.

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Understanding Assignments

What this handout is about.

The first step in any successful college writing venture is reading the assignment. While this sounds like a simple task, it can be a tough one. This handout will help you unravel your assignment and begin to craft an effective response. Much of the following advice will involve translating typical assignment terms and practices into meaningful clues to the type of writing your instructor expects. See our short video for more tips.

Basic beginnings

Regardless of the assignment, department, or instructor, adopting these two habits will serve you well :

• Read the assignment carefully as soon as you receive it. Do not put this task off—reading the assignment at the beginning will save you time, stress, and problems later. An assignment can look pretty straightforward at first, particularly if the instructor has provided lots of information. That does not mean it will not take time and effort to complete; you may even have to learn a new skill to complete the assignment.
• Ask the instructor about anything you do not understand. Do not hesitate to approach your instructor. Instructors would prefer to set you straight before you hand the paper in. That’s also when you will find their feedback most useful.

Assignment formats

Many assignments follow a basic format. Assignments often begin with an overview of the topic, include a central verb or verbs that describe the task, and offer some additional suggestions, questions, or prompts to get you started.

An Overview of Some Kind

The instructor might set the stage with some general discussion of the subject of the assignment, introduce the topic, or remind you of something pertinent that you have discussed in class. For example:

“Throughout history, gerbils have played a key role in politics,” or “In the last few weeks of class, we have focused on the evening wear of the housefly …”

The Task of the Assignment

Pay attention; this part tells you what to do when you write the paper. Look for the key verb or verbs in the sentence. Words like analyze, summarize, or compare direct you to think about your topic in a certain way. Also pay attention to words such as how, what, when, where, and why; these words guide your attention toward specific information. (See the section in this handout titled “Key Terms” for more information.)

“Analyze the effect that gerbils had on the Russian Revolution”, or “Suggest an interpretation of housefly undergarments that differs from Darwin’s.”

Additional Material to Think about

Here you will find some questions to use as springboards as you begin to think about the topic. Instructors usually include these questions as suggestions rather than requirements. Do not feel compelled to answer every question unless the instructor asks you to do so. Pay attention to the order of the questions. Sometimes they suggest the thinking process your instructor imagines you will need to follow to begin thinking about the topic.

“You may wish to consider the differing views held by Communist gerbils vs. Monarchist gerbils, or Can there be such a thing as ‘the housefly garment industry’ or is it just a home-based craft?”

These are the instructor’s comments about writing expectations:

“Be concise”, “Write effectively”, or “Argue furiously.”

Technical Details

These instructions usually indicate format rules or guidelines.

“Your paper must be typed in Palatino font on gray paper and must not exceed 600 pages. It is due on the anniversary of Mao Tse-tung’s death.”

The assignment’s parts may not appear in exactly this order, and each part may be very long or really short. Nonetheless, being aware of this standard pattern can help you understand what your instructor wants you to do.

Interpreting the assignment

Ask yourself a few basic questions as you read and jot down the answers on the assignment sheet:

Why did your instructor ask you to do this particular task?

Who is your audience.

• What kind of evidence do you need to support your ideas?

What kind of writing style is acceptable?

• What are the absolute rules of the paper?

Try to look at the question from the point of view of the instructor. Recognize that your instructor has a reason for giving you this assignment and for giving it to you at a particular point in the semester. In every assignment, the instructor has a challenge for you. This challenge could be anything from demonstrating an ability to think clearly to demonstrating an ability to use the library. See the assignment not as a vague suggestion of what to do but as an opportunity to show that you can handle the course material as directed. Paper assignments give you more than a topic to discuss—they ask you to do something with the topic. Keep reminding yourself of that. Be careful to avoid the other extreme as well: do not read more into the assignment than what is there.

Of course, your instructor has given you an assignment so that they will be able to assess your understanding of the course material and give you an appropriate grade. But there is more to it than that. Your instructor has tried to design a learning experience of some kind. Your instructor wants you to think about something in a particular way for a particular reason. If you read the course description at the beginning of your syllabus, review the assigned readings, and consider the assignment itself, you may begin to see the plan, purpose, or approach to the subject matter that your instructor has created for you. If you still aren’t sure of the assignment’s goals, try asking the instructor. For help with this, see our handout on getting feedback .

Given your instructor’s efforts, it helps to answer the question: What is my purpose in completing this assignment? Is it to gather research from a variety of outside sources and present a coherent picture? Is it to take material I have been learning in class and apply it to a new situation? Is it to prove a point one way or another? Key words from the assignment can help you figure this out. Look for key terms in the form of active verbs that tell you what to do.

Key Terms: Finding Those Active Verbs

Here are some common key words and definitions to help you think about assignment terms:

Information words Ask you to demonstrate what you know about the subject, such as who, what, when, where, how, and why.

• define —give the subject’s meaning (according to someone or something). Sometimes you have to give more than one view on the subject’s meaning
• describe —provide details about the subject by answering question words (such as who, what, when, where, how, and why); you might also give details related to the five senses (what you see, hear, feel, taste, and smell)
• explain —give reasons why or examples of how something happened
• illustrate —give descriptive examples of the subject and show how each is connected with the subject
• summarize —briefly list the important ideas you learned about the subject
• trace —outline how something has changed or developed from an earlier time to its current form
• research —gather material from outside sources about the subject, often with the implication or requirement that you will analyze what you have found

Relation words Ask you to demonstrate how things are connected.

• compare —show how two or more things are similar (and, sometimes, different)
• contrast —show how two or more things are dissimilar
• apply—use details that you’ve been given to demonstrate how an idea, theory, or concept works in a particular situation
• cause —show how one event or series of events made something else happen
• relate —show or describe the connections between things

Interpretation words Ask you to defend ideas of your own about the subject. Do not see these words as requesting opinion alone (unless the assignment specifically says so), but as requiring opinion that is supported by concrete evidence. Remember examples, principles, definitions, or concepts from class or research and use them in your interpretation.

• assess —summarize your opinion of the subject and measure it against something
• prove, justify —give reasons or examples to demonstrate how or why something is the truth
• evaluate, respond —state your opinion of the subject as good, bad, or some combination of the two, with examples and reasons
• support —give reasons or evidence for something you believe (be sure to state clearly what it is that you believe)
• synthesize —put two or more things together that have not been put together in class or in your readings before; do not just summarize one and then the other and say that they are similar or different—you must provide a reason for putting them together that runs all the way through the paper
• analyze —determine how individual parts create or relate to the whole, figure out how something works, what it might mean, or why it is important
• argue —take a side and defend it with evidence against the other side

More Clues to Your Purpose As you read the assignment, think about what the teacher does in class:

• What kinds of textbooks or coursepack did your instructor choose for the course—ones that provide background information, explain theories or perspectives, or argue a point of view?
• In lecture, does your instructor ask your opinion, try to prove their point of view, or use keywords that show up again in the assignment?
• What kinds of assignments are typical in this discipline? Social science classes often expect more research. Humanities classes thrive on interpretation and analysis.
• How do the assignments, readings, and lectures work together in the course? Instructors spend time designing courses, sometimes even arguing with their peers about the most effective course materials. Figuring out the overall design to the course will help you understand what each assignment is meant to achieve.

Now, what about your reader? Most undergraduates think of their audience as the instructor. True, your instructor is a good person to keep in mind as you write. But for the purposes of a good paper, think of your audience as someone like your roommate: smart enough to understand a clear, logical argument, but not someone who already knows exactly what is going on in your particular paper. Remember, even if the instructor knows everything there is to know about your paper topic, they still have to read your paper and assess your understanding. In other words, teach the material to your reader.

Aiming a paper at your audience happens in two ways: you make decisions about the tone and the level of information you want to convey.

• Tone means the “voice” of your paper. Should you be chatty, formal, or objective? Usually you will find some happy medium—you do not want to alienate your reader by sounding condescending or superior, but you do not want to, um, like, totally wig on the man, you know? Eschew ostentatious erudition: some students think the way to sound academic is to use big words. Be careful—you can sound ridiculous, especially if you use the wrong big words.
• The level of information you use depends on who you think your audience is. If you imagine your audience as your instructor and they already know everything you have to say, you may find yourself leaving out key information that can cause your argument to be unconvincing and illogical. But you do not have to explain every single word or issue. If you are telling your roommate what happened on your favorite science fiction TV show last night, you do not say, “First a dark-haired white man of average height, wearing a suit and carrying a flashlight, walked into the room. Then a purple alien with fifteen arms and at least three eyes turned around. Then the man smiled slightly. In the background, you could hear a clock ticking. The room was fairly dark and had at least two windows that I saw.” You also do not say, “This guy found some aliens. The end.” Find some balance of useful details that support your main point.

You’ll find a much more detailed discussion of these concepts in our handout on audience .

The Grim Truth

With a few exceptions (including some lab and ethnography reports), you are probably being asked to make an argument. You must convince your audience. It is easy to forget this aim when you are researching and writing; as you become involved in your subject matter, you may become enmeshed in the details and focus on learning or simply telling the information you have found. You need to do more than just repeat what you have read. Your writing should have a point, and you should be able to say it in a sentence. Sometimes instructors call this sentence a “thesis” or a “claim.”

So, if your instructor tells you to write about some aspect of oral hygiene, you do not want to just list: “First, you brush your teeth with a soft brush and some peanut butter. Then, you floss with unwaxed, bologna-flavored string. Finally, gargle with bourbon.” Instead, you could say, “Of all the oral cleaning methods, sandblasting removes the most plaque. Therefore it should be recommended by the American Dental Association.” Or, “From an aesthetic perspective, moldy teeth can be quite charming. However, their joys are short-lived.”

Convincing the reader of your argument is the goal of academic writing. It doesn’t have to say “argument” anywhere in the assignment for you to need one. Look at the assignment and think about what kind of argument you could make about it instead of just seeing it as a checklist of information you have to present. For help with understanding the role of argument in academic writing, see our handout on argument .

What kind of evidence do you need?

There are many kinds of evidence, and what type of evidence will work for your assignment can depend on several factors–the discipline, the parameters of the assignment, and your instructor’s preference. Should you use statistics? Historical examples? Do you need to conduct your own experiment? Can you rely on personal experience? See our handout on evidence for suggestions on how to use evidence appropriately.

Make sure you are clear about this part of the assignment, because your use of evidence will be crucial in writing a successful paper. You are not just learning how to argue; you are learning how to argue with specific types of materials and ideas. Ask your instructor what counts as acceptable evidence. You can also ask a librarian for help. No matter what kind of evidence you use, be sure to cite it correctly—see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial .

You cannot always tell from the assignment just what sort of writing style your instructor expects. The instructor may be really laid back in class but still expect you to sound formal in writing. Or the instructor may be fairly formal in class and ask you to write a reflection paper where you need to use “I” and speak from your own experience.

Try to avoid false associations of a particular field with a style (“art historians like wacky creativity,” or “political scientists are boring and just give facts”) and look instead to the types of readings you have been given in class. No one expects you to write like Plato—just use the readings as a guide for what is standard or preferable to your instructor. When in doubt, ask your instructor about the level of formality they expect.

No matter what field you are writing for or what facts you are including, if you do not write so that your reader can understand your main idea, you have wasted your time. So make clarity your main goal. For specific help with style, see our handout on style .

Technical details about the assignment

The technical information you are given in an assignment always seems like the easy part. This section can actually give you lots of little hints about approaching the task. Find out if elements such as page length and citation format (see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial ) are negotiable. Some professors do not have strong preferences as long as you are consistent and fully answer the assignment. Some professors are very specific and will deduct big points for deviations.

Usually, the page length tells you something important: The instructor thinks the size of the paper is appropriate to the assignment’s parameters. In plain English, your instructor is telling you how many pages it should take for you to answer the question as fully as you are expected to. So if an assignment is two pages long, you cannot pad your paper with examples or reword your main idea several times. Hit your one point early, defend it with the clearest example, and finish quickly. If an assignment is ten pages long, you can be more complex in your main points and examples—and if you can only produce five pages for that assignment, you need to see someone for help—as soon as possible.

Tricks that don’t work

Your instructors are not fooled when you:

• spend more time on the cover page than the essay —graphics, cool binders, and cute titles are no replacement for a well-written paper.
• use huge fonts, wide margins, or extra spacing to pad the page length —these tricks are immediately obvious to the eye. Most instructors use the same word processor you do. They know what’s possible. Such tactics are especially damning when the instructor has a stack of 60 papers to grade and yours is the only one that low-flying airplane pilots could read.
• use a paper from another class that covered “sort of similar” material . Again, the instructor has a particular task for you to fulfill in the assignment that usually relates to course material and lectures. Your other paper may not cover this material, and turning in the same paper for more than one course may constitute an Honor Code violation . Ask the instructor—it can’t hurt.
• get all wacky and “creative” before you answer the question . Showing that you are able to think beyond the boundaries of a simple assignment can be good, but you must do what the assignment calls for first. Again, check with your instructor. A humorous tone can be refreshing for someone grading a stack of papers, but it will not get you a good grade if you have not fulfilled the task.

Critical reading of assignments leads to skills in other types of reading and writing. If you get good at figuring out what the real goals of assignments are, you are going to be better at understanding the goals of all of your classes and fields of study.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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College education , life on campus, common problems when writing your assignments, editorial staff.

There are a lot of things that can lead to missing your deadlines when writing your college or university assignments. It is much harder to consistently work on a single project than your teachers would have you believe. It would get so stressful at times I used to pray that someone else can do the assignments I have to do assignments , I have to write my assignment.

So if you don’t wanna end up like those students who are begging the professor for an extension, here are a few problems you need to keep an eye out for. If not you might just get a handsome deduction for a late submission. Also, I’m not going to be talking about obvious things like procrastination or not making a schedule. These are problems that first-time assignment writers do not consider.

Writer’s Block

Yeah, you will get writer’s block as you work on your assignments. Just think about it, you’re trying to complete 2000 to 3000-word paper that all hinges on a single line, i.e. your thesis statement. That line is not going to offer you much when it comes to structuring your study and finding ways to write about the topic in an informative manner.

There will come times when you will feel stuck or that you are moving away from your research aims. When that happens, you have to stop yourself and take a few steps back so that you can center yourself before moving forward. Think about it, it can take up to a month to make an impressive academic assignment. You’re going to have a few times where you’re banging your head against the wall. Most of it will be from your fear and anxiety since you don’t want to mess it up. But now that you know that it happens, maybe you won’t freak out about it.

What Scheduling?

You might think that making a schedule and having an application on your phone might help, and to an extent, it does there are still a lot of problems you have to deal with. For one, you can’t just stop going to work for your assignment. The boss doesn’t care that you’re under a lot of stress, you need to do your job.

Also, we all have friends and social life so it is your responsibility to tell them no if you are falling behind. But how do you know that you’re falling behind…will always assume that you are. It is better to finish early, than being late since it gives you time to revise and edit your drafts. Just know that there will be days when you can’t work on your assignment, and other obligations will take priority no matter how good your schedule was.

Literature Betrayal

Has this ever happened to you? You had hand-picked all the studies and sources that you were going to use for your assignment. It was foolproof in your head, the studies were from a credible journal or online library and the information in the abstract matched your topic of research perfectly. Sadly, it can happen that you might be mistaken. It is often the case that the study you have selected is not a good fit for your research. You have to properly read through the paper to see if it is even talking about the problem you are discussing.

Imagine all that time you wasted thinking that you will use a study to provide an important point and now you can’t. Now you have to frantically search the internet, or any resource to find a study that meets your needs. Not only are things going to be uber stressful, but you are not put into a position where you might choose a subpar study just to not waste any more time.

I would not recommend that you do that, rather it is way better to ask for help at this point. So you can ask a friend or have the wonderful people at assignment labs create you a premium quality assignment in a few days.

This might not seem like a probable issue but it can happen that you forget the core argument of your thesis. It doesn’t seem professional if your assignment isn’t cohesive throughout. This often happens to people who don’t have a lot of experience writing long papers. A quick fix for this is to keep your research questions with you on a separate paper or on your phone as reminders of where your paper should go next.

The Supervisor Hasn’t Replied Yet

Your supervisor is supposed to help you by going over the drafts you send. And they are supposed to do that, but the reality is they are super busy. It is hard being a college/university professor. They have a lot on their plate and can easily miss an email or text from a student. Just imagine the number of emails and messages they get on the regular from how many students.

So relying on the supervisor too often leads students to waste a lot of time. But what can you do? Well if you want someone to have a look at your draft ask someone from your class who you think is a good student. If that isn’t something you feel comfortable with, you could always risk it can move forward with the draft or contact an online service that provides editing and proofreading like assignment labs. So there’s always the I have to do my assignments route .

Just remember don’t wait around for your supervisor to get back to you since you can always make changes to your current draft. Continue with the research just keep in mind that you may need to make slight changes later on.

Let me introduce you to Plagiarism

So well all understand what plagiarism means and want to avoid it. But for those students who want to add quotations and empirical statistics, this can be an issue. A lot of these details will show up as plagiarism and you may have to talk with your professor about what percentage is allowed. The green zone is often between 10 and 15%, so you have to keep your eye on that. The best way to overcome this issue is to learn the appropriate method of in-text citation in the format that your teacher specifies (you know APA, MLA, Harvard, etc.).

You could try simply paraphrasing the material but you still have to show where the original idea came from or offer evidence to support your argument. So there is no getting around learning how to properly cite your sources.

If you want to learn more about in-text citation, both direct and indirect, as well as how to master citation in the various formatting styles you can check our friends at assignment labs , they can help you get a better grasp on how to format your paper or to remove plagiarism.

These were some of the key things that you will come across as you start writing your academic assignment for college or university. Hopefully, now you’re better equipped mentally to deal with these challenges as they arrive. If not there is always the I have to write my assignments option we discussed at the start.

SEE ALSO: Dissertation Writing Techniques for College Students

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• Teaching Tips

Dealing With Students Missing Exams and In-Class Graded Assignments

Teachers often become more aware of students’ out-of-class activities than they might wish. Announcements and memos from the dean of students inform about sporting teams and their games and tournaments, forensics, service learning conferences, community-based work, and the like. And teachers quickly become familiar with student lifestyles and illnesses ¾ mono, strep throat, hangovers, the opening of deer and fishing seasons, quilting bees, family vacations, and their family mortality statistics. The relationship between exams and mandatory in-class work and the death of students’ cousins and grandparents is so high it should be a concern of the National Center for Disease Control. Given all this, it is a certainty that students will miss exams and other required activities. What is a teacher to do?

If you want to hear colleagues express frustration, ask them about make-up exams and assignments. Despite knowing intellectually that such absences will occur, teachers hope and pray, even in public institutions, that all of their students will take exams as scheduled. Alas, such prayers are rarely answered, and teachers are faced with the practical issues of keeping track of students who miss exams and assignments, as well as managing make-ups.

All of our advice, except that related to ethics, should be read through the filter of the type of institution where you teach, and the types of courses you teach and how large they are. For example, at a small liberal arts school, where teaching is a faculty member’s primary responsibility, more time may be spent with students who miss exams or assignments, and more creative (time consuming) alternatives may be practical as compared with someone teaching classes of 300 or 500 or more in a Research I institution.

Ethics Teachers are not to cause students harm; we must treat them fairly and equitably, and they must be allowed to maintain their dignity (Keith-Spiegel, Whitley, Balogh, Perkins, & Wittig, 2002). Whatever your procedures are for students who miss exams and required in-class work, they must be equitable, providing students equal chances to earn a good grade by demonstrating equal knowledge. The hard part may be balancing academic rigor and accountability for what students are to learn with a fair and manageable process for those who miss required exams and assignments.

Make-up Exams These should not be more difficult than the original test but must be, as best as you can design, alternate forms of the same exam. Exam banks that accompany texts make designing such alternate forms of multiple-choice tests relatively easy, and colleagues teaching two or more sections of the same course in a semester, who give alternate forms of exams, are often a good source of advice on this matter. Be thoughtful about the following:

• An essay make-up exam may be unethical if regular exams are multiple choice or short answer (or vice versa), since students must study differently and they may be more difficult.
• An oral exam may “punish” students who do not think well on their feet, or are more socially anxious.
• Scheduling make-up exams at inconvenient or undesirable times may express your frustration, but you or someone else will have to be there at the “inconvenient” time also, and such arrangements raise issues of foul play.
• It may be inequitable to students who meet all course requirements to allow their peers to do extra credit or drop their lowest grade instead of making up a missed exam.

In-class Assignments The same considerations exist for students who miss in-class required presentations, or other graded work. If possible, students who were to present should be given opportunities to make up the assignment using the same grading criteria.

Planning Ahead

Spell-out Missed Exam Procedure in Course Policies No matter how well you teach or what inducements or penalties you impose, some students will miss exams and required class activities. Good educational practice argues that you plan for this reality as you design your course, not two days before (or after) your first exam. You want as few surprises as possible once the course begins.

Put your policies in your syllabus. Have a section in your syllabus on exams and other graded work. Specify your policies and procedures if students know in advance they will be absent, or how to notify you if, for whatever reason, they were absent, and any effect, if any, absences will have on their grade.

Keep your policy clear and simple. Before finalizing your syllabus, ask a few students to read your make-up policy to determine if it can be easily understood. If your explanation of what students are to do in the case of missing an exam, and how their grade is affected, is not easily understood, revise it. In developing your policy, do you want students to:

• Notify you if they know they will miss, preferably at least 24 hours in advance, and give you the reason? Talking with you before or after class offers the best opportunity to provide feedback if the reason is questionable, to work out alternatives, and so forth. E-mail also can be useful.
• Notify you as soon as possible after missing an exam or required assignment and give the reason? Again, in person or e-mail work best.
• Present a letter from an authority (e.g., physician) documenting the reason? Keep in mind any student can “forge” such documentation or manipulate it in other ways, e.g., “Fred came to see me complaining of a severe headache.”
• Have their grades lowered if their absence is not “acceptable” (e.g., overslept versus seriously ill)? How will you decide what is acceptable? Our experience suggests that “legitimate” reasons for absence include, but are not limited to: illness of the student or a close relative, accident, court appearance, military duty, broken auto, hazardous weather, and university activities (e.g., athletics, forensics).

Policies should reflect the nature of the exam or graded assignment. If you are teaching an introductory course and each module largely stands alone, it may be appropriate for students to make up a missed exam late in the semester. But if you want students to demonstrate knowledge or competency on an exam or assignment because future course material builds on that which comes earlier, you want to give the students much less time to make up the missed work.

Common policies. A common procedure is for the teacher, teaching assistant, or departmental secretary to distribute and proctor make-up exams during prearranged times (Perlman&McCann, in press). You might also consider allowing students to take make-up exams during exam periods in other courses you are teaching.

Make your policies easy to implement. To maintain your sanity and keep your stress level manageable, you must be able to easily implement your policies. For example, even if you, a secretary, or a graduate student distribute and proctor make-up exams, problems can arise. For example:

• The secretary is ill or on vacation, or you are ill or have a conference to attend. You never want to change the time make-ups are available to students once these are listed in the course syllabus. Have backups available who know where make-up exams are stored, can access them, and can administer and proctor them.
• Too many students for the make-up space. Investigate room sizes and number of rooms available. You may need more than one room if some students have readers because of learning disabilities.
• Students often forget there is a common make-up the last week of the semester. Remind them often and announce this policy on class days when students are taking an exam, as this may be the only time some students who have missed a previous exam come to class.

Encourage appropriate, responsible, mature behaviors. Take the high road and let students know how they “should” behave. For example, one colleague includes this statement in the syllabus:

I expect students to make every effort to take required exams and make course presentations as scheduled. If you know in advance you will miss such a requirement, please notify me. If you are ill or other circumstances cause you to miss a required graded activity, notify me as soon as possible.

One of our colleagues states in her syllabus for a psychology of aging class, “It is very bad form to invent illnesses suffered by grandparents!” By giving students exemplars on how to behave appropriately, you can then thank them for their courtesy and maturity if they follow through, positively reinforcing such behaviors.

God lives in the details. Always err on the side of being “concrete.” If a make-up exam is at the university testing center, tell students where the testing center is. If you or a secretary hold make-up exams in an office, you may want to draw a map on how to get there. It is not uncommon for students to fail to find the office at the time of the exam, and wander around a large university building.

Students Who Miss Exams You have a variety of alternatives available on how to treat students who miss a scheduled exam. Select those that fit your course and the requirements of learning students must demonstrate.

Requiring make-up exams. If you collect all copies of your multiple choice or short answer exams, you may be able to use the same exam for make-ups. Our experience is that it is extremely rare that students deliberately miss an exam to have more time to study, whereas asking peers about specific exam questions more commonly occurs. Your experiences may be different. However, if you put exams on file at the university testing center, and students can take them weeks apart, you may want different forms. If you have concerns, you will need to prepare an equivalent, alternative form of the regular exam, as is often the case for essay tests.

Using procedures other than a make-up exam. Some faculty have students outline all text chapters required for an exam, use daily quiz scores to substitute for a missed exam, use the average of students’ exams to substitute for the one missed, score relevant questions on the comprehensive final to substitute for the missed test, or use a weighted score from the entire comprehensive final substituted for missed exam. Some teachers just drop one test grade without penalty (Buchanan&Rogers, 1990; Sleigh&Ritzer, 2001). Consider whether students will learn what you want from various alternatives and whether this work is equal to what students must demonstrate on exams before adopting such procedures. If your course contains numerous graded assignments of equal difficulty, and if it is equitable for students to choose to ignore a course module by not studying or taking the exam, you should consider this process.

Other teachers build extra credit into the course. They allow all students opportunities to raise their grades, offering a safety net of sorts for those who need to “make-up” a missed exam by doing “additional” assignments such as outlining unassigned chapters in the text.

Scheduling make-ups. Pick one or two times a week that are convenient for you, a department secretary, or teaching assistant, and schedule your make-ups then. Some faculty use a common time midway through the semester and at the end of the semester as an alternative.

Students Who Miss Other In-Class Assignments Allowing students to demonstrate learning on non-exam graded assignments can be tricky. Such assignments often measure different kinds of learning than exams: the ability to work in groups, critical thinking as demonstrated in a poster, or an oral presentation graded in part on professional use of language. But you do have some alternatives.

Keeping the required assignment the same. If the assignment is a large one and due near the end of the semester, consider using an “incomplete” grade for students who miss it. Alternatively, students can present their oral work or poster in another course you are teaching if the content is relevant and time allows it. The oral required assignment also can be delivered just to the teacher or videotaped or turned in on audiotape.

Alternative assignments. As with missed exams, you can weigh other assignments disproportionately to substitute for in-class graded work — by doubling a similar assignment if you have more than one during the semester, for example. The dilemma, of course, is not allowing students easy avenues to avoid a required module or assignment without penalty. For example, oral assignments can be turned in as written work, although this may negate some of the reasons for the assignment.

When we asked colleagues about alternatives for missed in-class graded assignments (as compared with exams), almost everyone cautioned against listing them in the course syllabus. They felt that students could then weigh the make-up assignment versus the original and choose the one that gave them the greatest chance of doing well, and also the least amount of anxiety (in-class presentations often make students nervous). They recommended simply telling students that arrangements would be made for those missing in-class required graded work on a case-by-case basis.

Students Who Miss the “Make-Up” On occasion, students will miss a scheduled make-up. Say something about this event in your syllabus, emphasizing the student’s responsibility to notify the instructor. We recommend that instructors reserve the right to lower a student’s grade by “x” number of points, or “x” letter grades. If you place exams at a university testing center, you may not find out the work has not been made up until the course is over, leaving you little choice but to give the student an “F” on that exam or assignment.

When the Whole Class Misses a Required Exam or Assignment On rare, but very memorable, occasions the entire class may miss an exam or assignment. For example, both authors have had the fire alarm go off during an exam. After a bomb threat cleared the building during his exam, the campus police actually contacted one author to identify whether a person caught on camera at a service station was a student calling in the bomb scare. (It was not.) The other author experienced the bomb squad closing a classroom building during finals week due to the discovery of old, potentially explosive, laboratory chemicals. Of course, the blizzard of the century or a flood might occur the night before your exam. What is a teacher to do?

The exam or graded assignment must be delayed. Prepare beforehand. Always build a make-up policy into your syllabus for the last exam or student presentation in a course. Talk with your department chair or dean about college or university policy. State that if weather or other circumstances force a make-up, it will occur at a certain time and place. This forethought is especially important if you teach at a northern institution where bad winter weather is not unusual. For exams and assignments during the semester, the policy that works best is to reschedule them (again, stating this in your syllabus) for the next regular class period. Call attention to this policy early in the semester, and post it on your course Web site. The last thing you want to do is call or e-mail everyone in the class to tell them an exam has been cancelled.

An exam or graded assignment is interrupted. Graded assignments such as oral presentations are easily handled. If time allows, continue after the interruption; if not, continue the next class period or during your designated “make-up” time.

If something interrupts an exam, ask students to leave their exams and answers on their desks or hand them in to you, take all personal materials, and leave immediately. A teacher can easily collect everything left in most classes in a few moments. Leave materials on desks if the class is large, or be the first person back to the room after the interruption. Fire alarms, bomb scares, and the like usually cause a lot of hubbub. Only if you have a lengthy two- or three-hour class, with time to allow students to collect themselves and refocus, and no concern about their comparing answers to questions during the delay, should the exam be continued that same day or evening.

If the interruption occurs late in the class period, you might tell students to turn in their work as they leave. You can then determine how you want to grade exams or the assignment, using pro-rated points or percentages, and assign grades accordingly.

If the interruption is earlier in the hour, the exam will have to be delayed, usually until the next class period. With a multiple-choice exam, we advise giving students the full (next) class period to finish their exams. If you are concerned about students comparing questions they have already answered, you will have to quickly develop an alternate exam.

A teacher’s decisions are more complicated if the exam is short answer or essay. Students may have skimmed all essay or short answer questions before an interruption. Will they prepare for those questions before the next class period? What if some students only read the first essay question but do not know the others they must answer? Preparing an alternate exam may be feasible, but students need to know you will do so, so they do not concentrate their studying on specific topics you will not ask about.

We know that such class interruptions are rare, but they can wreak havoc with students and teachers, be stressful, and raise issues of fairness that echo throughout the rest of the course. We advise teachers to talk with colleagues, and we have found a department brown bag on the topic fascinating. Your colleagues may have some creative and sound advice.

Summary A teacher needs to plan ahead. Take some time to think about what it means for you and students who miss required in-class work. A little preparation can save a lot of time and hassle later in the semester. Students deserve and will appreciate policies that are equitable and manageable.

Author’s Note: The authors are interested how teachers deal with missed or interrupted graded in-class work (and their horror stories). Contact us with your ideas and experiences at [email protected] .

References and Recommended Reading

• Buchanan, R. W., & Rogers, M. (1990). Innovative assessment in large classes. College Teaching, 38 , 69-74.
• Carper, S. W. (1995). Make-up exams: What’s a professor to do? Journal of Chemical Education, 72 , 883.
• Davis, B. G. (1993). Tools for teaching . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Keith-Spiegel, P., Whitley, B.G. E. Jr., Balogh, D. W., Perkins, D. V., & Wittig, A. F. (2002). The ethics of teaching: A casebook (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
• McKeachie, W. J. (2001). Teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers (11th ed.) Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Nilson, L. B. (2003). Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors (2nd ed). Bolton, MA: Anker.
• Perlman, B., & McCann, L. I. (in press). Teacher evaluations of make-up exam procedures. Psychology Learning and Teaching, 3 (2).
• Sleigh, M. J., & Ritzer, D. R. (2001). Encouraging student attendance. APS Observer, 14 (9), pp. 19-20, 32.

Do you know of any research related to taking points off an exam for students who take a make-up for whatever reason? It is mentioned in this article but I’m interested in evidence to back up that it is fair and/or punitive in a college setting with adult learners. Thank you. Gerri Russell, MS, RN

I teach introductory nutrition and other biology classes. If a student can prove that they missed an exam or assignment for a verifiable reason, even if they let me know ahead of time (usually technology related reasons), I let them make it up without taking points off. If they can’t prove it I take off points as follows: 10% off per day late during the first week after the assignment is due. Half credit earned after that. Even if they know there are always students who just miss things for no apparent good reason. I feel like this is fair because it gives them the responsibility for making it up, and I’d rather people become familiar with the material, rather than just not do it at all.

I think that the mid semester tests must be abolished from all colleges/universities in order to let them prepare for the final exams without any pressure of getting grades,this will not give rise to any decompetition then,so I personally feel that my suggestion will be very useful I want everyone to obey that

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About the Author

BARON PERLMAN is editor of "Teaching Tips." A professor in the department of psychology, distinguished teacher, and University and Rosebush Professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh in the department of psychology, he has taught psychology for 29 years. He continues to work to master the art and craft of teaching. LEE I. MCCANN is co-editor of "Teaching Tips." A professor in the department of psychology and a University and Rosebush Professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, he has taught psychology for 38 years. He has presented numerous workshops on teaching and psychology curricula, his current research interests.

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Your Child Failing College, What To Do Next: Expert Guide

I’ve been working with college students who have done poorly or failed since 2001, and I’ve learned that many parents are unsure of what to do when their child begins to have problems. This guide represents many lessons learned about how to handle the situation, and while it can’t cover all situations, it will hopefully help parents to get an idea of the process of helping their son or daughter get back on track. It can be an emotional and stressful time helping a child who has not done well, so if you have any questions please feel free to contact me at any time (see the menu link or below).

1. Assess The Damage

Many parents I’ve spoken with over the years have the initial reaction of shock or even despair when hearing that their child was having academic problems in college. After getting over this jolt, parents need to understand exactly what damage has been done. Generally speaking, if a student fails a class, parents don’t take it as a sign of overall problems that need addressed. It’s usually when the student is assigned a negative status at their college that they start to take it seriously. The common statuses, with each having their own level of severity, are:

• Academic probation: Students placed on academic probation are essentially being given a warning (in fact, at some colleges they call actually call this “academic warning”). This happens when a student’s GPA drops below a satisfactory level, usually a 2.0. Students on probation can continue to attend classes, but they now have some limitations or additional requirements to meet. For example, they may not be able to take certain classes, or may have to meet with an Advisor. But at some large colleges the student may be not have any limits at all. I’ve spoken with large schools where not only was the student not required to see an Advisor, they didn’t even keep a list of who was on probation.
• Academic Suspension: This is when a student must leave campus for a period of time, and they are not allowed to take classes there. Colleges vary regarding the terms and timeframes of suspension. Some say that the student cannot return for one term, two terms, or even an entire calendar year. For taking classes, some schools say that the student can still take their online courses or courses at another college, but others say that they will not accept credits at all for courses taken during suspension. Strengthening academic weaknesses during time away from their home school can be an important goal, but if your child is at a school that stipulates that they cannot take classes during suspension their skills may just weaken.
• Academic Dismissal: Under academic dismissal , a student is essentially expelled from the student body. They may no longer attend classes, cannot live in school housing, and lose all privileges of being a student at that college. Dismissal is permanent, but this can be relative for some colleges since they will reconsider them at some later point. However, this may be five to ten years from the date of dismissal, which effectively locks them out of that college during traditional college age.

2. Protect Your Child’s GPA

The grade point average (GPA) is the golden ticket for higher education. If a student wants to transfer, apply to a program at their school, go on to graduate studies, or even get a good job after college it’s the GPA that is the metric used. Many students who fail one or more classes automatically want to re-take them, or try to catch up by adding more classes to their schedule. Both of these can often contribute to their continuing to have problems, so try to resist these knee-jerk reactions and encourage your child to not just jump back in without understanding what happened.

There are some situations where some bad grades can be corrected , but these can be rare and hard to obtain.

• Appeals: Often it’s a student’s first reaction to want to appeal one or more bad grades, but this usually turns out to be unproductive. Individual course grade appeals are hard to win, since the school’s criteria usually includes that the Professor miscalculated the grade or showed bias against the student (which the student must prove). Appealing a suspension decision may work if the student can show a good reason for bad the grades, but the academic failures usually just repeat because they aren’t solving the problems that lead to bad grades.
• Grade Forgiveness Programs: Most colleges have some form of grade forgiveness, like the ability to repeat a class and have a grade replaced. Some larger colleges have a one-time grade amnesty, where a certain amount of bad grades can be forgiven. Again, even with grade amnesty or forgiveness, it doesn’t solve the problems that caused the bad grades in the first place, so they just tend to repeat without corrective efforts.
• Medical Conditions and GPA: Some colleges will consider allowing the student to withdraw from the class after an established date if they had a medical condition of some kind affect them during their studies. In this case, especially after that term has ended, the school will require documentation of the problem, a detailed explanation, or other information from the student. In this instance it’s best to work with a professional experienced with such processes since they can only be requested once, and the college can say no.

Do you have questions? Feel free to use the contact form to ask Jeff.

3. Talk With The School About Their Failure

You should make an effort to talk with the college about your child’s situation. Some schools will not want to speak with parents at all, while others can be surprisingly receptive. Smaller colleges tend to be more open to parents, while larger colleges may only give you the bureaucratic run-around. Gather more information about your son or daughter’s academic status , like probation or suspension, and clarify any stipulations or requirements the school sets for such students. Also ask about any opportunities to address bad grades, like forgiveness or amnesty programs. If you child did have a medical condition during their attendance, also ask about opportunities to correct any grades since it adversely affected their studies.

For speaking with colleges, there are usually certain offices or individuals that you can focus on:

• The Dean of the college in charge of the program you child is in. For example, if they are a history major, this is likely in the college of Arts & Sciences, which will have its own Dean.
• The Provost is in charge of overall operations at a college, and often the student body itself. While they may not be the decision maker in the situation, they can be a great resource.
• Academic Advising departments can be helpful for describing requirements for probation and suspension programs. They can let you know who the decision makers are for the processes.
• Enrollment Management departments are essentially student retention offices, whose role is to make sure students enrolled and actively attending classes. They can be very helpful in finding ways to help the student since their goal is to help them to stay enrolled.

Some topics to ask about:

Are there academic accommodations my child can receive?

• If a student has or is diagnosed with a disability during college, they may be eligible to receive academic accommodations. This includes extra time when taking tests and testing in a distraction free environment, which are the two most common. Access to Professor lecture notes, student note takers, the ability to record lectures, and many other things that help the students may be available to them as well. Students even receive priority course registration, 100% additional time to take exams, or preferential dormitory assignments.

Ask about grade forgiveness options.

• As I mentioned above, there are a variety of grade forgiveness options offered by colleges in the U.S., and each college is different in terms what they might offer their students. Be sure to ask about the types of options offered, and especially be careful with forgiveness programs for many bad grades. Typically the student can request this only once, so be sure your child is ready to resume their studies. These kinds of forgiveness options do not correct the problems that caused bad grades, so be sure that you have supports in place to ensure their future success.

Ask about a medical leave of absence or medical withdrawal.

• Some colleges will actually encourage a student to take a medical leave or medical withdraw, but be aware that there are two important connotations to this. One type is used for a specific semester, and may even be granted retroactively to eliminate bad grades for a specific term. The second type is not for just a term, but from the college itself. This then means that the student may not longer be enrolled at that school and later must re-apply.

Ask about campus resources, but students may not use them.

• At the first sign of problems, colleges refer students to their own tutoring, writing, or counseling centers. In reality, failing students say they do not like to use them, for various of reasons. Tutoring centers are usually staffed by students not Instructors, and counseling centers typically only offer a handful of sessions or may be staffed by student interns. Failing students also say that they feel self-conscious seeking help from their school, as if their Professors or classmates are going to find out they’re having problems. But still ask about these services as part of a good faith effort to collaborate with the school.

Ask about private resources, since they are usually bring better results.

• Failing students say they are far more likely to seek private help, so definitely ask the school about any private help sources they know about. Some colleges actually maintain a list of private services that help students, but these are typically small, private colleges that do not have their own tutoring centers. In comparison to school-based services, private ones can offer more comprehensive approaches, like integrated models that use student coaching, skills building, academic Advising, transfer searches, and even referrals for medical evaluations.

4. Avoid Bad Information And Advice

When it comes to helping a child having problems in college, what you don’t do is just as important as what you do. There is so much bad information out there that it’s easy to get off track (always keep in mind that search engines do not prioritize results based who is qualified to write about a topic). Information you find in parent forums, major newspapers, or advice you get from general sites easily take you in the wrong direction. Always keep in mind when trying to find help or decide what to do, that it is your child’s future on the line, so it’s education and experience with the subject matter that counts most. As a colleague of mine at Rutgers put it, “there are no do-overs in college,” have to get it right.

In light of the bad advice that is out there, it’s best to resist the following reactions:

• Rush to appeal. Even if you win the appeal, the student will likely just repeat the bad grades again because the causative issues have not been addressed. This then risks repeated failure that can lead to academic suspension or dismissal, the latter of which may lock the student out of the college system for years.
• Threaten to send your child to the military so they can “learn self-discipline.” They will simply lose this externally enforced discipline when they return to the independent, self-driven environment of college. Put simply, military attendance won’t solve academic problems.
• Instantly pull them out of school and send them in to the “real world” to work a low paying job so they can learn the value of a college degree. This may teach them nothing but how great it is to have some money and no homework while they enjoy living at home. The same is true for a gap year or abroad experience, there is no guarantee they will gain maturity, but a 100% certainty is that what academic skills they have will weaken from being out of the classroom.
• Have them immediately transfer to another college, because most likely the problems will repeat because they were never addressed in the first place, this includes Community Colleges.
• Have them apply as a freshman at a different college while concealing the fact that they attended elsewhere. Once a student attends any post secondary placement, and “attempts” a class, they are considered a transfer not freshman applicant. Colleges have become very serious about this in the last decade, and the student can be expelled if they are caught.
• Expect the college’s staff or centers to help them if they are failing. Some colleges actually instruct their success program staff to “coach out” weak students to make way for new ones. I was at a conference last year where staff from a large football college in the south gave a presentation that included this strategy.
• Let your child fail because you feel it will teach them a valuable “life lesson.” This is probably the worst offender of this list, since many failures are preventable, and your child’s transcript can be damaged irreparably.

5. Intervene, Since College Failure Usually Does Not Solve Itself

Experts know that there can be many possible reasons for a child is failing in college, ranging from a poor choice of college or major to skills issues, hidden medical problems, and others. Ask your child about the problems they’re experiencing, then talk with a professional who can assess exactly what the issues are. Your son or daughter might be having common problems, or they may be experiencing ones that you were not aware of. College failure can repeat itself , so focus on identifying the problems to permanently solve them, which is the right strategy for their overall success.

Prior to working full-time with college students I was the Director of a large center where we designed interventions for several hundred students each year. The best interventions for college students address all of the primary and secondary contributing factors that lead to the bad grades, and are both multi-systemic and multi-modal in nature. Successful intervention is critical because not only is the student’s future is at stake, parents run out of tuition funds with prolonged attendance, and repeated failures can cause a cumulative GPA to be so low that simply cannot be raised enough.

Common aspects of intervention for college failure include:

Interpersonal

• Earning poor grades in college can take a huge toll on students. It can hurt their self-esteem, make them lose their motivation, or even cause a loss of meaning for why they are doing the work. They may begin to conceal the reality of their situation, tell their parents everything is fine, and not tell anyone about the problem. Students may even begin to actively hide or conceal grades from their parents, avoid Professors, stop going to class, and begin a downward spiral in their academic lives. Some students at large colleges report feeling alienated from their classmates and are often overlooked by the school, and intervention must consider all of these aspects.

Academic & Educational Supports

• Academic interventions for failing students must be one of the primary focuses of efforts to help them find success, since college failure is by definition an academic problem, not one that can be solved via the healthcare system. Many students who enter college believe they already have the skills they need to succeed, and parents often agree with this because the student did well in high school. But they quickly learn that the skill sets needed to succeed in those two systems are different. Students may not have truly acquired the abilities they thought, and failure is not solely due to an increased level of difficulty for their courses. Learning how to work independently in the unstructured college environment can pose one of the biggest challenges to students who are working below their potential.

Medical Aspects

• In order for intervention to be successful, any outstanding medical issues must be concurrently addressed. A study by the American College Health Association showed that college students experience anxiety and depression at much higher rates than their non-school peers, presumably due to the pressures of academics. This can exacerbate any pre-existing problems the student entered college with, and there can also be a type of “reactive” depression from getting bad grades. Other conditions such as attentional issues, executive function deficiencies, and learning disorders must be considered since the student can request academic accommodations to help them to succeed in their classes. In the case of emergent conditions, a student may need to be evaluated by healthcare professional to detect the presence of issues that might be interfering with their studies.

College Choice

• There is a faulty belief that any student can function well at any college, and in human terms this is simply not true. No person can function equally well in all environments, and this is especially true when it comes to academics. The type and size of the college, the student’s major, and many other factors will all be important for their being successful in higher education. For example, students graduate at far lower rates at large colleges, but do much better at smaller ones. Not all students can handle majors like engineering or computer science, and if the student is in an environment that is not conducive to learning or has a major that just doesn’t fit them, these will work against them and affect their grades.

Effectiveness Of Intervention

• Effective intervention for students having problems in college has some key characteristics. It is knowledge-driven, and is based on what is known to work when helping students. This can be at the individual level, such as medication intervention to help them to overcome the impact of a condition on their studies, but concurrent academic interventions to build skills or strengthen weak areas may also be needed. Effective intervention is enacted by professionals, those who have both educational credentials in relevant fields as well as experience helping students in similar situations. While it can be easy to find practitioners like psychologists and psychiatrists, it can be much harder to find college professionals who have an integrated background that incorporates a graduate level of education with college Advising, student success efforts, and experience working with students at a variety of colleges. This latter integrated approach, however, has proven the most effective and an essential part of helping students to be successful.

6. Find Professional Help When Needed

It can be very difficult for parents when their child is not successful in college. What I’ve heard most from parents is that self-intervention typically doesn’t work, and they said their child tuned them out, didn’t respond, or that it even caused friction in their relationship. I had one parent tell me recently that my intervening with her daughter actually helped her , the mother, since it removed the conflict they had. Many parents reach a point where they just can’t do it themselves, either due to relationship dynamics, or because they lack the expertise. With college costs rising , and graduation times increasing, and the benefits of graduation still being clear it’s important to do what is needed for students to earn their degree. There are many professionals who could possibly help, and I’ve explained these roles repeatedly over the years I’ve worked with students. Understanding what these various professionals do can help you to focus on what you feel your child needs.

Common help sources for college students include:

College Services

• Colleges offer a variety of services meant to help their students. These include learning centers that offer tutoring and writing help, as well as many others. Academic Advisors can help students when planning educational pathways, but do not intervene to help students with bad grades. Tutoring or writing services are usually on a drop-in basis, and students must be willing to use them. College counseling centers can offer emotional support, but are usually limited in scope since they are not a substitute for private treatment or therapy. The rule for all college services is that students must actively seek them out, colleges will not send staff to help your child if they are failing classes, stop attending classes, or otherwise not doing what is required to pass their courses.

Counselors & Psychotherapists

• The term “counselor” is generic and means one who can provide talk therapy, and the terms counseling and “psychotherapy” are used interchangeably. There are often graduate level counselors or therapists available at college counseling centers, or they can be sought privately, and provide support to students for emotional or mental issues. These are considered to be healthcare practitioners, and typically do not provide direct educational support to help students succeed in their classes. If the counselor is at a school’s counseling center, they will typically refer the student to the learning center for academic support. Counselors and therapists can help with the mental and emotional aspects of college attendance, like stress, and play a role in treating conditions like anxiety, depression, and others.

Psychologists

• Psychologists can provide psychotherapy, and many do this on a routine basis. However, their specialty is the ability to perform is in-depth diagnostic testing. They are able to use such testing to diagnose learning disabilities, attentional issues, cognitive processing disorders, and neuropsychological testing can help to disentangle the nuances between subtle conditions. Psychologists are also healthcare practitioners, and typically do not help student directly with academic support. They can also recommend accommodations for students attending college with a disability, which may be required to receive things like extra time for exams at a college.

Psychiatrists

• Psychiatrists are physicians, trained as medical doctors first and foremost, then they further obtain a specialty in psychiatry. They specialize in pharmacotherapy, or medication treatment, and will evaluate a patient during the first meeting then determine a course of treatment for them to try. Usually the student will be asked to try the medication on a trial basis of four to six weeks, buy may try additional medications to find the optimal effect for their patient. Psychiatrist are healthcare practitioners, and in addition to medication some will do psychotherapy with their patients. Psychiatrists do not conduct educational interventions of any kind and do not work with students to help them succeed classes.

Integrated Professionals

• There are some professionals that have an integrated background of all the key areas above, and specialize in helping students who are failing or have failed in college. These practitioners have graduate backgrounds in fields that allow them to understand student challenges, effective learning, and can teach students to be successful in their courses. They may also be qualified as college Advisors , experienced with academic probation and suspension, as well as getting re-started after dismissal or finding a new college after a student has failed. They often run specialty programs that work directly with parents and students to help them to regain their academic pathway. Unlike many of the above, they offer educational services and work directly with students during their active classes to succeed. However, they are far less common than those above, since it takes many years of training and experience to achieve such dual expertise.

7. Develop A Corrective Plan To Address The Failure

Once you’ve considered all of the above information, it’s time to get together a plan to get your student back on track. Always remember that it is your child who is at risk, and not to put their future in the hands of a school. Colleges usually give the same answer that “it’s up to the student to avail themselves of the resources” that they offer, but this only means that they expect the student to help themselves out of the problems. Of course, this is unrealistic when a student is failing, since they can often become paralyzed after earning bad grades. As parents you must remember to be the adults in the situation, and recognize that a student may shut down, avoid, or even stop communicating in the face of such problems. Students will need a plan to get back on track, whether it means at their school or another, because repeated failures will prevent them from ever graduating. Keep in mind that in certain cases of probation or suspension, a college may actually ask for a written plan of action from the student, so the below points can help with both an informal and formal action plan.

Among many possible elements, the plan should include at least:

Why the problems occurred.

• Understand, in detail, why the problems occurred is a key part of preventing them from happening again, and a precise identification of the issues will allow them to be more accurately targeted. Broad statements like the student “lacked maturity” or “didn’t care enough” are not specific enough to intervene. Examples of more concrete terms are “only studied three hours for an exam, but should have spent eight or more hours,” or “should have clarified instructions for paper with a Professor, which affected the quality of the end product” are much more specific and show the elements of why problems happened. If needed for a school, this lessons learned analysis shows an increase in maturity on the student’s part, and a good description of the problems is important especially when the plan is requested for a re-admission decision.

What they will do to improve their grades.

• What the student will do differently in order to succeed is an important consideration for an improvement plan, and what is included will depend the student’s circumstances. For example, some students may include only educational actions, like getting help from a TA or Professor, while other students may have treatment elements like seeing a counselor or receiving medication. The same rule of specificity applies, and statements like “I’ll try harder” do not identify exactly what they’ll do. Specific actions like going to Professor office hours three times a week, using the learning center as needed, and attending review sessions are all more concrete statements about what the student will do to improve. Even private supports like working with an academic coach or consultant should be included in the plan, and I’ve been part of many action plans for students at a variety of colleges.

How they will prevent a recurrence of the problem.

• This section mirrors the one above, but focuses on preventative measures. If a student found themselves overcommitted during the term, they might reconsider participating in things outside of their classes like sports, greek life, or other non-class activities. They may also include proactive aspects like using a planner, reaching out early for help, and following up on any bad grades to discover the mistakes that they made. Some students may be required to meet with an academic Advisor during the term, while other colleges require students to take a success course to meet the terms of being on probation. Again, if the plan is to be submitted to a college, be as specific as possible.

Parental support for the whole process.

• Most of the student’s I’ve worked with could not have been successful in their efforts to improve had their parents not been supportive in all ways. Some parents want to be absolutely certain that their child gets back on track for college, or they recognize that the student is in a “last chance” situation that merits a higher level of concern. For example, at the time of writing this, I am working with a senior at Harvard who returned after academic suspension and had only has two terms left to go. His parents wanted to be absolutely certain that he graduates, so they got a plan together that included arranging supports ahead of time, which included my helping him. He finished this this past fall semester with two A’s and two B+’s, a critical win for him since he was under probationary status after returning. He now turned in his senior thesis this term, and now only has six weeks left before graduating. It is this type of parental support, both emotionally and in other ways, that shows what parents must do after their child has failed in college.

Are you a parent and need help with your son or daughter in college? Jeff will be happy to talk with you to see if he can help.

If you have questions, please use the contact form , and also see our program page for more information about how we help students.

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How to Never Miss an Assignment Again

Never miss an assignment again.

That which you had been dreading has happened. You either completely forgot about an assignment that was due or wasn’t able to finish and turn it in on time. While missing an assignment is something most college students are bound to face in a certain point of their academic trajectory, it can be a very unpleasant experience which can result in several complications with your marks in a specific subject. The best thing would indeed be not having to go through it.

However, with so many things going on at the same time, so many tests to revise for and a ton of other assignments due as well, it may often seem like science-fiction to be able to have everything prepared on time. True, it may be difficult, but it’s not impossible. In this article, we will give you some useful tips to help you organize yourself better and, as we say in Spain, “not get caught by the bull”… again.

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Let’s state the most important thing first, and that is

Forgive yourself. Regardless of the circumstances why you weren’t able to hand in your assignment on time. Acknowledging you’ve made a mistake and that you need to correct it is the first step towards improvement. Come to terms with what has happened and then let go; after all, there’s no use in torturing yourself over what you could have done differently once you can’t do anything else about it.

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Speak to your professor

If you weren’t able to complete your assignment because you or someone in your family have had a health-related problem, teachers are more likely to put themselves in your place and give you a chance to compensate for the mishap. Also, if you or one of your relatives have been ill, ask the doctor for a medical letter to show to your professor and prove that you’re not just making up an excuse.

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There’s (almost) nothing a good dialogue can’t solve

Even if you’ve missed your assignment deadline because you prioritized other things or simply because you procrastinated too much, talk to your lecturer if there’s anything else you could do in order not to fail the subject. Perhaps for this class, they’ll be taking the final exam’s marks more into account; or there are other assignments which would give you a good opportunity to make up for the incident. Keep in mind, however, that every professor is a world of their own. Just because Professor X told you that you could do a paper about tropical fish to compensate for the missed assignment doesn’t mean that Professor Y is willing to give you that chance. And furthermore, don’t try to have your way at all costs: if your professor says that there are no more opportunities, accept that no means no.

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Don’t let it happen again!

Whenever one of your professors proposes a new paper to turn in or a new project to present, take good note of it in your calendar or agenda so that you make sure not to forget about it and end up having the deadline catching up with you. Once you have the date in which your assignment is due in mind, you can start preparing it with enough anticipation.

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Get to work!

Go to your college or local library and start gathering the materials necessary for completing your project/assignment: read books, look up information online, take notes, write up some drafts… Of course, you don’t need to work yourself to death in a matter of a few days, on the contrary: dedicate every day a little time to your task, even if it isn’t more than an hour. If you start gathering up information and writing a couple of paragraphs since the very first day, you’ll see how you’ll have it done in time!

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“I’m stuck?! Help, please!”

Is your assignment topic too complicated? You don’t even know where to start? Are you at a total loss? Don’t worry we all have been there. If you see yourself struggling with your assignment, you can always ask your professor your doubts or request for a tutorship. If you address them in a polite manner and they see you truly interested in your work, they won’t refuse. Another tip that always helps is regularly attending your lectures: more often than not, your professors may drop little hints about what they’re looking for in an assignment… or even in the final exam! You can also resort to asking around your circle of college friends for some solidarity between partners. Keep in mind that at least two heads think more than one!

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If you follow these tips, you’ll see how you won’t miss another assignment again during your college years. But even if missing an assignment is not a very nice experience, think that you’re also a human after all and that it is impossible not to make a single mistake every now and then. Furthermore, there is always a valuable lesson to be learned from our slip-ups.

Do you think there are any other pieces of advice that should be taken into account for not missing your assignments’ and projects’ deadlines? If so, feel welcome to share them with us in the comment section.

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College Campus Protests: What Students Should Know Before Taking Action

Before demonstrating, students should learn their rights, understand campus policies and consider potential consequences.

Protesting on Campus: What to Know

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There are limitations, and sometimes punitive consequences – if laws or campus policies are broken – for participating in protests.

Key Takeaways

• Public schools, but not private ones, are bound by the First Amendment.
• Students should know their rights and campus policies before protesting.
• Legal or institutional consequences can occur if laws or campus policies are violated.

Student activism has been prominent on college campuses across the U.S. for generations, from the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War decades ago to more recent protests surrounding Black Lives Matter, the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the latest war between Israel and Hamas.

"Campuses have traditionally been places where there is free exchange of ideas, the unfettered pursuit of the truth and an encouragement of students to be engaged in public discourse," says Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, an organization focused on advancing equity within higher education.

However, there are limitations, and sometimes punitive consequences – if laws or campus policies are broken – for participating in protests. Here's what college students should know about engaging in rallies, sit-ins and other on-campus protests.

Protesting on a Public vs. Private College Campus

Public universities are bound by the First Amendment – which protects freedom of speech and the right to peacefully assemble – while private institutions are not, experts say.

"Unless there is a relevant state law, private colleges and universities can have whatever protest policies they want, including prohibiting all protests if that's their decision," says Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

"Now, most private colleges adopt free expression principles that at least approximate the standards of the First Amendment. But it's important to know that those are not generally enforceable. So if they decide that they don't like the direction of a particular protest movement, they can change those rules."

Because of this, those attending private colleges in particular need to refer to their student handbook and understand their campus' time, place and manner rules.

"Even for speech that is permitted, it's not permitted at all times and in all places," Wizner says. "That's because colleges have to function, people have to get in and out of buildings, people have to use libraries. Almost every school will have a rule that prohibits the kind of encampments or building takeovers that we've seen" with the protests related to the Israel-Hamas war. "Nonetheless, I wouldn't tell a student not to do that. I would just make sure they understand that doing so is civil disobedience. It's likely to escalate the response."

The Do's and Don'ts of Protesting

Students protest to "raise awareness and push for change on issues they feel are being overlooked or mismanaged by those in power, especially after going through the expected avenues have failed," Stephanie Hall, senior director for higher education policy at the Center for American Progress, an independent policy institute based in Washington, D.C., wrote in an email. "This could include concerns over social justice, human rights, the environment or internal issues around campus policies or administrative decisions."

However, before participating, it's important to have a plan as "well organized logistics decrease the chances of unsafe situations cropping up," she says.

"Know the cause," Hall adds. "Be informed about the issue, goals and demands of the protest."

During a demonstration, students should be peaceful and nondisruptive, abstain from violence and not resist arrest – if it comes to that, says Zach Greenberg, senior program officer and a First Amendment attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit organization focused on protecting free speech on college campuses.

Not resisting arrest is a hallmark of engaging in civil disobedience – violating a law or policy in peaceful protest and accepting the consequences.

"Document everything with, usually, a cellphone ," says Greenberg, who is also FIRE's student association counsel. "Just put a video on your recording device. That can be a really good tool in the case they are facing university discipline."

Students should "know their rights, know the limits of what they can do, what they can't do and adhere to those limits," Greenberg says.

Pasquerella advises against making unconditional, nonnegotiable demands and being unwilling to "listen critically and with understanding to all sides of an issue. Because if you don't do that, you'll never move the needle. ... We all have to come to situations of protest, no matter what side we are on, in good faith and with the willingness to engage in humanistic identification."

Students also need to be mindful of outside agitators and "the dangers of ideological filtering," she adds. "And the messages that they are getting from certain groups and not have their movements be co-opted by extremists ... They need to speak up forcefully against any messages of hate, of violence that are being put out there by those who are supposedly their allies. In the past, it may have been easier to distinguish who your allies were and who your enemies were."

Other Considerations to Weigh Before Protesting

Presence of social media.

Compared to protests in past generations, many people today have access to smartphones. This means videos and pictures can be posted on social media or online in a blink of an eye, which comes with both advantages and downsides, experts say.

"College students today are living in a sort of merciless world where what they do is permanently recorded and available to anyone and searchable for all time," Wizner says. "And that may bear on the kind of decisions and risks that some young people want to make."

Potential Institutional and Legal Consequences

Colleges can shut down protests and punish students – either through suspension or expulsion – in cases of civil disobedience, which occurs when students willingly violate university policies, disrupt campus or commit any acts of violence.

Legally, college students are considered adults, so fines or arrests can occur if laws are broken. Depending on the circumstances, the legal consequences of peaceful civil disobedience are typically not severe, Wizner says.

"You may spend half a day in jail or overnight if you get arrested at night," he says. "You are likely to have a court appearance where the charges are dropped, provided that you don't re-offend or get arrested again in the next six months. That's not a guarantee and of course it depends what you are arrested for. The consequences may be different for breaking a window and entering a building at night than they are just for peacefully blocking somebody's right of way."

However, if students engage in this conduct repeatedly, it may affect potential career opportunities , Wizner adds, especially jobs in law enforcement or security. Additionally, private employers can choose not to hire someone if they consider the protest reason offensive.

"Students should know what potential consequences they may face and decide if the purpose of the protest outweighs those," Hall says. "In the context of today’s campus protests, we are seeing students overwhelmingly say that their purpose for protesting or their demands of their institutions are worth the consequences they may receive on an individual level. This is the spirit of protest, after all: putting yourself or even your livelihood on the line in the name of a bigger cause."

Impact of Protesting in College

While students face potential consequences, peaceful campus demonstrations can result in some positive outcomes, experts say.

For instance, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a group of students marched and protested at the University of Rhode Island, taking over the administration building and making a list of demands in response to racist incidents on campus, Pasquerella recalls.

"The administration worked with them to achieve their shared objectives around promoting racial and social justice," she says. "I still hear from those students about how it was one of the most meaningful experiences that they had in college."

"Protests can be a learning experience and that's what we hope that they will do," Pasquerella adds. "It involved negotiation on complex issues with administrators who held power. It involved working together with a team on trying to achieve a shared objective. And really putting their own sense of meaning and purpose and applying it to what they were doing in a college environment, connecting those co-curricular activities to protest with their curriculum and using that. And they use that leadership role throughout their careers. It really enhanced their ability to do their work."

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