Motivating those who are behing
One challenge I have is working with students that have not been exposed to the prerequisites of a class I am teaching. I can not stop the class to help them catch up because that will only diminish the experience for students prepared for the class.
I have been working with students that are not prepared, providing them opportunities for tutoring and giving them websites I feel will help them catch up.
It is still a challenge to get some students to push themselves to catch up to the point they need to be at.
What are your thoughts on this problem?
Michael, hard to discuss this topic without asking how students end up in your class if they have not met the prerequisite. If the prereq is clearly marked in the college course catalog and the student selects the course then you seem to be doing all you can by providing them with guidance on how they can catch up through additional resources. If on the other hand students are placed in your course without any control then this seems to be very unfair to the student and I for one would feel more strongly about offering even more resources such as a before class or after class study session for those that need more information. I would probably even go as far as to offer virtual tutoring if the students would take advantage. There are so many resources today to provide additional engagement and this can be done synchronously or asynchronously and all virtually so everyone can participate. Definitely not an easy situation to overcome but I would focus on how the student got into my class And go from there.
I am challenged with this problem as well, both the underachiever student that isn't doing the work, and the student with low academic skills. The underachiever I try to encourage them to want the good grades. The student that doesn't have the basic skills I will put more effort into leading these students to resources to get the remedial help they need to succeed.
I try revive the dream of why they are there, I believe they all have the potential to succeed... it is fully dependent on how much time and effort they are willing to invest in that dream.
I am currently working with my first class, so I haven't any metrics yet if my technique will have success.
