Weekly Tip: Keeping Your Students on Track to Successful Course Completion

During this stressful time, it is easy for students to fall behind in their courses.  Here are a few ideas that instructors can use to help their students stay on track to a successful course completion:

• Provide opportunity for formative assessment. Students need rich and frequent feedback to know how they are doing throughout the semester, and instructors can respond to student needs.    
• Use polls, surveys or quizzes to help identify common misconceptions or challenges.
• Use the Blackboard or Canvas gradebook so that students can see how they are doing.
  • Replace blanks with 0 to get the student’s attention.
• Send a personal email to students who are missing or failing assignments and/or not attending and invite them to a one-on-one meeting. (Time saving tip: create email templates for various messages to your students)
• Submit actual midterm grades, (Academic Regulation 88), not placeholders. This helps students determine their progress in a class and decide if dropping the course is an option.
• Use the announcements feature in Blackboard or Canvas.
• Encourage students to login to Blackboard or Canvas frequently by incorporating the following:
  • Attendance quizzes (completed before or after class)
  • Discussion boards
  • Panopto lessons for students to view before class meetings
  • Assignment submissions

Students will find helpful information on these sites:

• Cougar Success
• WSU Access Center

Learn more from The Office of the Provost’s site for Early Academic Referrals.