One thing that I am trying to do differently this semester as opposed to last semester is to establish high expectations earlier.  Last semester I fell like I gave more leeway on early assignments without inviting students to meet higher levels of effort and deeper levels of thought, at least not explicitly enough to be helpful.  Which resulted in some issues further along in the course (obviously).

While I still think that greater leeway should be afforded to students as they learn a new system and get used to the level of work expected of them in a new course, it’s important to make expectations for future work clear and, if appropriate, inviting students to rework and resubmit early assignments to conform with those expectations.

A recent example comes to mind that occurred in my English 10 course.  In completing the introductory discussion post and classmate response, one student elected to give a single sentence answer in his self-introductory post and single word answers (Hi!) in his responses to classmates.  While he technically completed each part of the assignment brief, it was clearly not a thoughtful, engaged response, and did not meet the standards and expectations I have for my students.  I was also concerned that, in a writing class especially, if this lack of thought and detail went unaddressed, it might show up later in larger writing assignments when it would be more difficult to course-correct.

My public response to the student on the discussion board was as follows:

“Hi, [Name]!  Welcome to class!

What are some of the hobbies that you most enjoy?  Do you participate in any extra-curriculars at your school?  What are you looking forward to in this class?”

Here I prompted for the information that should have been included in the original post without overtly correcting him in front of peers.  When creating a more private comment, however, I could be a little more straightforward:

“Thanks, [Name]!  I’m excited to have you in class this semester! However, I’d like to know a little more about you than you’ve shared here.  I think that it’s important that you know right off the bat that I expect high levels of thought, detail, and effort from my students.  I can’t give you full marks for your work on this assignment yet, but you are welcome to edit your posts or reply to them and give us some more information on yourself, and give more thoughtful responses to your classmates!  If you’re unsure about how to do that, or about what type of information/response I’m looking for here, shoot me a message/email/text and I’d be happy to help!  I’m rooting for you!”

I think the trick is keeping a positive tone while at the same time making it clear what you need from them and what your expectations are.  In my experience, both in the past and so far this semester, students respond very well to this mix of firmness, expectation, positivity, and availability.