Promoting Student Rapport

"Never let yesterday use up too much of today." Will Rogers

PROMOTING RAPPORT WITH STUDENTS: SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL FOUNDATIONS FOR STUDENT INVOLVEMENT/ENGAGEMENT IN THE LEARNING PROCESS
Joe Cuseo
Marymount College
DEFINITION OF INSTRUCTOR-STUDENT RAPPORT
Rapport is defined herein as a form of interpersonal interaction distinguished by its degree of social or emotional "closeness" between the persons involved. It is social interaction that is neither superficial nor perfunctory, but which is marked by interpersonal warmth, caring, and acceptance. In this type of interpersonal interaction, the student feels personally valued as a human being and recognized as a unique individual. For instance, in a personal instructor-student relationship, the instructor knows the student by name and remembers personal information about the student, such as the student's educational plans or personal interests; and the student relates easily and openly to the instructor, feeling comfortable asking questions of the instructor and seeking advice or assistance from the instructor on personal issues relating to the college experience.
RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP SUPPORTING THE VALUE OF PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS
Research on college teaching has consistently revealed that instructor-student rapport or the quality of student-instructor relations ranks among the top three characteristics of effective college teachers (Cohen, 1981; Lowman, 1984; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991). Rapport with students may be viewed as a precondition for optimal active student involvement and student-teacher interaction in the classroom. If students feel comfortable relating to you, they will be more likely to respond positively to your attempts to involve them in the learning process. As Tom Angelo (1993) states it, "Most students have to believe teachers know and care about them before they can benefit from interactions--or even interact" (p. 13). Also, if students feel emotionally comfortable with you, they should respond less defensively to constructive criticism or corrective feedback provided by you.
Instructor rapport with students in class may also increase students' willingness to interact with you outside of class. This assertion is supported by research indicating that faculty identified as "outstanding" by students, faculty colleagues and administrators are those who interacted frequently with students outside the classroom; moreover, it was the behavior of these instructors inside the classroom that served to signal their out-of-class approachability and accessibility to students. Reflecting on these findings, the principal author of this research report drew the following conclusion: "A major part of teaching and learning may involve successful modeling or identification; likeable, interesting, and available teachers are undoubtedly more powerful and acceptable models" (Wilson, 1975, p. 108).
The importance of personal relationships for promoting student learning and academic achievement is suggested brain research which indicates that the impact of cognitive and social-emotional experiences cannot be separated. As Caine and Caine argue forcefully in their book, Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain, “The brain does not separate emotions from cognition, either anatomically or perceptually. Such artificial categorization may be helpful in designing research projects, but it can actually distort our understanding of learning” (1991, p. vii).
Positive emotions such as those associated with optimism and excitement, have been found to facilitate learning by enhancing the brain's ability to process, store, and retrieve information (Rosenfield, 1988). In contrast, negative emotions such as feelings of anxiety and personal threat, have been found to interfere with the brain's ability to (a) store new information (Jacobs and Nadel, 1985), (b) retrieve already-stored memories (O'Keefe & Nadel, 1985), and (c) engage in higher level thought processes (Caine & Caine, 1991). In addition to these experimental research findings, applied research involving nearly 4,000 college freshmen has revealed that the level of students' optimism or hope for success during their first semester on campus is a more accurate predictor of their college grades than are their SAT scores or high school grade-point average (Snyder, et al., 1991).
Taken together these findings lend strong support to an argument made by the Committee on the Student in Higher Education, "Cognitive growth which is separated from the development of other aspects of the human personality is illusory and distorted" (cited in Barefoot & Fidler, 1992, p. 63).
The importance of this human element for student retention is highlighted by Beal and Noel's (1980) national survey of 947 colleges and universities, both two-year and four-year, in which retention officials on these campuses were asked: "What makes students stay?" Ranking first in response to this question was "a caring faculty and staff." Lee Noel concludes that, among the "critical factors" associated with student retention,
First, enrollment is dependent upon satisfied students and alumni; they are, after all, an institution's best recruiters. This satisfaction is manufactured in classrooms by competent, caring faculty who believe that their mission is to reach individual students and have a positive impact on their lives (1985, p. 15).
College students' need for such caring relationships with faculty is well articulated by John Gardner:
Students need mentors and facilitators. If not heroes, students need more realistic models; they need, in the words of Carl Rogers, authentic professional human beings who are worthy of emulation. Students cannot be told how to do this; authenticity cannot be transmitted through lectures. Student growth must be fostered and shaped by deliberate faculty mentoring and facilitating (1981, p. 70).
Faculty concern and commitment to student welfare appears to be especially important for at-risk or "withdrawal-prone" students. Vincent Tinto (1987) conducted interviews conducted with withdrawal-prone students who persisted to graduation, these students were asked if there was any one thing about their college experience which accounted for their staying and completing their degree. The most common response, by far, was that some member of the faculty or staff at the institution took a personal interest in him/her, i.e., someone was genuinely concerned about the individual student's welfare and progress. Vincent Tinto eloquently expresses the upshot of this finding in his book, Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition,
Students are more likely to become committed to the institution and, therefore stay, when they come to understand that the institution is committed to them. There is no ready programmatic substitute for this sort of commitment. Programs cannot replace the absence of high quality, caring and concerned faculty and staff (1987, p.176).
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Lastly, the causal influence of faculty rapport on student satisfaction with the overall college experience is underscored by research indicating that student satisfaction with faculty-student relations is less dependent on entering student characteristics than any other measure of college satisfaction (Astin, 1977).
All the findings cited in this section that point to the important influence of close faculty-student relationships become even more significant when viewed in light of national survey research conducted by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. These national surveys reveal a substantial decline in the number of undergraduate students who agree with the statement, "There are professors at my college whom I feel free to turn to for advice on personal matters" (only 39%) and almost half (48%) of the students surveyed agreed with the statement that, "Most college students are treated like numbers in a book" (Boyer, 1987).
The need to combat these student feelings of anonymity and depersonalization is further supported by the fact that more than 80% of college-bound high school seniors graduate from schools with enrollments of less than 500 (The College Board, 1988), yet the overwhelming majority of them begin their college experience at universities with enrollments of over 10,000 students (U.S. Department of Education, 1994). The feelings of insignificance and personal distance that can result from this transitional "culture shock" could be substantially reduced if professors would make an effort to know who their students are and learn something about them. As Benjamin DeMott, Professor Emeritus at Amherst College, pointedly asks, "Is not knowing who you're talking to as bad as not knowing what you're talking about?" (1988, p. 54).
INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES FOR PROMOTING PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS The following practices are recommended to college instructors as specific strategies for establishing rapport and clearly conveying a caring attitude toward students. These strategies represent concrete behaviors which explicitly communicate to students that the instructor is genuinely concerned about their educational and personal welfare. Many of these recommendations may be perceived as simplistic, or as blatantly obvious "human relations" skills. However intuitively obvious these strategies may appear to be, their actual implementation and consistent practice by college faculty is the real issue. As the nationally recognized student-retention scholar, Lee Noel warns:
Many of the suggestions to improve [student] satisfaction appear very elementary--and I suppose they are. They represent common-sense avenues to achieving important results. But their simplicity doesn't change the fact that they are effective and they are too often neglected--in part because of their simplicity (1989, p. 6).
With this caveat in mind, the following recommendations are offered as explicit strategies which deserve careful consideration and consistent implementation. These recommendations are intended to be more than "touchy-feely vibrations"; instead, they represent concrete actions which not only enhance the quality of your relationships with students, but also promote student retention in college and student retention and academic achievement in college.
* Learn your students' names and refer to students by name.
Remembering a student's name communicates in a very concrete way that you know the student as a unique individual--not as just another face in the crowd, and that you are interested in relating to the student as a person--not as an anonymous "student number." Perhaps no one has more poignantly captured the impact of remembering an individual's name than Dale Carnegie in his widely read book, How to Win Friends and Influence People:
We should be aware of the magic contained in a name and realize that this single item is wholly and completely owned by the person with whom we are dealing. . . and nobody else. The name sets the individual apart; it make him or her unique among all others. The information we are imparting or the request we are making takes on a special importance when we approach the situation with the name of the individual . . . . Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language (1936, p. 83).
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Educational research supporting Carnegie's assertion is provided by Berliner and Tekunoff (1976, 1977) who found that precollegiate teachers who are more effective in promoting higher levels of student achievement are more likely to call their students by name. Research on the college level by Murray (1985) indicates that "addressing students by name" is a classroom teaching behavior that correlates positively and significantly with students' overall evaluation of the instructor. In contrast,, Bowers (1986) found that "uncomfortable courses" (i.e., courses most likely to cause "classroom communication apprehension" among students) were more likely to be courses taught by instructors who were perceived by their students as being unfriendly and who did not address students by their first name. More recently, Bonwell and Eison reviewed the research literature in higher education, and reached the following conclusion:
Perhaps the single most important act that faculty can do to improve the climate in the classroom is to learn students' names. Among many other benefits, doing so acknowledges the decentralization of authority in the classroom and recognizes the increased responsibility of students for their learning and the learning of others (1991, pp. 22-23).
It is my personal experience that learning the names of students as quickly as possible is the most effective way to establish early rapport with your class and to lay the foundation for a classroom environment in which students feel comfortable sharing their ideas and getting involved in the course.
For these reasons, making a vigorous attempt to learn students' names is strongly recommended. This recommendation holds true even for those instructors who claim, "I don't have a good memory for names," as a rationale (or rationalization) for being unable to remember their students' names. There is absolutely no evidence to indicate that the capacity to remember names is an immutable trait determined by one's genetic make-up or early childhood experiences; rather, it is an acquired skill that requires an expenditure of effort and the deployment of effective memory strategies. Listed below are twelve habit-forming strategies recommended to promote effective and expeditious learning of student names.
1. Ask the office of Students Services or Student Affairs if you could review identification photos of students in your class.
This could be done before the course begins, or whenever class rosters are first available from the registrar. Like any paired- association memory task, learning to associate or pair faces and names is expedited if the names are learned prior to making associations with their respective faces (Kintsch, 1970). Also, you can use student-identification photos to selectively review the names and faces of particular students who you are having difficulty remembering.
2. Make short-hand comments next to student names when calling roll on the first day of class (e.g., record memory-triggering comments referring to the student's distinctive physical characteristics or seating location).
Remaining after class for a few minutes to review these comments made by each student's name is an effective memory-enhancement practice because it capitalizes on the fact that you may still have visual memory for students' facial features and for the spatial (seating) position they occupied in class. Your visual-spatial memory can be improved further if you request some information from students on the first day (e.g., personal information cards) and collect their responses in the same order in which they are seating in class. Moreover, this quick post-class review tends to combat the "forgetting curve" at a time when most memory loss tends to occur--during the first 20-30 minutes after new information has been processed (Ebbinghaus in Gordon, 1989).
3. On the first or second day of class, consider using short ice-breaker activities designed to help students and the instructor to get to know each other.
For example, "paired interviews" or "team interviews" may be used in which two students interview each other and then report the other's autobiographical information to the whole class. Another effective icebreaker is the "name game" strategy whereby students sit in a circle or horseshoe arrangement and say their name preceded by an adjective that begins with the first letter of their name and describes something about their personality (e.g., "jittery Joe" or "gregarious Gertrude"); or, students may say their names accompanied by some nonverbal behavior that reflects their personality. After each student introduces himself, ask the next student to recall the name of the previous student before introducing herself. (This practice also helps students learn their classmates' names which may increase the likelihood that they will get to know each other and interact with each other, thus promoting their social integration and retention.)
4. On the first day of class, take a photograph of the class and have individual students sign their names by (or on) their respective faces. Use this as a record to review or rehearse student names until you have mastered them.
5. On the first day of class, have individual students introduce themselves, and have this class session videotaped so you may review or rehearse students' names and faces outside of class time.
6. During the first week of class, have students submit to you a photocopy of the picture on their student identification car d or driver's license and use these pictures to help you associate names with faces.
7. Rehearse student names during periods of "dead time" (e.g., as students enter class and take their seats, or as you circulate among students during small-group discussions and exams).
During the first few weeks of the semester, make an attempt to come to class early and to remain after class while students file out. This will provide you with opportunities to rehearse names, one by one, as students enter and leave the classroom. One instructor, identified as "outstanding" by both students and faculty, claims that his most effective strategy for remembering student names is by walking around the classroom and practicing face-name associations while students work on problems or quizzes (Davis, Wood, & Wilson, 1983). 8. Consider assigning some short "reaction papers" or "minute papers" at the end of class during the first weeks of the term.
This practice will enable you to learn the names of students as they come up (one by one) to turn in their papers at the end of class, as well at the beginning of the following class session when students come up individually to the front of class to pick up their papers. (After you have learned your students' names, you can turn this task over to different students so they may begin to learn the names of their classmates.)
9. Schedule brief, out-of-class conferences with individual students during the first few weeks of class so you can meet them one at a time.
This should enhance your ability to learn and remember their names because it allows for "distributive" practice, i.e., learning small amounts of information in a series of short learning sessions. Such spaced-out practice tends to result in greater retention of information than "massed" practice, i.e., learning large amounts of information in one long session (Underwood, 1961). For instance, it is easier to associate 21 faces with 21 names if they are learned three per day on seven different days, rather than learning all 21 of them on one day.
10. If you happen to meet one of your students outside the classroom, but cannot recall the student's name, take advantage of this fortuitous situation and ask for his name.
Though admitting your memory failure may be a bit embarrassing, your recognition of him and your effort to learn his name will be appreciated by the student. Furthermore, you will very likely retain the student's name because you are learning a small amount of information at one time (distributed practice), plus you are learning the name in a an environmental setting that differs from the usual classroom context. This different setting provides a distinctive contextual cue, and such cues are known to facilitate memory storage and retrieval (Eysenck, 1979).
11. Learn your students' last names along with their first names.
Research on human memory indicates that recalling a list of items or a series of small bits of information is facilitated when items comprising the series are dissimilar or distinctive (Johnson & Runquist, 1968). Students' last names are much more distinctive than their first names. Rarely will you have students in class with the same last name, yet you may have several students in class with exactly the same first name, or with first names that are very similar (e.g, Mary Ellen and Mary Ann). Furthermore, you may have had students in previous classes with the same first names as those in your present class. All this overlapping information tends to produce mental "interference" which militates against effective memory storage and retrieval.
By learning students' last names in conjunction with their first names, you reduce this interference and improve memory by making the to-be-remembered information more dissimilar or distinctive, thus enhancing your ability to retrieve it. Once you retrieve the student's last name, this serves as a memory tag or cue for recalling the first name which has been associated with it. This strategy of learning last and first names together has worked well for me, sometimes enabling me to recall the names of alumni who I have not seen for months or years. What typically happens is that I will recognize the face of the former student, not be able to immediately recall her first name, but I will be able to recall her last name which, in turn, triggers my memory for her first name.
12. Continually refer to students by name after initially learning their names (e.g., always address them by name when you respond to them in class or when you see them on campus).
This practice serves not only to reinforce your memory of the student's name, it also repeatedly signals to the student that you know him as a person and are responding to him as a unique individual. (Referring to individual students by name in class has the further advantage of helping students learn their classmate's names.)
* Personalize the classroom experience by learning and remembering information about individual students.
One specific strategy for implementing this recommendation is to request from students, on the first day of class, a sheet of paper or index card listing their names and some information about themselves. (See the addendum at the end of this manuscript for a “student information card” that may used to gather personal information about your students.)
Whenever possible, use the information you have gathered about individual students in subsequent class sessions to actively involve them in the course. For instance, if a student had expressed interest in a particular career during this exercise on the first day of class, attempt to solicit that student's involvement in class when covering a course topic that relates to the student's career pursuits. Such attempts to connect course concepts to student interests serve to personalize your course, enabling students to see its content as relating directly to their personal lives.
One strategy that has worked well for me is to review the topical preferences which individual students record on their information cards during the first day of class and then record the student's name in my class notes--next to the topic or subtopic which the student had expressed an interest. When that particular topic is covered later in the semester, I introduce it by mentioning the names of students who had expressed interest in that topic on the first day of class. It has been my experience that students are exceedingly appreciative of this attention to their personal interests, and they are often amazed by my apparent ability to remember the interests they expressed on the very first day of class. (I prefer not to reveal my "crib sheet" strategy to the class; instead, I prefer to let students conclude that I have extraordinary social memory and social sensitivity.)
Instructors who make a genuine effort to know their students and learn something about each of them, demonstrates in a very visible way that they care about students as unique human beings. Carl Rogers, renowned humanistic psychologist, artfully expresses the value of knowing your students:
I think of it as prizing the learner, prizing his feelings, his opinions, his person. It is a caring for the learner . . . It is an acceptance of this other individual as a separate person, a respect for him as having worth in his own right (Rogers, 1975, p. 107).
A very proactive strategy for personalizing the learning experience of first-year students is practiced by an instructor at the University of San Francisco. He sends personal letters to all students before the course begins, in which he welcomes them to the class and shares some of the exciting things they will be experiencing in the course (Paul Lorton, personal communication, January 1996).
* Be personable and empathic when interacting with students.
Reflecting on his forty years of successful college teaching, William Van Love, succinctly summarizes the educational value of being personable: "Understanding, charity, goodwill . . . are the lubricants on which the subject matter slides more easily into student minds" (1983, p. 7).
Empirical support for the educational value of instructor empathy is provided by the research of Berliner and Tekunoff (1976, 1977) who found that teachers at the precollegiate level who attended carefully to students' stated feelings, and acknowledged them, were more likely to have classes that displayed higher levels of academic achievement. At the college level, research has revealed that teaching assistants' level of empathy is positively related to students' academic performance on both multiple choice and written exams (Chang, Berger, & Chang, 1981). Also, McKeachie, Lin, Moffett, and Daugherty (1978) found that college students who scored high on achievement tests of critical thinking had instructors who tended to be described in the following fashion: "He listened attentively to what class members had to say." "He was friendly." "He was skillful in observing student reactions."
Specific recommendations for behaving personably and empathically toward students include the following practices.
- Greet students when you enter class and when you see them on campus.
- Welcome back students back after a weekend or semester break.
- Acknowledge the return of an absent student (e.g., "Glad to see you're back, we missed you last class").
- Wish students good luck on a forthcoming exam.
- Acknowledge emotions expressed by students in class (e.g., "You seem excited about this topic." "I sense that you're feeling tired, so let's take a short break.").
This recommendation is supported by an observational study of 25 professors who were identified as "superb" classroom instructors. These instructors were found to have (a) strong interest in students as individuals, (b) display high sensitivity to subtle messages from students about the way they feel, (c) acknowledge student feelings about matters of class assignments or policy, and (d) encourage students to express such feelings (Lowman, 1984).
- Express concern to students who are not doing well or to those students who have been excessively absent (e.g., "Everything okay?" "Anything I can do to help?").
Empirical support for expressing concern for students is provided by Weber (1981) who found that freshman-to-sophomore retention rates increased significantly when faculty members made a personal telephone call to students who missed consecutive classes--not for the purpose of playing "truant officer", but to express concern about the student's welfare and course progress. I have employed this telephone-contact strategy with students who have missed more than two consecutive classes and it has worked well. Students who have been contacted are very appreciative and they often convey this in writing on their course evaluations. Several contacted students have said to me directly that they never missed class again after the call because they knew it really mattered to me that they be there.
Phone contact with students can be facilitated by asking for their phone numbers as part of the personal information you request from them on the first day of class. This is a reasonable request, especially if you preface it by saying that you will not bother them at home unless it is something urgent. Also, if you give your home phone number to students, then it seems reasonable and equitable for students to do the same for you.
* Be personal: Engage in some self-disclosure by sharing your interests, feelings, or experiences.
Use of personal anecdotes to illustrate an academic point is one instructional practice which not only serves to clarify an abstract concept with a concrete, real-life experience, but it also shows students that the illustrious instructor is human--a person with whom they can identify. Kenneth Eble (1976) trenchantly expresses the instructional value of teacher self-disclosure through the use of personal anecdotes:
,ul> The personal anecdote that illuminates an idea or clarifies a concept is neither ego- indulgence nor mere wandering from truth. The personal is a way of gaining the kind of interest absolutely necessary to learning. Moreover, an anecdotal account of how some aspect of the subject matter itself came to have value for the teacher exerts a powerful force upon the student to grant that subject matter personal worth (p. 13).
Empirical support for this assertion is provided by Wilson (1975) who conducted a four-year longitudinal study involving eight different types of higher educational institutions, 4815 students and 1472 faculty. One classroom behavior typical of "outstanding" teachers (as nominated by both students and faculty colleagues) was that they were more likely to share examples from their own experience than teachers who were not so highly rated.
If you are uncomfortable about sharing personal information verbally, you can share it in print. For instance, even listing some personal information on the course syllabus (e.g., place of birth, educational background, professional and avocational interests), may serve to send an early message to students that you are a "real person" who is approachable. Also, if you request students to complete a personal information card on the first day of class, then you could, at the same time, share the same personal information which you are requesting from your students (e.g., by writing your responses on the board as students write their responses on index cards). Such self-disclosure shows students that you trust them well enough to reveal something personal. If students perceive you as someone who is open and who relates course concepts to your own life, then students are more likely to do the same. This may increase the likelihood that they will emulate you as a model and follow your example by also reflecting on, and applying course concepts to their own lives, as well as sharing their own personal thoughts or experiences in class. This, in turn, should serve to increase the likelihood that students will perceive the course content as relevant to their personal lives.
Empirical support for this argument is provided by McKeachie, Lin, Moffett, & Daugherty (1978) who found that instructors whose teaching style in the classroom could be categorized as "facilitator-person" were more effective than instructors categorized as "expert" or "authority" in terms of promoting student motivation--as measured by students' willingness to take additional courses in the field. The architects of this study concluded from their findings that the role of teacher as "model" is enhanced if the instructor is perceived as a person, rather than as someone who is only a content-matter expert or academic authority.
I have also found that sharing my course evaluations from the previous semester during the first week of class is an effective form of self-disclosure that conveys the message to my students that we can work together to improve the teaching-learning process. In particular, I share any written comments made by last semester's students that suggest ways in which the course could be improved. I tell the class that I take student feedback seriously and that I will attempt to use the feedback provided by last semester's students to improve the quality of their present experience. I also encourage them to provide me with feedback during the semester so that I may respond to their suggestions while the course is still in progress.
* Share your home phone number with students.
This sends a strong signal to students that you are genuinely interested in being available and accessible to them. It also conveys the message that you are willing to share something personal with your students. It has been my experience, and the experience of virtually all other instructors I have spoken with who share their home phone number, that students do not abuse this privilege. To further minimize the risk of student abuse or overuse of this privilege, you can suggest specific parameters or boundaries (e.g., "No calls after 11 PM, please.").
I have found that less then 10% of students in class will actually call me at home, yet 100% of them know that I have offered them the opportunity to do so. Thus, this appears to be a strategy that has a low cost/high benefit ratio; it does not cost you much time, yet its benefits are offered to all students.
* Consider holding student conferences or a class session in your home.
It has been my experience that sharing my home with students, even if it is one on just one occasion, has an extraordinarily positive impact on them and their subsequent relations with me. It is often the one event they remember long after the course is completed.
As a freshman, the noted author, E.B. White, was once invited to an instructor's home and eloquently recalls the personal impact it had on him:
When I was an undergraduate, there were a few professors who went out of their way to befriend students. At the house of one of these men I felt more at home than I did in my own home with my own father and mother. I felt excited, instructed, accepted, [and] influential (Bailey, 1973, p.72).
* Do not be afraid to incorporate humor into the classroom (e.g., a humorous story or joke relating to a course topic; a humorous cartoon projected on an overhead projector; or a cartoon or humorous question on exams).
Research has revealed that course-relevant humor (a) increases positive student attitudes toward the subject matter of the course (Andersen & Andersen, 1982), (b) increases retention of course concepts (Kaplan & Pascoe, 1977), (c) facilitates creative problem solving (Isen, Daubman, & Nowicki, 1987), (d) reduces test anxiety (Smith, 1971), and (e) correlates significantly with higher student ratings of college-teaching effectiveness (Murray, 1985).
One instructor encourages his students to bring him course-related jokes that he can use in class, contending that this practice fosters active student involvement in class and protects his ego in case the illustration proves not to be particularly humorous. As he puts it: "`Bad' jokes are their ‘bad’ jokes as well" (Davis, Wood, & Wilson, 1983, p. 113).
Fear of being perceived as "unprofessional" or "losing control" of the class may inhibit some instructors from incorporating content-relevant and socially appropriate humor in the classroom. However, the wealth of research evidence supporting the positive effects of humor suggests that its multiple benefits clearly outweigh its possible risks.
* Enhance students' self-esteem by praising the positive aspects of their performance.
Try to avoid the "criticism trap" of focusing exclusively on, and responding only to, student mistakes or errors. There may be a natural tendency for instructors to focus only on student shortcomings because they are often very concerned with justifying to students (and themselves) why they have deducted points or why they did not award a higher grade--perhaps to guard against the possibility of student complaints or grievances. Such preoccupation with grade justification may result in our forgetting to acknowledge and reinforce the positive aspects of students' work (e.g., ways in which the student has improved during the semester). The dire need for such student acknowledgment and reinforcement is strongly supported by a research-literature review on the social and emotional aspects of instruction in higher education conducted by Dunkin and Barnes (1986), who report: "The most consistent finding was that instructor praise, encouragement, and acceptance accounted for less than 5% of total class time" (p. 766).
At the precollege level, Rosenshine and Stevens (1986) conducted a comprehensive review of the research literature and found that specific teacher praise of student performance correlated positively with student achievement. Brophy and Good (1986) also conducted a large-scale literature review at the precollege level and reported that teacher encouragement and praise were associated with student success, especially for students of low socioeconomic status. At the college level, Murray (1985) found that instructors who received higher ratings on teaching effectiveness--as measured by end-of-course student evaluations, were more likely to praise students for good ideas--as measured by in-class observations of their teaching behavior.
All these findings lend empirical support to the long-held belief that positive feedback or positive reinforcement enhance students' self-esteem and achievement motivation. Self-esteem and achievement motivation are patently important contributors to academic persistence, thus faculty attention to and acknowledgment of the positive aspects of student performance should serve to promote student retention. This claim jibes well with the recommendation offered by Terenzini & Associates, stemming from their national research on students' transition to college: "The formal and informal mechanisms by which an institution sends subtle signals to students about how valued they are should be reviewed and revised . . . to provide more early feedback and early validation for students" (1993, p. 9).
Listed below is a series of recommendations for providing early validation and positive feedback to students which should serve to promote their learning and their expectations for future success.
1. Create positive expectations on the first day of class.
For example, report the successes of previous students in the course, and share specific strategies for success with students that will enhance their chances of doing well in the your course.
2. Positively reinforce students' in-class contributions.
For example, express appreciation for the questions they ask and the contributions they make during class discussions.
3. Provide students with some opportunity to experience early success in the course (e.g.,an early exam covering a limited amount of material).
4. Utilize testing and grading procedures that minimize invidious comparisons and unhealthy competition among students (e.g., grading "on a curve").
5. Personalize the feedback you provide to students. Feedback is more likely to be received constructively by students if it is individualized and delivered with a "personal touch." The following practices are recommended for this purpose.
- Write a personal note to students, referring to them by name when you deliver feedback to them on returned exams and assignments.
Though it may be may be too time-consuming to write a personal note to all students on every returned assignment or exam, you can write personal notes to a smaller subset of students when you return a particular exam or assignment. On the next exam or assignment, select a different subgroup of students to receive personal notes and continue to employ this strategy throughout the semester, so by the end of the term, each student in class will have received at least one returned test or assignment with a personal note from you.
- Point out to students their overall "standing" in the course while the course is in progress (e.g., "John, your cumulative grade at this point in the course is . . . .").
Students not only need cognitive feedback (e.g., what the correct answers were on a test), they also need affective or emotional feedback, i.e., they need to be reassured that they are "okay" or competent and that they are making satisfactory progress in a college-level course.
* Deliver negative feedback (criticism) to students in a sensitive, non-threatening manner.
The implication of this recommendation for students' self-esteem is well articulated by Thomas Malone in his review of the literature on student motivation:
Performance feedback should be presented in a way that minimizes the possibility of self- esteem damage. There is a tension here between the need to provide clear performance feedback to enhance challenge and learning, and the need not to reduce self-esteem to the point where the challenge becomes discouraging rather than inviting (1981, p. 360).
The following practices, drawn from the field of human relations, are offered as strategies for delivering negative feedback in a way that minimizes the risk of damage to students' self-esteem and to the instructor-student relationship.
- Avoid making a long list of student mistakes; instead, focus on no more than two or three things the student could do that would have the most impact on improving subsequent performance.
- When responding to a student whose performance is generally poor, try to identify at least one answer or section of the student's work that was strong and acknowledge this strength.
- Focus negative criticism on the student's work product or performance, not on the student's personal qualities or characteristics (e.g., "Your answer to this question lacks organization" rather than "you lack organization").
Focusing criticism on observable behavior rather than on personal characteristics or dispositions serves to de-personalize the criticism. It also directs the student to a specific action that is likely to be seen as readily modifiable. In contrast, criticism directed at a general characteristic is more likely to be perceived as an enduring personality "trait" that is immutable and not easily changed. The importance of attending to such nuances in the wording of feedback delivered to students is well articulated by C.R. Carlson in his article, "Feedback for Learning": "Small differences in approach can help a student on the defensive. Instead of "What you did wrong," or "What you should have done," the performance can be separated from the student by saying what might have been done to make (it) better (in Milton & Associates, 1978, p. 148).
When providing feedback to students on their writing, Knoblauch and Brannon suggest using a variant of the "I message," which they call "facilitative commentary," whereby the instructor says: "Here's what your writing has caused me to think you're saying--if my response differs from your intent, how can you help me to see what you mean." In contrast, "directive commentary" says or implies: "Don't do it your way; do it this way," which is much more threatening to the student's self esteem (1984, p. 129).
- Use "I" messages when delivering criticism (e.g., "I could not follow . . . ." rather than, "You did not make it clear").
- Avoid absolute or extreme statements when delivering criticism (e.g., "Your answer needs more organization" rather than, "Your answer is totally disorganized").
- End the critical message on a warm, optimistic note that expresses confidence in the student's ability to improve. (For example, "I'm confident that, if you follow my suggestions for improvement and maintain your motivation, you will learn from these mistakes and do much better on future assignments".)
There is research evidence indicating that if instructors describe mistakes to students as part of a larger learning experience from which the student will improve, this feedback can increase "self-efficacy," i.e., the degree to which students perceive themselves as being able to influence or control their future success (Ames & Ames, 1984).
- Consider refraining from the ritualistic use of red ink to correct student errors on exams and assignments.
I can offer no scholarly support for this suggestion, other than my vague intuition that humans seem to associate this color with fear and apprehension (e.g., "red flag," "red alert") or embarrassment and humiliation (e.g., "red-faced"). These are feelings we do not want students to be experiencing while processing feedback because they may cause inexperienced learners to react emotionally rather than rationally, and defensively rather than constructively, to our specific suggestions for improvement. Perhaps providing written feedback to students in a color that has a less inflammatory history than the corrective color, red, may reduce the risk that it will be perceived as self-threatening.
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