'I didn't do the reading' and other tales of woe

Nothing is more frustrating then going into your classroom prepared to do a lesson built on application level activities only to find out that half your students have not done the reading and are not prepared to participate! I've found a couple of techniques that have solved this issue with my own students and am thinking one of them may work for you.

Reflective Discussion Questions

When I teach on-campus classes they are usually in a two-and-a-half hour format one night a week. I try to devote most of that time to activities that are focused on applying what the students have learned from the readings and media content that are assigned for that week. Nothing kills this plan faster than having half the class coming in without having done their assignments. Now I post a reflective question or two in the Blackboard Discussion Board based on the readings/media . The students not only have to post a substantive response to the questions, they also have to respond to a couple of their peers. I lock the discussion board an hour before class so that no new postings are accepted. Anyone who has participated in the online discussion board gets points, those that don't participate get a zero. The discussion points are then folded into their overall participation/attendance portion of their grade.

Since I've instituted this approach I have almost 100 percent participation in the online discussions. This reaps several benefits:

1. students come to class prepared to apply what they've learned;

2. students come to class ready to discuss the topic at a more advanced level since they've already been thinking about it;

3. every student's perspective is heard.

It's a win-win and easy to do. All you have to do is think up some good questions and post them as graded threads on the discussion board .

Not familiar with the Blackboard Discussion Board? Check out these tutorials on our ID website.

Electronic Review Quizzes

Another option is to use Blackboard's quizzing feature. Again you can set up a short quiz based on the readings and turn it off right before class. Students can take it anytime before class and will get their grade immediately providing instant feedback on their comprehension of the material. If they get a poor grade they know what questions to ask when they get to class. The grades are automatically entered into the online grade center so you don't have to do any recording yourself but can monitor at a glance how well the class is doing.

With Blackboard quizzes you can add a bunch of questions for each week or topic and then set the quiz to randomize so each student gets a different quiz. You can even set up the questions so that every time they are delivered to a quiz their answers are in different order. If you put up a bank of questions (publishers are great resources for these question banks), you can allow students to take the quiz multiple times and they'll see a different quiz each time. You can even include images and math calculations in your quiz questions.

This approach is a little more work at the beginning but once you've set up your quizzes they just copy over from semester to semester as a reusable learning resource. Students really appreciate the effort.

Not sure how to set this up? Check out our tutorials on the ID website.

- Linda