Helping Students Succeed (Part 2)

In the previous entry, I discussed the occasional paper entitled “What Faculty Can Do” by Jillian McKinzie. While I stated that there were six different things faculty can do to help students become more successful, there are actually nine. Today I’ll discuss three more ways to help students. If you haven’t read the first three, you might want to scroll down to read about them.


The fourth item in McKinzie’s article is to “use engaging pedagogical approaches appropriate for course objectives and students’ abilities and learning styles.” As discussed earlier, part of the idea of getting students involved is to teaching according to their learning styles. But there are other approaches to use to keep students involved and successful, too. One way is to promote Service Learning. According to the EPCC Service Learning site, “Through Service Learning students can apply newly-acquired academic skills and knowledge to address real-life needs in their own communities and reflect on the meaning of this service.” Many students learn more from doing something that reading about it. Service Learning gives them a great opportunity to apply what they are learning in class in a concrete way. Contact EPCC’s Service Learning facilitators for ways your students can benefit.


Other ways to engage students are to have study groups, peer tutoring both in and outside of class, and collaborative learning.


The fifth way McKinzie says faculty can help students succeed is to “build on students’ knowledge, abilities and talents.” In jest, we may say that our students don’t have knowledge, abilities, and talents, but of course they do! Community college students often come to our classes with a wealth of information gleaned from their life experiences. They know what it’s like to live and work with a variety of people. Unfortunately, many of our students also know what it’s like to live close to violence. Their knowledge of the world can provide interesting additions to our class discussions.


Our students probably know more about technology than most professors, and we can use that knowledge to help develop better methods of collaboration, such as the use of wikis or Facebook. Students often have hidden talents that may help them be successful students, and our job is to draw out those talents so they can be used.


McKinzie’s sixth way faculty can help students be successful is to “provide meaningful feedback.” Providing detailed constructive criticism is beneficial to the students, and of course more meaningful than just a grade without comments. Giving students a high grade if they haven’t deserved it doesn’t provide them with information for their growth, either. If you’re an instructor reading and grading multiple papers, grading seems like a never-ending task. That may indeed be the case, but each student deserves to know what he or she has done incorrectly and how to fix it. The key is to guide the student. There may be internet sites, writing centers, tutoring, and peer evaluations than can also provide guidance. Continuous improvement should be the goal.


The final blog entry on this Occasion Paper will take a look at the final three items McKinzie says faculty should do to help students succeed. Helping our students is not just our job-it’s our duty.