Students Don't Do Optional?

At many colleges across the nation, much discussion is being had regarding student responsibility and self-motivation in achieving the highest 'grade' possible in any given course. As the majority of students in higher ed are adults (by age only!), many instructors believe the responsibility for learning falls squarely on the shoulders of the student. While one can argue that not many employers would hire an unmotivated student, the purpose of this blog will take a different spin by looking at what instructors can do to promote learning in their courses.

As you are reading this, there is inevitably an instructor somewhere on the globe assigning a massive reading assignment to his or her students, "Please read pages 45 - 110 by Monday!" Many students will skim through the reading, trying to grasp at what main highlights, while some students will read the entire selection and take copious notes to be well prepared for class. And of course, there any many that will never pick up the book or even go and buy it, know all too well the instructor will fail in checking whether students read the text or not.

Many of the struggles regarding 'optional' for students comes in the form of lack of engagement with 'optional' assignment by the instructor. We've all encountered the above instructor, only to come to class to either hear our instructor lecture about what we just read, or never assess what we learned from the material we read - not just simply giving us a quiz to 'prove' we learned. Even an elephant can tell you how to climb a tree!

Therefore, the challenge falls solely on the instructor to find and create unique opportunities for using the optional assignment to show students how valuable and important the information was. For instance, using any number of text protocols in small group discussions provides students an opportunity to reflect in a wide variety of ways; assumptions author made, arguments against the author's words, agreements with the author, and aspirations on how the information can be used in students' lives. That's a small sample of questions that engage students in their reading. Providing case studies or hands-on application of material learned prior to class will ensure that students WANT TO do optional to be prepared for class and the 'FUN' activities that are designed.

While it's often easy to point the finger of blame at someone else -  in this case students - we must often take a long, hard look at what we are doing to help students progress in their learning. Are we providing the best learning environment for students and modeling the expectations we have set forth? The challenge is to push students to ask the difficult questions, to be willing to wrestle with the difficult task, and to face adversity head on, overcoming anything thrown at them. We must teach our students to problem solve, think critically, analyze, and evaluate more frequently to prepare them for what the world has to offer!