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Teaching Tips | Week 1: Preparing Students to Learn Twice as Fast in Summer
Summer 2009

Learning has to happen twice as fast as usual in a summer semester. Luckily, summer students tend to be more focused, as they cannot take as many classes as they might in a 15-week semester, but the pace can still be challenging.

You can help your students be successful by getting them to engage quickly with the content of the course, and by helping them understand the time and energy commitment your class will require of them on the first day of your class meeting. The following tips are important for any semester, but they are especially crucial on the first day of a summer semester class:

• Engage students in a real, content-based activity. Teach them something on the first day.
  
  
• Give a full homework assignment. If you don't usually do this in a 15 week semester, consider moving the second assignment up to the first day and giving them an extra class meeting to complete it.
  
  
• Distribute a calendar of the summer semester with your topics, grading periods, and possibly homework filled in. As you go over the syllabus and main assignments, have students estimate the amount of time outside of class that they will need to dedicate to your class on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Remind students that they can get assistance with this kind of time management planning at the Academy Resource Center.
  
  
• Make sure that your students have contact information for each other. Let them know that they must be in touch with each other if they have to miss a class or get clarification about anything.
  
  
• Make sure that students are comfortable contacting each other. Don't forget to do some sort of rapport building activity or ice breaker—because simply having each others' contact information doesn’t mean that students will use it.

Resources:

Click here to access the AAU calendar.

Click here for First Day Priorities Teaching Tip.