Supporting First Year Students: Flexibility, but also Clarity
Incoming students spent as much as a year and a half learning from home. They attended middle school online or while masked, sitting far apart from their peers. Given the traumas of the pandemic, their teachers were as accommodating and flexible as could be. Students now expect that kind of flexibility to continue. But we’ve also learned that they respond well to clarity. So if a deadline is important, speaking with them about why it is can help them meet your expectations.
Offering structure and clear expectations ensures students know what they need to do and why. Determining and communicating where there’s room for flexibility creates an environment that prioritizes accessibility and acknowledges that different learners have different needs.
Flexibility does NOT mean lower standards. So, yes, be flexible where it makes sense, but:
- Set high expectations. Communicate that you expect all students to do well and share with students:
- That you want to know how they’re doing and how they’re experiencing the course—what challenges are they experiencing? What would support their learning?
- The value of a growth mindset
- Timely, considerate, and specific feedback
- Provide clear guidance by:
- Articulating the aim of every assignment, reading, or activity and your reasons for selecting them
- Letting students know their questions aren’t just welcomed, they’re expected
- Sharing examples of work that meets expectations
- Explicitly discussing norms, expectations, and the hidden curriculum
- Reviewing in advance how you’ll assess student learning
- Following transparent teaching principles
- Consider where you might show flexibility, with your course’s learning objectives, your needs, and your students’ needs in mind, by offering students choice, creativity, and agency around assignments and deliverables, for example:
- Permitting students to propose topics or alternate formats for projects
- Allowing open or flexible deadlines for submission or work
- Some students may disregard due dates they find arbitrary or punitive. Taking time to explain how you arrived at the due dates can be helpful
- Allowing for multiple revisions/submissions so that students can demonstrate improvement and learning
- Considering alternatives to “participation,” e.g, use of a Canvas discussion board or posting/contributing in hypothes.is or Miro