TA TALK
Web-based newsletter of TA/AI issues for
The University of Texas at Austin

Breaking the Ice and Establishing Rapport: Learning Your Students’ Names
Joanne Holladay, TA Program Coordinator

Midway through one semester, a student in a small class where I was a guest speaker told me that the best thing about my presentation was that he had learned his classmate’s names for the first time! Sadly, this professor had not thought that learning names was important. In fact, one of the most essential aspects of developing a positive relationship with your students is to learn their names. At a place like UT where large classes and anonymity are the norm, learning your students’ names can help them feel less invisible. When learning names is made into a group activity, it also builds rapport between students by helping them get to know one another.

Here are some tips on learning student names that I have gleaned from faculty and TAs over the years. It’s true that these activities are ideally conducted the first day or week of class. However, it’s not too late to set aside a few minutes for one of these activities. Perhaps you want to call on students by name to improve discussion. Or perhaps you've observed that students don’t know each other. Finally, you’re likely to find that you feel more comfortable when you know your students’ names. Consider these techniques to enhance this simple but nonetheless challenging learning task.

• One of the easiest ways to create multiple exposures to student names is to ask them to write out their first names on large index cards (pass around a bold marking pen). Cards should be large enough to fold over to form "table tents." The back of the card could contain information to "prompt" students to participate in class. ("Your perspectives are important! Speak up!" or, more gently, "Part of your final grade is based on your participation. We’d all like to hear from you!") These cards should be placed at the front of their desks where they are visible to you and to other students. Students should place them in their text or backpack and bring them to class and pull them out each time.



• Use the photos available to you and your professor on "ROSE" (the Registrar’s Online Services") - and literally quiz yourself until you’re familiar with your students’ names. Keep this resource a secret as long as you can and students will be quite impressed.



• CTE’s creative Director and faculty member in Educational Psychology, Marilla Svinicki, invites her students to visit her at her office during the first and second week of the semester. At this time she takes their pictures in front of a "white board" with their names written above the tops of their heads. Even though she can get pictures through ROSE, she prefers to get students to physically locate her office, and see her in a more informal setting. She also invites them up in small groups of two or three, so they get to know a few other students in her large (70+) classes. She then cuts the names off the pictures, places the photos on index cards, and writes the names on the back. She carries these cards with her and reviews them regularly. Students often comment on their evaluations that it meant a lot to them that she took the time to learn their names.



• Learn something more about your students. Some TAs will conduct a brief getting acquainted activity early in the semester. You might do a "human scavenger hunt" where students "find someone who…" or ask students to introduce themselves and their biggest "brag", the strangest thing that’s ever happened to them, or their favorite movie or CD. A bit of personal information encourages future conversations between students and provides everyone with more details to support their recall of names. You could also ask students to complete a written questionnaire to ask these and other questions such as their goals for taking the course.



• One of the simplest exercises is the naming circle, a game often used at parties as an icebreaker. The group, including the teacher, forms a circle (or this can be done in rows) and the first person gives her name. The second person gives the name of the first person and his own name, the third person gives the first two names and her name, and so on. The cycle continues until it returns to the first person who can now repeat the names of almost everyone in the class. I've seen this work with up to thirty people with relatively few mistakes. It is remarkable what focused attention can accomplish.
  
  While some names will be forgotten by the next class, many will be remembered, and you may want to repeat this a few times until everyone has "got it down," or perhaps supplement it with another technique. This activity also provides an excellent illustration of the effectiveness of rehearsal as a learning strategy!



• Finally, allow time in class for your students to work in groups during the semester. During this time you can circulate to ask or field questions, and at the same time, reinforce your recollection of their names. Small group work can promote active learning, so you should already consider having it as part of your repertoire of teaching strategies.

Helping Your Students to Become More Effective and Efficient Learners
Joanne Holladay, TA Program Coordinator

In your position as an AI or TA, your primary task is to help students learn course content. Often times we may not know the best ways to go about this for a couple of reasons. First, we don’t think about how we learn. Our learning skills and strategies are already so automatic that we should consider making a thoughtful examination of how we go about being successful in our own classes. Second, research supports that when we develop considerable expertise in our chosen field, it may actually become more difficult to communicate course content to novice learners. In addition, some TAs or AIs might also believe that it is not possible to teach a student to improve his or her learning skills; either they have them or they don’t. How many times have you heard TAs or professors lament that students should have learned these skills in high school?

In fact, the expectations of college courses are different than high school. Therefore, the learning strategies are also different. Students can definitely develop and improve upon their own strategies for learning and you can help to facilitate that process.

Learning Goals
What are the goals of learning? Oftentimes, freshmen think that there is only one kind of learning (usually knowledge or comprehension) and are caught off guard by exam questions that ask them to apply or analyze the material. This is one of the primary differences in the expectations of college courses compared to high school.

According to Benjamin Bloom, the goals of learning in the cognitive domain can be classified from basic to complex. His Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain helps us as instructors to guide students in developing appropriate learning strategies. Appropriate strategies depend on the learning task as well as on the student, so plan to expose students to a variety of strategies during the semester. As you read the taxonomy below:

• determine what the professor expects of the students (Or, if you're an AI, what you expect). What are his or her goals? Frequently these are reflected in how the students are tested.



• keep in mind that testing at the higher levels does not preclude acquisition of the information at the lower levels. In order to answer an analytical question, students still must have their facts straight.



• finally, study the examples of the appropriate learning strategies for each level. Would these be appropriate in your field? What would you add? Which of these works for you?

Print up Bloom’s Taxonomy and keep it handy to share with students. It provides an invaluable tool for exam preparation and exam analysis.

For all of these learning goals, the use of questioning strategies is invaluable. Questioning provides immediate feedback for students and generating answers clarifies and deepens the memory trace. In addition, asking questions similar to test questions provides students with practice similar to the exam. Such questions as, "What is this an example of?" How would I explain this to my eighth grade brother? How does this relate to what I know? Why did the author choose this example? How is this theory different from that one? How would I organize this material to make sense to me?" These are process questions, designed to get students to think about their own learning. Such questions promote metacognition or students’ ability to monitor their own thinking processes.

Now, with all these good ideas, how can you actually get students to acquire these learning strategies?

According to Bandura, the best instructional strategies for teaching cognitive skills are to provide modeling and guided practice with feedback. Later in the semester, students will need less feedback from you, and will be more able to accomplish tasks on their own. In your labs or discussion sections, you should have many opportunities to provide this modeling and feedback. The following ideas will help you get started as you think about the best way to introduce appropriate strategies in your classes.

• Recommend and illustrate these when you work with students during office hours.
• Provide models in class of effective outlines, summaries, charts, concept maps. Then ask students to generate their own.
• Assign small groups in class to complete some of these activities. Circulate between the groups to guide and give feedback.
• Give a brief practice test and provide time to discuss learning strategies useful for test preparation.
• Give students class time to compare lecture notes, generate possible test questions, or solve problems in groups. Alternatively, or additionally, recommend study groups for these activities.
• Have students suggest the best way to learn new material.
• Administer a pre-test survey to assess students’ readiness.
• Administer a post-exam survey to analyze their efforts.

Students will need time and effort to learn these new approaches to learning. But as they become more familiar with the strategies and find what works for them, they will improve their efficiency and effectiveness in studying. They will also see you as an ally in the learning process as you help them to build their strategies for success, not only in this course, but in the future.

Thanks to last year's Interim TA Program Coordinator, Dr. Michelle Achacoo, for contributing to this article.

References

Bandura, A., Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social-Cognitive Theory, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1986.

Bloom, Benjamin, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, New York, McKay, 1956.

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