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GSI
TA Talk Highlight
How to Help Freshmen in the College Transition
by Joanne Holladay
The freshman year: What is normally a difficult transition semester both socially and academically, this year's freshmen (and women) are also having to cope with the recent world events without their families and other familiar support networks. At the same time, we as teachers may find ourselves frustrated at what we perceive to be students' lack of effort or motivation. Even if you do your jobs well in your labs or discussions, students must do their jobs too. So, how can we assist students in making this transition? Helping freshman to become more self-aware in the classroom and to develop help-seeking behaviors is a great way to help them cope with a new situation at a difficult time.
A recent issue of "The Learning Curve" a newsletter published by the UT Learning Center identifies five "success traits" of UT freshmen. These include: exhibiting help-seeking behaviors, self-discipline, academic readiness, a positive attitude, and adaptability to a new environment. To read the entire article, go to: http://www.utexas.edu/student/utlc/
How can you as a TA help students develop these characteristics?
Encourage help-seeking behaviors: Encourage your students to form study groups and allow some time during class for them to arrange these. Give them specific "assignments" to bring to your office hours for feedback and suggest that they come to office hours (yours or the professors') with a classmate. Finally, learn and use students' names and utilize collaborative class activities so that they get to know one another. And finally, make them aware of departmental or campus resources to assist them, such as the UT Learning Center.
Help develop self-discipline: First, we can discuss with them the expectations of the course, and whatÕs involved in achieving these. For example, ask students who are doing well in the class to describe how (and how much) they study. Also, provide your students with some tools and models of how to structure and organize their study time. For example, consider constructing a time line for students to write a paper or prepare for an exam to model methods of managing study time.
Support academic readiness: Students frequently don't know what's expected of them until after they've received their first grade. Some TAs help students develop this readiness by providing ample opportunities for practice. Administering quizzes, brief writing activities, using group work and other activities provide students with feedback prior to exams thus helping them develop a more realistic sense of the expectations and information to inform changes in their study approaches. These activities need not be graded, or even collected, but incorporating brief assessment techniques into your classes go a long ways towards enhancing learning.
Encourage positive attitudes: TAs frequently report that some students have belief patterns that are self-defeating. For example, you may hear students say things like: "I've never been good at math." Or "There's no way I'm gonna pass this test!" How can we help our students improve their self-confidence and self-efficacy? First, we should convey a "can-do" attitude, even when students are struggling. These new attitudes should be supported by helping students develop more successful learning strategies and experiences. Some students may need an easier problems, or a simpler question, or may need to refer to additional resources such as an easier textbook or a tutor. We should also learn how our students are studying to determine if their negative attitudes may reflect inappropriate learning strategies. We can also remind students of the role that positive thinking has in improved motivation and learning, and help them "reframe" negative statements and make them more realistic.
Help students adapt to the environment of a large university: We can try to "make UT smaller" by promoting learning communities in our classes, by arriving to class early (or staying late) to get to know our students, and by thinking of creative ways to engage students in the course material, and to connect the material to their own goals and interests.