Students' organizational skills

[kaysixteen]

So I just git home from my second job to find a email from the kid with the disability accommodations, who missed class today due to an injury/er visit, apologizing and asking if he would still be able to do his assigned article presentation.  Problem is , the presentations, which were originally scheduled to start next Tuesday, were pushed back to next Thursday.  I have mentioned that in class for the last 2 or three sessions.  What I did want tgem to do today was to tell me what article they had chosen.  He gave me a title on Tuesday but it was entirely off topic, so I told him and the rest of the class, yet again, to take the syllabus to the reference librarian and ask her to find an article for him.  How can he have confused that for actually having to do the actual presentation today?  I am deeply concerned that this young man is just not yet capable of minimal college success, but this is probably largely due to the disability necessitating that accommodation in the first place.  He is an extreme example, but the young woman who wrote the complaint letter ccd to my supervisor, who I now know is also her advisor, well Wed was a all classes cancelled midsemester advising day, and my supervisor emailed me earlier in the week asking me for a progress report on her, so I told supervisor thatnshe was likely the most disengaged student, won't pass in the easy pass/fail journals, is always on her phone, refuses general all-class exhortations to put it away, etc.  So today she showed up, kept phone away... And took out a book to read instead.  And that happened right after I reiterated that what I would be teaching today would certainly be on Tuesday's quiz.  I get that I cannot really institute significant additional mandatory organizational task reqs at this time, but I must find out what I should do in this regard for next semester, what would both work and be institutionally acceptable.

[zoey]

Lack of motivation is very hard to tackle. Even in real life, outside of school, organizational skills are lacking. This does translate to a loss in productivity. Teachers will find repeating their instructions tiring, but after a few days, things do change for some students. For the better. I'm just exploring this idea - does dividing a class into groups and getting the group to be organized sound more doable? Over time, the students might improve. 

[Caracal]

So I just git home from my second job to find a email from the kid with the disability accommodations, who missed class today due to an injury/er visit, apologizing and asking if he would still be able to do his assigned article presentation.  Problem is , the presentations, which were originally scheduled to start next Tuesday, were pushed back to next Thursday.  I have mentioned that in class for the last 2 or three sessions.  What I did want tgem to do today was to tell me what article they had chosen.  He gave me a title on Tuesday but it was entirely off topic, so I told him and the rest of the class, yet again, to take the syllabus to the reference librarian and ask her to find an article for him.  How can he have confused that for actually having to do the actual presentation today?  I am deeply concerned that this young man is just not yet capable of minimal college success, but this is probably largely due to the disability necessitating that accommodation in the first place.  He is an extreme example, but the young woman who wrote the complaint letter ccd to my supervisor, who I now know is also her advisor, well Wed was a all classes cancelled midsemester advising day, and my supervisor emailed me earlier in the week asking me for a progress report on her, so I told supervisor thatnshe was likely the most disengaged student, won't pass in the easy pass/fail journals, is always on her phone, refuses general all-class exhortations to put it away, etc.  So today she showed up, kept phone away... And took out a book to read instead.  And that happened right after I reiterated that what I would be teaching today would certainly be on Tuesday's quiz.  I get that I cannot really institute significant additional mandatory organizational task reqs at this time, but I must find out what I should do in this regard for next semester, what would both work and be institutionally acceptable.

Kay, are you using the CMS now? I remember some discussion about this years ago...The benefit of these things is that it means the schedule can be kept in some convenient spot, changed easily, and students should be able to know what is due. In general, however, students get confused about all sorts of things. Sometimes, I realize that I might have said something or done the schedule in a way that might be genuinely confusing. More often, there's no reason they should be confused. My impression is that confusion is a posture that some students adopt because they don't want to be honest with themselves. It is very human and most of us do it in some form, some of the time.

[kaysixteen]

I see your point, but I just ain't being paid enough to buy the computer I would need, let alone take the extra training it'd require, especially given how tech-unsavvy and generally mechanically disinclined I am.  It really just ain't too much to ask to have a student take notes as to the homework, especially when it goes on the board, as well as when it is class-emailed, to send follow-up questions back to me.

[Hegemony]

They really ought to provide you with a computer.  I'm afraid it actually is too much to ask to have a student take notes as to the homework — I say this as the parent of a kid who shows every indication of qualifying for your class.  The stages of confusion are likely to be as follows:

• Kid thinks assignment will be very easy to remember, and so does not copy assignment off the board.  Kid later forgets entirely that there was an assignment.
• Kid copies assignment off the board, but has dyslexia or other conditions which means that pp. 12-45 get copied down as pp. 2-4 or pp. 21-45 or simply pp. 12.
• Or kid copies "Read chapter 2, do problem sets 4 and 5" as "Read chapter, do sets 5."
• Kid means to take photo of the assignment written on the board with his phone, but has forgotten to charge his phone, or forgotten to bring his phone, or lost phone entirely again.

Every single one of these has happened multiple times in our household.

As kid has been to multiple high schools, we have experienced many different ways that high schools handle these things.  The *only* one that has been successful is:

• All the assignments are posted on a single central website, e.g. Canvas.  This is opposed to, for instance, some teachers posting on Canvas, some posting assignments to their own websites, some emailing assignments, some not posting assignments, some handing out assignments on papers which get lost immediately, etc.  One website.  For everything.  As universities do with their CMS.
• All the assignments are posted from the beginning, in advance.  Things are not added along the way, dates are not changed.
• The teacher sends out reminders when something counting for a grade is due.

It's undoubtedly true that students "should" be able to function in more complicated systems.  But some of them don't.  Those kids that don't are in your class, Kaysixteen.  And I would guess that even most of the ones who appear disconnected and unmotivated secretly would like to do well — but are just in such a state of despair and hopelessness that they appear checked out.  I know it from close up.

[spork]

Computers are almost always in the library, available to both students and instructors. A university's LMS can be accessed there.

[Caracal]

• All the assignments are posted on a single central website, e.g. Canvas.  This is opposed to, for instance, some teachers posting on Canvas, some posting assignments to their own websites, some emailing assignments, some not posting assignments, some handing out assignments on papers which get lost immediately, etc.  One website.  For everything.  As universities do with their CMS.
• All the assignments are posted from the beginning, in advance.  Things are not added along the way, dates are not changed.
• The teacher sends out reminders when something counting for a grade is due.

It's undoubtedly true that students "should" be able to function in more complicated systems.  But some of them don't. 

Yes, and while not all of those things are possible in a college environment, the CMS is the easy part. In terms of preparing students for the rest of college, it is important that you use the systems that their other instructors are going to use. Students who have trouble with deadlines and organization need to become familiar with the tools that can help them work around these problems and it isn't helping them if they don't have access to one of the major tools in your class.

More broadly, I don't think it really works to be a college instructor and lack basic computer skills. It is ridiculous that you don't have an office with a computer, or at least some sort of shared space with computers and printers, (How do you print handouts and other stuff?) but you still need to be able to use a CMS. I'm really not trying to be mean, and I get that this feels like something where you are way out of your depth, but I promise you can do. First of all, I'm almost sure you can afford a computer that will do the things you need. You can buy a tablet with a keyboard for a little more than a hundred dollars. That would probably work just fine. The CMS are all a bit annoying in their own way, but they aren't that complicated. My school has regular training sessions for how to use them designed for faculty who aren't great at this kind of stuff. You're obviously a capable person, and it isn't rocket science, I'm sure you can learn quickly.

[kaysixteen]

Random thoughts and observations:
1.  I would much rather have the school boost my salary by the price, even wholesale price, of any computer they'd buy, but of course they're not going to do either.
2. I suppose I could access the CMS on this tablet, but it really is perfectly acceptable for me to insist a student copy the assignment off the board, or even copy down an assignment given orally in class, and to ask questions there, or even in a follow-up e-mail, rather than rely on such technology to cover them from having to do that.
3. Now an admission/ confession: I ain't good with hardware.  I'm mechanically disinclined, big-time.  I'm not proud of this, but I avoid mechanical tasks like the plague whenever possible.  I'm not sure, at my age, that I can do much about this?  But I'm also not a tech class teacher.

[Hegemony]

I hope at least you are providing all the assignments on the syllabus or on a separate instruction sheet in hard copy.  As I have said before, you may say that it's not too much to ask to want students to copy assignments off the board, but part of the problems posed by ADHD, dyslexia, and similar challenges is that copying accurately can be extremely difficult.  And that is the population you have.  If you're not going to post the assignments electronically, at the very least they need to be on a handout.  Although you should realize that a number of students will lose the handout.  (If they copy the assignment off the board, even if they copy it accurately — which guaranteed not all of them will do — some of them will lose that too.)  Undoubtedly they "should" do these things accurately.  But their inability to do these things accurately is precisely why they are in your class.  I don't see anything in your teaching that means this will change for them.  Therefore making the assignment available on the CMS would boost their success rate.  Our one faculty member who says he is unable to handle electronics pays a grad student a small sum to post things for him.

It is a little bit ironic that you don't want to cater to the students' inability to handle certain kinds of learning, when you yourself are resistant to a certain kind of learning (learning how to use the CMS).  Perhaps your own resistance would give you some understanding of how the students feel when they encounter the demand that they should copy things off the board and remember where they put the assignment.  I would imagine that it feels as impossible to them as using the CMS does to you.

[spork]

[. . .]

The *only* one that has been successful is:

• All the assignments are posted on a single central website, e.g. Canvas.  This is opposed to, for instance, some teachers posting on Canvas, some posting assignments to their own websites, some emailing assignments, some not posting assignments, some handing out assignments on papers which get lost immediately, etc.  One website.  For everything.  As universities do with their CMS.
• All the assignments are posted from the beginning, in advance.  Things are not added along the way, dates are not changed.
• The teacher sends out reminders when something counting for a grade is due.

[. . .]

This is best practice from the perspective of design, accessibility, security, and privacy. Everything in one place, set up in advance, on the university's authorized platform. It eliminates conflicts/claims about disability accommodations -- all deadlines are known from day one of the semester, so the student can plan ahead. The instructor can simply point to the CMS website and state this.

And as I mentioned earlier, computer ownership is not required to set up or access a course on a CMS.

[downer]

[. . .]

The *only* one that has been successful is:

• All the assignments are posted on a single central website, e.g. Canvas.  This is opposed to, for instance, some teachers posting on Canvas, some posting assignments to their own websites, some emailing assignments, some not posting assignments, some handing out assignments on papers which get lost immediately, etc.  One website.  For everything.  As universities do with their CMS.
• All the assignments are posted from the beginning, in advance.  Things are not added along the way, dates are not changed.
• The teacher sends out reminders when something counting for a grade is due.

[. . .]

This is best practice from the perspective of design, accessibility, security, and privacy. Everything in one place, set up in advance, on the university's authorized platform. It eliminates conflicts/claims about disability accommodations -- all deadlines are known from day one of the semester, so the student can plan ahead. The instructor can simply point to the CMS website and state this.

And as I mentioned earlier, computer ownership is not required to set up or access a course on a CMS.

I try to do this as much as possible. I have not yet managed to actually create all the assignments ahead of time, and sometimes you want some flexibility because of what you learn about students' capabilities and interests during the semester. But I do put the deadlines up for everything at the start of the semester.

I find that it works well to meet my own organizational challenges. I teach a lot of classes and I get confused if I don't have everything sorted out ahead of time. It also helps to coordinate assignment deadlines for different classes so I don't get overwhelmed with grading at any one time.

[Caracal]

2. I suppose I could access the CMS on this tablet, but it really is perfectly acceptable for me to insist a student copy the assignment off the board, or even copy down an assignment given orally in class, and to ask questions there, or even in a follow-up e-mail, rather than rely on such technology to cover them from having to do that.
3. Now an admission/ confession: I ain't good with hardware.  I'm mechanically disinclined, big-time.  I'm not proud of this, but I avoid mechanical tasks like the plague whenever possible.  I'm not sure, at my age, that I can do much about this?  But I'm also not a tech class teacher.

You're right that it isn't absurd, but students, like all of us, develop strategies to navigate the world they live in. When I was a student, most classes didn't have stuff posted online yet, so I had to figure out how to know what the reading was. Ideally I would write it down, but then sometimes I'd forget or not be able to find where I wrote it down. If that happened, I'd try to find the syllabus. Often I would have lost that as well. At this point, I'd probably email someone I knew in the class and ask them what we were supposed to read. It was a mess, but I almost always figured out what I was supposed to read, one way or the other. But your students have mostly grown up in a world where the CMS is where you find the reading and they haven't developed all of these strategies, because the most important thing is to know where to find stuff there.

On the second point, I think you're selling yourself short here on your ability to figure this stuff out. In my experience, people who are freaked out by technology overestimate the extent to which the rest of us know what we are doing. Mostly what I do is fiddle around with stuff until I can get it to work. I'm not actually particularly good at using the CMS, I invariably screw things up during the semester and students write to me to point out that something isn't working. But it is all fine, the computer won't blow up, you can fix mistakes.

[rhetoricae]

I spend large amounts of instructional time just on how to turn off one's smartphone and keep it away from you for more than 20 minutes.

I spend about a minute on that. After that, it is up to them.

For students who are weak on organizational skills but who are hooked to their phones, maybe there is an app that will help them. Again, it is up to them to work that out. Or maybe there is a counselor on campus who can do it for them. Definitely not my job.

This is a bit more general (and I see the conversation has moved toward a specific instance), but I wanted to note that there are TONS of apps that might help with this. I keep a list of bookmarks of such apps for students, but you can generally google something like "top ten apps for students" and find a recent article with many options.

I teach first year composition and developmental writing; in both cases, a lot of what students still need to learn comes down to organizational, time management, and study skills. I spend a full class period (I think actually 2 in the developmental course) talking about options, skills, etc. It does seem to work. Part of this is that I have an assignment where I ask students to set a course-related goal, and as part of that goal setting to explicitly discuss what challenges they expect to meet in achieving the goal.  Then they have to specifically outline what strategies or tools they plan to use to handle the challenge.  So for students who, for example, set a goal of turning things in on time, they first have to openly state that they lack time management skills, and then lay out their plan for improving those skills.  I see students who make a lot of progress from this assignment - we do check in formally later in the term to recap some of this stuff.

I am also a person with ADHD, and keeping a paper calendar was always something I wanted to do, but couldn't figure out how to make it work for me & use it consistently. It turns out that what my brain needs is multiple methods; I now keep a paper planner with task lists AND my Google calendar + to do lists/reminders on my phone. I don't know why this is, it's just what I needed to do. My system works very well, now, whereas before I would have told you that the planner alone would fail. It really is about helping students figure out what works for them, and what they will use and stick with.

Lastly - I am much more lax about phones in the classroom than most, and it doesn't always make things great for me. But I have found that at a minimum, getting students to use their phones for Good can sometimes be effective in helping them figure out these other skills. As an example, for the student who missed the reminders and didn't write down the work -- I project the homework for the next class on the screen at the end of each class. Often, students snap a picture of that slide with their phone.  That seems to work for them (others have other methods), and so it doesn't make sense for me to push back with No Phones, etc. Leverage what they're already comfortable with to help them get the other stuff they need.

ETA: I cannot favorite Hegemony's post about the CMS enough. Excellent points.

[mythbuster]

Kay, at my uni you won't get hired unless you use the CMS. Even the old fart full proffs who still tape the exam answer keys to their door have to set up and post at least the syllabus with all asiignment due dates. If you can navigate here to post, you can handle the CMS. Most work on tablets and even on cell phones now. I'm actually surprised that fully using the CMS is not a key learning objective of your course.