Drop/Add Period: Frustration or Opportunity?
You’re just getting underway in your course and then several new students come and need to catch up. You’ve already done your icebreaker and course expectations, and now you’ve got a group that consistently feels out of sync with everyone else… It can feel frustrating to manage these roster fluctuations and there doesn’t seem to be much written out there for faculty on managing the frustrations of the drop/add period. So that’s why I am reaching out to our own faculty to see what you are currently doing that works – strategies and approaches to managing the flux during this important point of the semester!
Please post your thoughts as comments to this post! You can send them to me directly if you’d rather I post them anonymously…
My thoughts…
In the past, I’ve met with these students 1-on-1 in my office to catch them up; I’ve put things online; I’ve communicated via e-mail or phone, but each of these takes time…and I don’t think is exactly scalable for larger classes.
During that important first week, I am trying to build student connections, set expectations, and explain the course rationale – things that don’t easily translate to simply putting the missed info online for latecomers anyway. So what if I thought about this in a different way… of all the first-week processes and content that I want to deliver, would it make sense to switch the order of delivery until our rosters settle down? I don’t know. I’ll try it and let you know… I’m thinking of going right into some content that I could put online and then quiz people on during week 2… so latecomers can look at the content (article, ppt, website, reading, etc.) and be accountable for it. Then – once the roster is stable – stop and talk about expectations about behavior and class decorum, talk about the rationale for the course design, go over the syllabus in greater detail, and start to do more in-depth community-building in the classroom. maybe this is a no-brainer, but, I’d like to hear your thoughts on how you navigate this challenging part of the semester!
Thanks!
From Amber Seidel … and thanks! She gives a syllabus study guide/quiz for each class to make sure the students are familiar with what’s in the syllabus. Students who add late still have to do it. They seem to be less confused with expectations than before I started doing it.