Ideas for Final Day of Class

[jimlang]

Hello all.  I'm planning for the next column in the On Course series, which should appear in late November/early December, to give some ideas for interesting and effective ways to finish up a course on the last day of the semester.  Since people would be reading this column close to the last day of the semester, it can't be anything that requires weeks of advanced preparation.  If you have a great idea about how to finish the semester with a bang, and are willing to have your idea mentioned in a column, please post your idea to this thread.  I'm especially interested in techniques or exercises that encourage students to see what/how much they have learned over the course of the semester.  Thanks in advance.

JL

[mj_romo]

In my advanced comp course (critical thinking/close analysis level), I teach writing through media analysis.  For the final day, I show a TV sitcom (something like The Office or Family Guy, in other words, something hyper-ironic or quotational) and have the students write a short analysis of the show, then we have discussion.  And, in that discussion, I call on every student to comment and contribute.  Everyone must participate.

[larryc]

In my Latin American history courses we have a Latin-themed potluck on the last day.  I link some relevant recipe websites and allow those who just can't cook to bring something from a local bodega.  It is always a huge hit! Then I hand out the course evaluations...

[diveprof]

In my Public Speaking class, I have them give a speech on a classmate whom they have 'shadowed' all semester. I give them three people the first week of class and then I pick the one that they will speak about at the beginning of December. They have written down things that these people have done/said in class for the semester and it's usually very touching to hear what they say about their classmates (as well as a way for me to see what they have leanred from the million speeches they have given in the class!)

[starrigyrl]

In a small (about 25 people) discussion section I have "question day". The students can ask and discuss questions related to our course topic that we havn't had time to get to during the semester, but that they are curious about. It's always a lot of fun, and we've had some great discussions.

[putnam_phd]

On the last day of class, I like to think about "relevance" -- after a semester of working/thinking hard about some topic (possibly quite esoteric, from the point of view of the students), I think it's important to spend some time talking about how they're going to take this material out into the world with them.  Through a combination of freewriting and informal discussion, we talk explicitly about what ideas were new to each of us (self included), and how we think differently about the topic now.  Then, I have each of them articulate an argument about how this material is relevant to their lives.  (I always tell them that I know that they won't always remember or refer to all of the specific material of our course, but maybe there is an idea or approach or perspective that they can imagine remembering 20 years from now.)  This last part is especially wonderful -- obviously, there are no wrong answers, and relevance can be as mundane or exalted as the student wishes.  I feel like it makes them own the material (as well as their educational process) and also imparts a real sense of accomplishment in terms of the "usefulness" of the semester; it also is a nice shift in who is dictating "what's important" (usually the prof., for most of the semester).  Often, these conversations turn into wonderful discussions of "I never thought about the idea that X!" and "Now everytime I read about Y in the newspaper, I think about it differently!"  If the class is small enough (say 25 or under), I leave enough time that we actually go around in a circle and everyone has to say at least a few words about their personal experience of "relevance" related to the class.  It really ends the semester on a positive (and reflective) note, on a number of levels.

[jimlang]

These are all great ideas--thanks, everyone, and I would still welcome more ideas . . .   

[voxprincipalis]

I used to teach an interdisciplinary humanities course at a CC that included several components that made students nervous -- analyzing and critically discussing visual art, music, poetry, film, and dance. In addition to dealing with topics that were unfamiliar to them, the course was also writing-intensive and had a heavy workload.

In the last class, I asked students to collectively make a list of things they thought students taking the class next term should know. It was really heartwarming to see them come up with things like, "have faith in yourself. You can do this" or "this class is hard but totally worth it" or "this class will really help you be openminded -- be ready to learn a lot!" Even things like "it will be easier to write the papers if you start thinking about them early" were helpful. It was a good way for us to synthesize the things they'd learned in the class and it gave the students a chance to reflect on how far they'd come, and how much more confident they were.

Then I saved the lists and handed them out to the next class at the beginning of the next semester.

VP

[anthrodiva]

I usually do a wrap up covering all of the things they learned and practiced in class and how it will apply in the real world and how they can talk about it to a potential employer. We read a relevant article, and answer any lingering questions, then, (this is an  intro to anthropology class) we listen to some world music and I have them practice some deep breathing and draw any entoptic phenomena that appear. All this to relax them into finals week :-)

[oldadjunct]

In my Intro to Lit class we designed the final exam.  The students framed the questions and I stipulated that I would add the actual works on which the  questions would hinge.  They also developed a list of terms that they should be able to define.

In my FYS class we are planning a group piece of guerrilla theater which will take place out side the Student Center during finals week for the amusement of all.

[cynical]

Don't attack me please--for the final day I break the students down into groups of about five.  They have to quickly come up with a group name.  Each group has to call me by a different name, eg.  Alex, The Donald, Vanna, Regis, Jeff.  I ask them questions and if the group addressed does not get it, it passes to the next group who can "steal" the question.  I ask them all about objective things learned throughout the course and also insert the questions that will be on the non-essay portion of the final exam.  If anyone in the class blurts out an answer out of turn, his or her group loses a point. 

There are typically about 150 questions; it's rapid-fire, I keep track of the score and the winning team gets a big bag of candy and team number two gets a smaller bag of candy. 

[rayleigh]

Our university designates the last friday of the semester as a "study day" and cancels classes on that day (waste of a lecture day in my opinion). We will be having a full-time lab that thursday (last day of the semester) just like always. 

[expatinuk]

We do team presentations of the project that will be submitted in January. It's the students final chance to get any feedback prior to submission. We block out a 1/2 day and combine all the final year BA and first semester MA students (the UK has students in cohorts) so that the students are presenting to their peers... who complete a grading matrix that will be given to the teams.

This is done the day after all students have submitted their individual written work that supports the project.

Oh... we also combine it with cookies and such (no beer to the students' disgust).

Attendance is required.

We don't have an attendance problem for the most part. There are always a couple of students who have been 'captured by space aliens', but not many.

[jds2006]

In my Research Methods course, we discuss the best ways to write short pieces--columns for weeklies, for example--without having to do any real work.

[larryc]

Here is the column that James Lang cobbled together from our replies:

ON COURSE
Finishing Strong

Is there a way to close the semester with an inspiring class that doesn't require a ton of planning or energy?

By JAMES M. LANG

As the end of a semester approaches, I always have this vision that my students and I will spend our last day of class reminiscing about what a terrific time we had and sharing war stories. We'll drink some coffee, have some laughs, and then the students will give me a hug on the way out, promising to IM me.

What usually happens instead is that they fill out the evaluations, I review the final exam for them or answer questions about the final paper assignment, and then I stand behind my desk watching them leave class 20 minutes after they arrived. Some of them wave goodbye or thank me, but mostly we are all just too tired at that point to do much beyond be grateful that it's almost over.

Still, I know better. I know that the final days of a course can be a fruitful time to help students process what they have learned. I also know that many of us hand out the course evaluations on the final day of the semester, and that coupling that activity with some inspired pedagogical exercise helps put students in a positive frame of mind when they are filling out the forms. Since student evaluations help determine the fates of so many of us, I'm all for nudging students in the right direction.

Perhaps most important, though, I know that by the last day of the semester I don't have a whole lot of gas left in my tank, so as much as I would like to finish my class on the contemporary British novel by staging an interpretive dance version of The French Lieutenant's Woman, it just ain't gonna happen.

With the end of the semester right on top of us, and most of you probably just about to hold the final class, I thought the ideal topic would be a review of good ideas on how to finish strong. How can you close with a rousing and intellectually inspiring class that doesn't require a ton of planning or energy?

I went looking in the usual literature for essays about the topic, and pored over my little library of teaching guidebooks, but didn't find much on the subject.

So I turned instead to The Chronicle's forums, where I posted a request for people to describe their best ideas for the final class of the semester (see http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,30714.0.html). Only a handful of responses came back, evidence perhaps that most people do what I usually do on the final day of the semester — i.e., clean up administrative tasks, let the students go early, and then go back to my office and sink into my chair with a sigh of relief.

Not everyone does that, though. One of the first posters to respond, a faculty member who teaches Latin American history, made no secret of the link between pleasing students on the final day of class and the course evaluations — he organizes a potluck meal of Latin dishes, and then hands out the course evaluations.

I usually bring in doughnut holes or leftover Halloween candy once a semester on a day when students are doing presentations or reading essays aloud, but I have to say feeding them on the day of the evaluations strikes me as a bit too Machiavellian, even for my tastes.

The remaining posters also gave me some ideas, which I've sorted into two categories. The first set of ideas involves having students articulate what they have learned. I do a version of that myself in some classes, though with less frequency than I would like. But when I do use it, I find it to be a powerful tool.

Using that technique can be very simple in small classes of 25 students or fewer. Ask them to write down — on a piece of paper that you can collect for a final quiz grade — the three most important ideas or concepts they learned, or skills they developed. Give them 10 minutes to write, and then either let a few volunteers share what they have written or ask everyone to pick one of their three items and explain it to the class. The more people you can get to contribute, and the more varied the answers, the more students will begin to see how much they have learned.

You can vary that format in all kinds of ways — have students do the writing but no discussion, the discussion without the writing, or come up with ideas in small groups, and so on. Talking about those ideas one last time will not only help the students remember them, it will also give you valuable information about whether students are learning what you want them to learn.

My variation of that exercise builds upon an information sheet I have the students fill out on the first day of the class that asks them to identify what they hope to learn. On the last day, I hand back those sheets and ask them to tell me whether they fulfilled their hopes, or learned something new altogether.

If your institution's course evaluations ask any kinds of questions about how much or whether the students learned in the course, this exercise certainly primes the pump. It reminds them that, despite what they may have felt when they were sitting comatose through one of your lectures, they learned something.

One poster suggested an interesting variation on that technique: Have students write a letter to the people who will be taking the class in the next semester, giving them advice about how to do well in the course. That exercise, the poster wrote, offered "a good way for us to synthesize the things they'd learned in the class, and it gave the students a chance to reflect on how far they'd come, and how much more confident they were."

The second set of ideas focused on using the final day of class to demonstrate to students how their newly acquired skills and knowledge can help them in the world beyond the course, and even beyond college. Maybe you have been reminding them about that all along, but the final day can be reserved for a lesson that really drives the point home.

One poster, who teaches a course in media studies, finishes by having the students watch an episode of the sort of television show they watch already — The Office or Family Guy — and asks them to take the analytic skills they developed that semester and wield them on those popular shows. Every student writes a brief response to the program, and then makes a comment or contribution to the final discussion.

Another poster talked about reserving the last day for a demonstration of "relevance." Through both writing and discussion, this faculty member asks students to think about how the material of the course might prove relevant to their lives in the future: "If the class is small enough (say 25 or under), I leave enough time that we actually go around in a circle and everyone has to say at least a few words about their personal experience of‘relevance' related to the class. It really ends the semester on a positive (and reflective) note."

The success of any those exercises depends, in part, upon having a small class. Larger classes might have to be restricted to the written portion of an exercise, or to discussions in which participation is more selective. Still, both options seem better than doing nothing.

The thread on this topic remains open, so if you're sitting at your desk and fuming because you have been wowing students for years in the final class of the semester with some brilliant pedagogical innovation, and it didn't get mentioned in this column, head over to The Chronicle's forums, visit the "In the Classroom" topic, and scroll down for the thread on "Ideas for Final Day of Class." Enlighten us.

While you're surfing around, trying to steel yourself for the tidal wave of end-of-semester grading that's about to crash down upon you, visit this month's recommendation for pedagogical resources, Tomorrow's Professor, Rick Reis's Web site and e-mail discussion group on teaching and higher education. "Desktop faculty development," Reis calls it, "one hundred times a year."

Finally and perhaps most important, enjoy your break.

James M. Lang is an associate professor of English at Assumption College. He writes about teaching and welcomes reader mail directed to his attention at careers@chronicle.com. For an archive of his previous columns see http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/archives/columns/on_course
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