So you’re teaching a course or two this summer. Most colleges have a lot of fun stuff going on during the summer. Summer is a time of free concerts on campus. There are summer camps for big and little kids, internships, and volunteer opportunities. A big easy. Most students expect a summer course to mirror the air of fun and ease on campus.
During the summer, college instructors often try to find ways to walk the line between the big easy, and achieving college-level academic goals. Below are 7 tips for teaching summer courses that are fun, yet still meet academic goals.
This is going to be easy. Don’t create an ‘easy’ course. There are two main reasons.
1. According to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, a credit bearing, college level course must have “levels of rigor, appropriate to the programs or degrees offered.” The course must be of “sufficient content, breadth and length,” and connect to its parent discipline. A course must have clear, achievable learning goals. If it’s a pre-requisite, it must provide a foundation for other courses. If it’s a co-requisite or a course intended for majors in the discipline, it has to relate to other courses within the major. You owe it to students to meet course goals, connect to the discipline and create a foundation for, or relate to other courses.
2. The summer will end and students will take courses in the Fall and Spring that follow. If there was a lack of rigor or a content/skill gap during the summer, students may discover that they are not academically prepared for future courses. The stakes are higher if the summer course is in students’ major area. The same students who wanted an easy course in June, will, in the fall, declare that the course was a bulls**t course. These students may need tutoring in the future. Or they may need to take another course to fill learning gaps. In the end, the course would be seen as a waste of time and resources. And you don’t want that.
You owe it to students to meet course goals, connect to the discipline and create a foundation for… other courses.
We get to leave early right? This is your call. I do it if it’s part of the culture of the institution and if I can end early and still meet course goals. If it’s the done thing, I negotiate with the students about ways we could work together to meet course goals and still give them time to enjoy the summer. Negotiations include items like not having a break; starting on time; doing an activity online rather than in-class.
The important thing here is to know your institution. A fellow instructor taught a summer course at a different school. He let students out a half hour early. Learning goals were met. All good. He applied to teach there in the fall and didn’t get the position. Turns out, the dean used to ask the security guard about the times that students were seen leaving the class.
My colleague admitted that it was his fault. He was new to the college and hadn’t yet earned the right to take such liberties. He just assumed that behaviors that were the norm in one institution were also the norm in another.
So much work, so little time. Most summer courses are about 6 to 7 weeks long. So 12 to 14 weeks of instruction are condensed to half or less than half as much time. Ideally, during the summer, you should teach two weeks worth of material each week. Realistically, you teach a heavy week’s worth of material each week.
For example, I’m teaching children’s literature this summer. In a week, during a traditional semester, we read Alice in Wonderland, an article on the role of fantasy in children’s literature and discuss the readings. Then I assign a write a three-page paper.
In the summer, my course becomes a hybrid course. The class meets twice a week. One meeting occurs on campus.The other occurs online in Moodle. This is a great way to expand the time needed to achieve course goals. Since we only have a week to deal with Alice, we will read the text and an article. We discuss the readings in class. Students write a one-page response to Alice’s dream, and respond to an online discussion thread about the role of fantasy in children’s literature.
I usually post online work way head of time and give students long blocks of time within which they can submit work. So the Moodle discussion thread remains open until a day or two before the next class meeting. That way I get a chance at look at it.
Since so much work will be covered in such a short time, instructors will benefit from periodic formative assessment.
Use Formative Assessment. When I was a college student (during the late Jurassic period), every fall, groups of students would literally be crying because they failed a required summer course. These were often STEM courses that met for 4 to 6 hours a week. With a lab. And featured a midterm and a final. Or a cumulative final. There have been some changes in college STEM assessment, but practices from the Jurassic period still persist at some institutions.
Since so much work will be covered in such a short time, instructors will benefit from periodic formative assessment. Formative assessment allows instructors to see how students are responding to instruction. The instructor reviews evidence of learning from formative assessments and makes adjustments to improve teaching and learning. Students also review formative assessment evidence so that they can adjust future learning approaches. Find out how to use formative assessment in the classroom here.
Vary Assessment Instruments. You should be doing this all the time, but it’s crucial during the summer. Offering various types of assessment instruments allows you to cater to different learning styles, meet the varying strengths and weaknesses in the room, and the various interests. Offer quizzes, online written assignments of varying lengths, presentations… you get the idea. For this to work, be sure to provide guidelines and a clear rubric for each assignment.
Make it fun. Everybody and their brother (their sister and their Nan) support the idea that learning should be fun. But can you make every aspect of learning fun? A derivative is a derivative for goodness sake! (Shrug). Instructors, especially those in the hard sciences and hard humanities (Platonian Philosophy! Rhetoric! Can you say chiasmus?) often think that they need to break dance while teaching to force learning into the realm of fun. And as instructors, we often feel that students expect us to entertain them. Not teach them. These are all valid arguments. But there are some things you can do liven up the menu, no matter your discipline. Not just in the summer. Year round.
You can also leave the classroom. Hell, leave the campus.
We talked about one already. Vary assessment instruments. You can also vary media. The media you use to teach and the media that students use to submit their work. TEDtalks, podcasts, artwork, screenplay, graphic novel, performance, installation. The students will think of stuff you may not. Provide clear guidelines and a rubric. Or ask students to run their project by you first, to make sure it’s kosher.
You can also leave the classroom. Hell, leave the campus. Have a field trip. Visit an exhibition. Have students conduct interviews with a scientist or a writer. Students can attend or host a chemistry demonstration. Students can write about their experiences or respond in another way that meets course goals. In each case, provide guidelines and a clear rubric for each assignment.
Have a celebration. On the last day when you’re wrapping up or students are making their presentations, have a food and drink (soda if you’re a dry campus). Music if it’s possible. You can do a potluck or have everyone donate a sum of money. In one small class, a different person (including me) brought snacks each day. You can float the idea with students early on to gauge their interest.
This all depends on the vibe tho. Some groups of students just want to have their class and peace out. Some may not dig you and can’t imagine so such as having a glass of water with you. Don’t take it personally if they don’t want food or they don’t want to celebrate. That’s life. Just don’t use it as a reward. We’ll get to have if pizza if you hand in all the assignments on time. It’s a community building activity. It announces that you are learning as a group (a community of learners) and that learning can take place in a fun, relaxed atmosphere, just like many other things in life.
Well, that’s all folks.#heidiholder #redloheducation Hope you’ll share your experiences teaching summer courses in the comments below.
