Supporting Student Success

Owned by Gina Persichini
yesterday at 7:18 pm
6 min read

Academic, social, and emotional support form the foundation of student success. This article proposes instructor practices and sample assignments that help all students be more successful in any modality. Learners have many responsibilities outside of coursework, so being able to track and monitor their progress can help them stay engaged. Students also appreciate time management, scheduling, organization tips, awareness of what’s coming next, being pulled back in when they start to drift, and reminders to apply instructor feedback built into the course.

Supporting student success involves:

  • Proactively communicating with learners at risk

  • Addressing problems proactively, and responding quickly as problems emerge

  • Addressing common problems such as students falling behind or failing to participate

  • Addressing situations that impact learning and performance including: 

    • interpersonal conflicts (between learners, or learner and instructor)

    • undesirable behaviors

    • individual learner needs 

    • accommodations for disabilities

  • Connecting students with institutional resources and help

  • Attending to unanticipated events in the learning environment during instruction such as broken links, and confusing directions; 

  • Responding to student concerns, questions, and points of confusion

  • Responding to academic integrity violations promptly and equitably

Setting Clear Expectations

  • Instructors can clarify expectations around participation, anticipated time needs, due dates, and grading criteria within individual assignments.

  • Remind students in a predictable manner of tasks they are to complete ahead of upcoming deadlines.

  • Orient students on how the course is organized, what to do to get started, how to engage with you, their peers, and with the content. Explain class procedures, resources, tools, and communication guidelines. 

  • Use due dates in Canvas that will be displayed in the Canvas calendar and the Canvas To Do list 

Checking on Students

Managing an online learning environment is similar to managing a traditional classroom. The difference lies in the application of online (sometimes asynchronous) tools, resources, and strategies to prevent, detect, respond to, and resolve potential issues. It is the student’s responsibility to complete their college coursework, however, teacher/student power dynamics, cultural barriers, “a fear of appearing stupid or a sense that they don’t belong in college discourages low-income, underrepresented and first-generation college students from getting the kind of support and mentoring that they need or taking advantage of the kinds of opportunities that colleges offer” (Mintz, 2024). Insufficient preparation, poor academic skills, and/or lack of foundational knowledge can be discovered through consistent monitoring and 1:1 communication with students. You can reduce barriers somewhat by letting students know how best to reach you and how you prefer to be addressed. Checking on struggling students, however, has the potential to open up a relationship between the instructor and student and remove many barriers in online learning. 

Communicate with Students

Canvas has excellent communication tools that allow you to message students who have the same behavior in an assignment:

  • Haven’t submitted yet

  • Haven’t been graded

  • Scored less than

  • Scored more than

These go out as a blind copy to students so they do not know who else was messaged.

Use Course Analytics

Canvas provides many analytics tools that can help you look at trends for individual students or for your course overall.

Avoid Assumptions

We all make assumptions sometimes about why people behave in ways we don’t understand. Approaching students from a point of curiosity and caring can help avoid assumptions that could harm the relationship and success of the student. Probing questions can lead to strategies that are most relevant and effective.

Scaffolding Course   

Projects

Breaking down large projects into a series of smaller, manageable deliverables that are completed and submitted over several weeks helps students tackle complex tasks by focusing on incremental progress, allowing them to refine their understanding and skills at each stage. By setting clear milestones, such as outlining, drafting, and revising, scaffolding promotes time management, reduces procrastination, and provides opportunities for feedback and improvement. This method not only eases the workload but also fosters deeper engagement with the material, leading to a more polished and thoughtful final product.

Discussions

Context, hints, examples, and sentence starter frames can lower barriers to starting a discussion. A wide variety of procedural, metacognitive, conceptual, and cognitive scaffolds may be explored in Stravedes, 2011, chapters 7-10.

Helping Students Build Good Habits - Example Assignment

Some students come into college-level learning with weak study skills. They may not have been taught how to study. Here are a few sample prompts you could use or adapt for your course to help students learn these strategies.

Weekly Review Assignment

In this type of assignment, you are supporting your students to go back and review and reflect on what they have learned. This can help them retain and be ready for the next week. It can also help them celebrate their accomplishments. See the example below of how you might add this to your course.

Organization, planning, and effective study habits are essential to doing well in this fast-paced online course. This activity is intended to help you to structure your time and instill some habits that will help you succeed in university. Spend 30-60 minutes completing the tasks listed below that have value for you.

Looking Back

  • Review any feedback provided by the instructor in course Announcements, grading comments and assignment or discussion board rubrics, and possibly email.

  • What are the main points in this feedback?

  • What things attracted positive feedback?

  • What things attracted negative feedback?

  • How can I use this feedback in a future assessment?

  • What are my next steps?

  • Review the results of past quizzes and exams, as any of those questions may come up again in any exam later in the course.

  • Reflect upon the study strategies you have used in the past and how effective they were. Did you earn the grade you wanted with those strategies? If not, consider using new strategies that might help you learn more in less time.

Looking Ahead

Review the assignments in the upcoming module. Briefly read the instructions for each activity. This will help ensure you understand assignment components before reaching the due date.

If you have any general questions regarding the course organization or assignments, post your question to the general class discussion forum used for this purpose or email the instructor. Additionally, you may want to review the syllabus and course schedule to see if your questions are answered there.

Plan your study schedule for the week using the time estimates provided for each activity and other strategies suggested in the syllabus. Identify and prioritize tasks needed to accomplish your learning goals.

Assess the human, technology, and material resources you may need to support your learning goals.

Instructor Note: (identify a specific item coming up in the next few weeks)

Suggestions to help you stay on track in this course

  • Idea 1: Prepare a Monthly Calendar with all of your due dates (exams, homework, projects, prelabs, lab reports, papers, etc). This will be your living document that you will continue to write on to set goals. Use it to establish a reasonable plan for achieving your goals.

  • Idea 2: Prepare a Weekly Schedule with all of your weekly commitments and all of the weekly sources of academic help you have for each course.

  • Idea 3: Review your grades regularly. Your grades in Canvas may be temporarily inflated or deflated due to the timing of instructor-grading on written and missing assignments. Please be patient until grading is completed. Use the syllabus and schedule for a list of all work to be submitted and keep track of your own scores. Use the What-If Grades feature to view your grades based on What-If scores.

 

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