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2. Teaching Practices
2.4. Knowing Your Students
Why Do First-Year Undergraduates Require Special Attention?
Faculty and TAs experienced in teaching first-year under-graduates agree that a number of things are going on in these students' lives during their first-year. First-year students are not only developing academically and intellectually, they are also establishing and maintaining personal relationships, developing an identity, deciding about career and lifestyle, maintaining personal health and wellness, and developing an integrated philosophy of life.
What this means, in concrete terms, is that many of the students are doing things which may seem minor many years later, but can be quite daunting when they are new.
For example, many students are:
- sharing a room for the first time
- writing a check for the first time
- finding their way around a new place
- learning a new set of rules and procedures
- adapting to living away from home
- feeling homesick
- learning to manage their own time
- interacting with people with diverse backgrounds and values
- adapting to different classroom norms
- learning how to learn
- making new friends
- exploring their sexuality
- thinking about their future
- feeling like a small fish in a big pond
- redefining their understanding of learning
What these students bring with them to college is a whole set of assumptions and strategies about life and learning based on their prior experience. Unfortunately, prior experience rarely prepares them for academic and social life at University of Florida.
For example, in high school:
- students' days were rigidly controlled
- they often had a personal relationship with a teacher which helped to motivate them
- assigned reading was discussed thoroughly in class
- students were tested frequently covering short spans of material
- their view of learning was often memorizing a collection of facts
- their view of teaching was transmission of knowledge from teacher to student
- many had strong support systems of family and friends to turn to for advice, help or comfort
Some of our students handle this transition with ease. But many others face adjustment difficulties, especially during the first few weeks of the first semester (and even longer, for some) not only because of the new challenges, but because their old strategies don't work and new support systems are unfamiliar. Sadly, too many of these students are reluctant to ask for help, or simply do not know where to seek it. Students in large lecture courses are particularly at risk because they often feel anonymous in a learning environment that they are unaccustomed to.
Adapted from the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon University
