Effectively Ending A Course

Hello Everyone,

Welcome back for another installment to our Tuesday Teaching Tips (TTT) Blog.

With the commencement of the end-of-semester season, many students are preparing for various final examinations (summative assessments). In other cases, some courses comprise 100% in-course (formative) assessments which may still be underway. Either way, ending a course should never be a seemingly abrupt experience. We’d like to use this blog post to share with you some tips in effectively ending your course.

 

 

A – Ending A Course.

 

More than just your last opportunity to connect with your students/cohort within your course context, ending a course is essential in helping students consolidate all that you have taught them, and/or preparing them for their final examinations. Very often, there is the tendency to rush through final lectures, projects or assessments at the end of the semester – trying to squeeze everything into the final session ends – which can be quite a stressful experience that may trigger some level of anxiety in you and your students. But ending a course effectively does not have to be a stressful experience. This should be a very deliberate, well-planned process that involves reflections, summarizing key course takeaways, and providing a smoother transition to further learning. Effectively ending a course essentially involves three pillars:

 

1. Looking Back: this involves allowing students to reflect on what they have learned and accomplished in your course, identifying key concepts and integrating them into a cohesive whole (the bigger picture/context).
2. Moving Forward: This is all about helping students prepare for what’s coming next. It can include an end-of-semester examination (summative assessment), or even a follow-up course.
3. Saying Good-bye: By the end of the semester, most classes evolve into a community of learners whereby students become bonded by a similar course learning experience.

 

B – Strategies for Ending A Course Effectively

 

Ending the course effectively does not have to be a “one size fits all”, absolute approach. You can find various meaningful ways to look back, move forward and say good-bye to your cohort. Here are some strategies and/or activities that may help you accomplish this:

 

1. Reflective Activities: Reflective discussions, journals or even presentations are excellent ways for students to look back on their learning journey throughout the course, identifying what they have learned, or how they have grown. To this end, you may consider prompts such as “Within the context of this course, what are you better at now than you were at the beginning of the course/semester?” or “What are you most proud of that you accomplished in this course? Why does this make you proud?”
2. Role-Play, Networking and Mentorship Activities: You may consider asking your students to set goals for continual development of the skills they learned in your course. They can identify how they will apply those skills, receive feedback, and continue learning. You may also instruct students to develop personalized learning plans where they identify ways they will continue to learn about the subject and develop their skills (in preparation for a final examination or beyond the course. For example, students can identify associations to join, journals to read, or leading scholars to follow on social media. Additionally, you can connect students to ongoing affinity groups related to your field, such as student organizations, professional and academic associations, and community groups. These Personal/Professional Learning Networks (PLN) allow students to connect with and be mentored by experts in the field even after the commencement of your course.
3. Expressing Gratitude: You can acknowledge the end of the semester with a few words, thank students for their hard work or commitment, and perhaps let them know you were also proud or inspired by what they accomplished, and wish them well. You may consider doing this live in class, or it can be a pre-recorded video/screencast. You can also ask students to write notes of gratitude to an individual or group who helped them during the semester/your course. Those could be individual notes to classmates, friends, or family, or perhaps as a group they wish to thank a guest speaker or a department who provided services that supported their learning.

 

 

We hope the aforementioned resources are helpful.
Should you need any further assistance, or would like to let us know if these blog posts are helpful to in any way, please feel free to contact us.

Regards,
The Centre for Excellence in Teaching & Learning (CETL),
The University of the West Indies (UWI),
St. Augustine.

Previous TTT Posts you may also like:

• MyeLearning Access and Support
• Myelearning, Resources, Activities and Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
• Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and H5P
• Active Learning and MyeLearning Activities
• SECTIONS for Technology Selection
• Research and the Power of Artificial Intelligence (AI)h
• Formative Assessments and the MyeLearning GradeBook
• Aligning Learning Outcomes with Assessments
• Importance of a Community of Practice (COP) 
• The Tenets of Inclusive Education
• Open Education and OERs