Today's guest blog is by Anna Krieg, an undergraduate researcher in Sara Brownell’s Biology Education Research Lab. She is a senior Barrett honors student who is pursuing an honors thesis that examines student academic self-concept in physiology.
Learning student names is often promoted as a good teaching practice. Although learning student names has been linked to positive course evaluations and positive impacts on the students themselves, such as increased student participation and even student learning, there have been no studies specifically looking at the impact of learning student names. Researchers from Arizona State University have set out to fill this gap and explore the impact of this instructional practice.
In short, yes. 85% of students thought that instructors using student names was important in a large class. Nine specific reasons as to why this was the case were identified that could fall into three broad categories: an instructor knowing a student’s name affected students’ attitudes about the course (e.g. students feel more valued), it affected their self-reported behavior in the class (e.g. students feel more comfortable getting help), and it affected their perception of the course or the instructor (e.g. students feel the instructor cares about them).
Learning student names is often promoted as a ‘best practice’ for small classes in high school and college. However, instructors of large college classes often assume that it is too hard to learn student names because there are just too many students. In fact, few students typically perceive that instructors know their names in large classes, but the class where this study was done was different. The majority of students in this particular class perceived that the instructor knew their name. A heartening finding of this study, however, was that the instructor did not have to memorize every single student name for students to perceive their name as known. In this class, half of the students correctly perceived that their name was known, but an additional 28% perceived that their name was known even though their name was not actually known by an instructor. If a student perceives their name to be known, even if it is not actually known, they presumably reap some or all of the positive benefits listed above.
How can instructor use student names
The primary way in which students perceived that their names were learned by the instructor during class was through the use of name tents, folded pieces of card stock with a student’s name written in black sharpie. The name tents were introduced at the beginning of the semester as a way for the instructors to learn student names and each subsequent class the students were reminded to take out the name tent and put it on their desk. Interestingly, as the semester progressed, students seemed to forget that the name tents were even on their desks; they just assumed the instructor knew their name!
In interviews that were conducted after the conclusion of the class, students were asked about the name tents. Students perceived that the name tents were used by the instructor to learn their name and that the name tents helped build that relationship. Somewhat surprisingly, however, name tents were also used by students to refer to each other by name. The name tents helped foster community among students as well as between instructor and student and could be a good practice to implement even in smaller classes where an instructor might be able to memorize the seating chart in order to build classroom community. Students said that the name tents even helped them to find study partners.
Lastly, we found that some students did resist using the name tents until they realized the benefits of having their name known. During interviews, students expressed how they were unsure of the point of name tents at the beginning, but it did not take long for students to realize that they liked having their name known and being able to refer to others by their names. So it took some persistence of the instructor to get over the initial resistance of students, but the students appreciated the name tents by the end of the course.
Link to the study: http://www.lifescied.org/content/16/1/ar8.full
Learning student names is often promoted as a good teaching practice. Although learning student names has been linked to positive course evaluations and positive impacts on the students themselves, such as increased student participation and even student learning, there have been no studies specifically looking at the impact of learning student names. Researchers from Arizona State University have set out to fill this gap and explore the impact of this instructional practice.
Do students even care?
In short, yes. 85% of students thought that instructors using student names was important in a large class. Nine specific reasons as to why this was the case were identified that could fall into three broad categories: an instructor knowing a student’s name affected students’ attitudes about the course (e.g. students feel more valued), it affected their self-reported behavior in the class (e.g. students feel more comfortable getting help), and it affected their perception of the course or the instructor (e.g. students feel the instructor cares about them). Learning student names is often promoted as a ‘best practice’ for small classes in high school and college. However, instructors of large college classes often assume that it is too hard to learn student names because there are just too many students. In fact, few students typically perceive that instructors know their names in large classes, but the class where this study was done was different. The majority of students in this particular class perceived that the instructor knew their name. A heartening finding of this study, however, was that the instructor did not have to memorize every single student name for students to perceive their name as known. In this class, half of the students correctly perceived that their name was known, but an additional 28% perceived that their name was known even though their name was not actually known by an instructor. If a student perceives their name to be known, even if it is not actually known, they presumably reap some or all of the positive benefits listed above.
How can instructor use student names
without knowing their names?
The primary way in which students perceived that their names were learned by the instructor during class was through the use of name tents, folded pieces of card stock with a student’s name written in black sharpie. The name tents were introduced at the beginning of the semester as a way for the instructors to learn student names and each subsequent class the students were reminded to take out the name tent and put it on their desk. Interestingly, as the semester progressed, students seemed to forget that the name tents were even on their desks; they just assumed the instructor knew their name! In interviews that were conducted after the conclusion of the class, students were asked about the name tents. Students perceived that the name tents were used by the instructor to learn their name and that the name tents helped build that relationship. Somewhat surprisingly, however, name tents were also used by students to refer to each other by name. The name tents helped foster community among students as well as between instructor and student and could be a good practice to implement even in smaller classes where an instructor might be able to memorize the seating chart in order to build classroom community. Students said that the name tents even helped them to find study partners.
Lastly, we found that some students did resist using the name tents until they realized the benefits of having their name known. During interviews, students expressed how they were unsure of the point of name tents at the beginning, but it did not take long for students to realize that they liked having their name known and being able to refer to others by their names. So it took some persistence of the instructor to get over the initial resistance of students, but the students appreciated the name tents by the end of the course.
Link to the study: http://www.lifescied.org/content/16/1/ar8.full
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