Expectations
A page within Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning (CATL)
Setting clear, achievable expectations can motivate students, enhancing their engagement and academic success. This aligns with Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development, suggesting optimal learning occurs when challenges are slightly beyond current abilities but still attainable with support. Properly communicated high expectations encourage a growth mindset, leading to deeper learning and self-efficacy. Conversely, too low or unrealistically high expectations can result in disengagement or anxiety. Therefore, instructors should carefully balance expectations, considering students' abilities and the support provided, to create a positive learning environment.
Understanding Student Responses
Students may perceive the expectations for their performance as appropriately challenging and achievable for several reasons:
- Calibrated Challenge: Expectations are calibrated to offer a stimulating challenge, thoughtfully aligned with students' prior knowledge, experiences, and preparation level.
- Adequate Scaffolding: When high expectations are set, they are accompanied by the necessary guidance and resources, enabling students to successfully meet these challenges.
- Transparent Communication: Expectations are clearly and effectively communicated, eliminating confusion and ensuring students understand the required performance level.
- Fairness: Expectations are consistent for all students, fostering a sense of fairness and equity among peers.
- Student Buy-In: Students are genuinely invested, more likely to engage deeply, meet challenges, and achieve academic success.
- Flexibility: External factors, such as personal or health issues, are considered, allowing flexibility and understanding in meeting expectations.
Teaching Strategy Toolbox
Instructors can improve expectations for performance and enhance student perceptions of the learning environment through the strategies listed below. We recommend building on what you are already doing and incorporating strategies selectively.
Set Clear and Achievable Goals
- Transparent Learning Objectives: At the beginning of the course and each unit, clearly outline the learning objectives and goals, ensuring students understand what is expected of them and what they should aim to achieve.
- Realistic Assignment Design: Create assignments and projects that are challenging yet achievable, taking into account the diverse skill levels and backgrounds of the students.
- Progress Milestones: Break larger tasks or projects into smaller, manageable milestones with their own mini-goals, helping students track their progress and stay motivated.
- Regular Check-Ins: Conduct regular check-ins or surveys to gauge students' understanding and comfort with the course material, adjusting goals as necessary based on their feedback.
- Encouragement of Self-Assessment: Foster a habit of self-assessment among students, encouraging them to set their own personal learning goals and reflect on their progress towards these goals.
Provide Scaffolding and Support
- Step-by-Step Learning Guides: Develop and provide comprehensive study guides or learning modules that break down complex topics into manageable steps, helping students build their understanding incrementally.
- Tutorials and Worked Examples: Organize regular tutorial sessions or workshops that focus on challenging aspects of the course, offering additional explanations, examples, and practice opportunities. Provide worked examples or annotated sample assignments at different levels of achievement (e.g., underdeveloped, developed, exemplary).
- Accessible Student Hours: Schedule and promote office hours effectively, ensuring students are aware of these opportunities for personalized support and guidance.
- Online Support Forums: Create online forums or discussion boards where students can ask questions, share resources, and collaborate on understanding course material, with the instructor providing guidance and clarification as needed.
- Peer-Assisted Learning: Encourage or organize peer-assisted learning groups or study sessions, where students can support each other's learning, share insights, and tackle difficult concepts together.
Foster a Growth Mindset
- Acknowledge Effort and Process: Consistently acknowledge the effort and strategies students use, rather than just focusing on the end result, to reinforce the value of hard work and perseverance.
- Share Success Stories: Share stories and examples of individuals who achieved success through persistence and learning from failures, to illustrate the growth mindset in action.
- Encourage Reflection on Challenges: Create opportunities for students to reflect on their challenges and setbacks, discussing what they learned and how they can apply these lessons in the future.
- Model a Growth Mindset: Demonstrate a growth mindset as an instructor by openly discussing your own learning process, acknowledging mistakes, and showing how you learn and grow from them.
- Incorporate Growth-Oriented Feedback: Provide feedback that focuses on how students can improve and grow, emphasizing that abilities and understanding can be developed with effort and time.
Wise Feedback
- Set Realistic Yet High Expectations: Establish expectations that are both high and attainable, challenging students to push their boundaries while ensuring goals are within their reach. This approach motivates students to strive for excellence and fosters a sense of achievement when they meet these challenging objectives.
- Incorporate Wise Feedback: Provide 'wise feedback' that communicates high expectations alongside the assurance that the student can meet them. This type of feedback should include specific, constructive guidance on how to improve, coupled with the message that the effort and strategies used are crucial for success and that you believe in their potential to grow.
- Actionable Suggestions for Improvement: Offer clear, actionable steps for students to enhance their skills, ensuring that the high expectations set are accompanied by a roadmap for achieving them.
- Use of Detailed Rubrics: Employ detailed rubrics that clearly articulate the high standards expected in the course, providing a transparent framework for what constitutes excellence in each assignment.
- Feedback Dialogue Opportunities: Facilitate opportunities for students to engage in discussions about their feedback, encouraging them to understand and reflect on how they can meet the high expectations set, and reinforcing the belief that they are capable of rising to the challenge.
Adapt to Student Needs
- Just-In-Time Teaching (JiTT) Adaptations: Implement Just-In-Time Teaching strategies by adjusting lesson plans and content based on student feedback and understanding assessed just before class, ensuring that instruction is highly relevant and responsive to current student needs.
- Flexible Teaching Methods: Utilize a range of teaching methods and materials, adapting them as needed based on ongoing assessment of student engagement and understanding, to accommodate diverse learners.
- Tailored Learning Opportunities: Offer customized learning opportunities, like supplemental workshops or alternative assignments, that cater to the varying skill levels and interests of students, incorporating JiTT insights to make these as relevant as possible.
- Open and Responsive Communication: Foster an environment where students feel comfortable sharing their learning challenges, using this feedback to inform JiTT adaptations and respond effectively to individual and class needs.
- Proactive Support Based on Feedback: Utilize insights gained from student feedback and performance to proactively offer additional resources, such as targeted tutoring or study sessions, addressing specific areas where students need more support.
Encourage Self-Assessment
- Reflective Journals or Logs: Encourage students to maintain reflective journals or logs where they can regularly assess their own learning, understanding, and progress, fostering a habit of self-reflection and self-assessment.
- Self-Assessment Checklists and Rubrics: Provide students with self-assessment checklists or rubrics that align with assignment criteria, enabling them to evaluate their work against specific standards and expectations.
- Peer Review Sessions: Organize peer review sessions where students assess each other's work. This not only helps them learn to evaluate work critically but also to reflect on their own work by comparison.
- Guided Self-Evaluation Exercises: Incorporate exercises that guide students through the process of self-evaluation, such as asking them to identify their strongest and weakest points in an assignment and to plan steps for improvement.
- Feedback that Prompts Self-Reflection: Offer feedback that encourages students to think critically about their work. Questions and comments that prompt deeper reflection can help students develop the ability to assess their own learning and performance
Contact Us
CATL staff members are here to support your teaching improvement efforts and would enjoy meeting with you to discuss how to tailor strategies for your unique learning environments. Contact us to arrange a consultation.