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When I started teaching – last century [gasp] – if a student did poorly on a test, I would write “see me” at the top of the paper. I had few takers. Since then, I’ve developed a simple email to such students with a nearly 100% response rate, which I’ve talked about here.
The Chronicle article, Could a few emails from you boost student success, shows I may have been on to something. A new paper offers encouraging evidence that light-touch forms of outreach from an instructor can make a difference in how students, especially those from marginalized groups, view the course — and help improve their academic performance. It turns out that light-touch personalized emails can help move the needle on student performance.
But what about the students that ghost you? They’ve missed multiple classes or haven’t turned in assignments and are not responding to your emails, no matter how light or personal. In the Inside Higher Ed article, How to work with students who ghost on classes or assignments, Kerry O’Grady shares some ways to address this with an equal dose of empathy and accountability, helping students realize that the student-professor relationship is a 50-50 partnership, meaning the student needs to put in the 50 percent, as does the instructor.
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