The Last Days of Class

Both students and faculty welcome semester's end and in the final push to get there, we often forget to take advantage of our last days together. While it's important to do course evaluations and give last minute details about final exams and final essays, the last days of class also provide an opportunity to gather some information from your students about their learning experience and help them learn even more.

Here are some suggestions for making the last few classes memorable and useful:

• Have questions about what worked well or didn't work so well for your students' learning as you begin to think about next time semester? Use this opportunity to ask them to reflect. Give them your own final evaluation questions or ask them to write one last one minute/muddiest point paper.
• Review the course syllabus, especially the course objectives. Ask students to discuss – with each other and with you -- how the topics were covered and how the objectives are related.
• Do a course review for the final using a game show, such as, Jeopardy.
• Ask students to reflect – in writing and/or verbally -- on what they have learned in class and how they are going to put their learning to use in their own lives, with their families, in their workplaces or in the world at large.
• Discuss famous people who have studied your subject and their accomplishments.
• Anything else? Encourage student to ask questions about the subject matter that may not have been discussed in class.
• Discuss some of the feedback you received throughout the semester and indicate how you will use that feedback for future classes. Include some of the minute papers that were written by class.
• Have students brainstorm on how and where they can learn more about topics covered in the class.
• Give the class feedback. Give them some indications of what they did well as a class, what they might have done better.
• Thank and applaud them for their good work, and tell them what you enjoyed about working with them.
  

Tips adapted from http://teaching.berkeley.edu/newsletters0607/newsletter13.html.