Almost all college classes require students to meet a plethora of demands: Presenting papers and moderating discussions, active participation in class, self-directed learning, research, doing the required reading, and more. But what happens when students fail to see the point of their coursework? I attempted to solve this problem in a class for education majors in their freshman year of college. The results speak for themselves. First, in clearly articulating learning objectives, students were much more likely to accept the assignments they were being given. I also asked students to fill out an evaluation to assess how successful I had been in communicating these objectives to them, and I received valuable feedback from it.
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