Enriching college students
Teachers at all levels often focus on how to help those who struggle to learn the material. And we should! But let’s not forget the other end of the curve — students who learn the material quickly and struggle with the lack of pace.
When you give 2nd graders a worksheet with 50 double-digit multiplication problems and an hour to do them, what do you do with the student who submits answers in 15 minutes?
1. Give them another worksheet with 100 similar problems
2. Give them a worksheet with 3-digit multiplication problems
3. Give them something to read about number theory related to multiplication
This is a deceptively hard choice that all teachers face eventually.
(1) is called punishment and teaches the kid to hide how smart they are
(2) is called acceleration and is common and helpful, but has the risk of separating students from students their own age
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(3) is called enrichment and can be a wonderful experience, but requires creativity from the instructor
K-12 teachers study acceleration and enrichment. But this also occurs in college. What do we do with students in college classes who are not challenged? If we ignore them, we run the risk of alienating them.
Some college students will take extra classes as a form of self-enrichment. A second major or second minor can certainly help their career. Some will finish their degrees in fewer than 4 years as a form of self-acceleration. Some will take a 4+1 BS-MS combined program (widely available) and finish their BS and MS in 5 years.
These are all good strategies for self-aware students, but the most pressing need is often in individual classes. For fast learners, some assignments are often unnecessary or repetitive. Early in my career, I had a data structures student who submitted only one assignment the entire semester. I accidentally assigned an undecidable graph problem and he thought it was interesting. Nobody else got anything to work, but he submitted an excellent approximation algorithm! In the end, he learned all the course material and more, but got a B because he got a zero on most assignments. My course structure did not serve that student well.
What can we do? Enrichment! If I even suspect I have “one of those” students, I offer an alternative path to the typical assignments. For example, in a web software course, instead of a sequence of small assignments to learn individual concepts like redirection and distributed state management, I offer a semester-long project. The project is open-ended and loosely defined to encourage divergent thinking and creative problem solving. I allow any technologies so the students can learn tools or frameworks that we don’t cover in class. Many students have loved that option!
The downside? Two, really. It’s more work for the instructor to create and grade a project. I think it’s worth the investment to help those students. Second, students will sometimes overestimate their abilities or time. So the project needs an off-ramp where they can ease back to the regular assignments without penalty.
College teachers do not get much education in how to teach. But if you care about teaching, helping fast-learning students can be the most rewarding part of teaching.
(No AI was used for this story)
