How do I get students over anxiety about the course?
- Sometimes course fears have more to do with learning the skills necessary
to handle the material: how to take good lecture notes, how to effectively
read the text, etc. Suggest that students contact Academic
Learning Services if they need skill-building help.
- If a student expresses anxiety, talk to him or her in private. Ask questions.
Find out specifically what the student fears. Students who fear doing math
have different fears than students who fear presenting their own poetry. Ask
the student at what point in the process his or her heart starts pounding,
and they start looking for distractions. Some instructors make written contractual
agreements with especially anxious students. Here is
an example.
- Share the frustration you experienced and mistakes you made when you first
learned the material.
- Try to present the topic in the student's terms. Connect it to his or her
experience using situations from his or her life.
- Find out what particular terms or concepts the students find ambiguous.
Spend time first clarifying definitions, and then examine the relationships
between the terms/concepts.
- Explain that your subject is just something someone, somewhere understood and the student's goal is to work toward understanding it, too. Discipline-specific knowledge is a human invention, not some inhuman, unattainable thing.
Address questions or comments about
TEP or this site to:
Georgeanne Cooper, Program Director,
64 PLC
Phone: 541-346-2177 Fax: 541-346-2184
© Copyright 2000-2006 Teaching Effectiveness Program, University of Oregon.
Last Modified:
06/12/09
