How Do I End a Course Successfully?

You know the scene. It’s the end of the semester, and you see instructors lugging boxes of donuts across campus to their classrooms so they can end the semester on a festive note. Perhaps you’ve lugged those boxes, too. As you’ll see below, ending the semester with a celebration of effort can be a great way of honoring the learning community your class has formed. But what other strategies might help you and your students reinforce learning at the very end of the semester? We have some ideas for you.   

STRATEGIES & EXAMPLES 

Reflect on Learning 

Ask your students to fill out a reflection questionnaire. If one of your goals as a teacher is to increase your students’ metacognition (the ability to think about one's thinking processes with the goal of achieving greater efficacy as a learner), a reflection questionnaire can be a great way to end the semester. Some instructors list major assignments and ask students to comment on their work process, key learnings, and feelings about their work. (Blum, 2020). Or, you can ask broader questions, such as: 

• What do you know now that you did not know in August/January? 
• What work was challenging What was fun? What was useful? What didn’t seem useful? 
• What was something unexpected that you learned? 
• What may you have expected to learn but didn’t? 
• What did you change your mind about? 
• What question would you like to investigate more deeply? 
• What’s a profound insight you’ve gained? 
• How many hours per week did you study? 
• How engaged and mentally present were you in class? 
  
  (Adapted from Blum, 2020, pgs. 66-73) 

Bookend activities. Some instructors use the last class to revisit an activity from the beginning of the class to help students see how much they’ve learned. If you administer a knowledge survey at the beginning of class, you can administer a similar survey at the end, and students can compare their two sets of results. Or consider using a concept inventory, a discipline-specific standardized assessment tools used to evaluate student understanding of specific concepts in a course. Or you can invite students revisit an assignment from earlier in the semester, and reflect on what they would rewrite. Or you can ask students to reflect on the nature of the subject, thinking about what they know now that they didn’t know before, and what new directions might be possible for their learning (Nilson, 2016). 

Situate student learning in broader major, departmental, or university goals. Students don’t always know how a single course fits into the greater university curriculum, and therefore may not know what next steps they can take in their academic journey to continue their learning. You may be able to use the final class to preview other classes they can take, highlight undergraduate research opportunities, or facilitate connections to other faculty whose interests and professional experience might align with their own. 

Honor Learning 

Appreciate good work. Taking time to celebrate achievements within the class can be a wonderful, affirming way to end a class. You can either highlight achievements on your own, or ask students to share transformative realizations or read a small portion of their favorite work aloud (UC Berkeley CTL). 

Share transformative learning as a community. Collaborative exercises at the end of the semester can help students recognize and appreciate their learning more than individual activities. You can ask all students in the room to share something significant they’ve learning (in small classes, they can share verbally, in larger classes you can use polling software or a shared document). Or you can engage students in a concept map activity to visually capture the complexity of how much has been learned. Students may remember more collectively than they could individually, furthering or deepening their learning even on the last day of class! This approach also helps reinforce connections among students in the class, something critical for student success throughout their college career. 

Encourage movement and collaborative displays of learning through a “stations” or “gallery walk” activity. These techniques gives students the chance to move around and focus on particular topics. In a “stations” activity, you set up stations around the room where students can interact on a particular topic. For example, you can have stations for each major concept in your class, with questions aimed at helping students display their learning. You can ask students to rotate in small groups. For a “gallery walk” activity, you can ask students to share artifacts of their learning around the classroom, or if you have a large class, you can ask them to share evidence of their work digitally, with time allotted for looking through work and engaging with what they see.  

Share your research. Taking a little time to explain your current research can help students see beyond your class, better understand what is possible within your discipline, and think about what more they’d like to learn (UC Berkeley CTL). 

Frame Course Evaluations Effectively 

Have you ever asked students if they know why we ask them to fill out student evaluations? Many students are surprised to learn that evaluations are used in promotion decisions (some may not even realize that professors can be promoted!), to improve future courses, and determine depth of learning.  Some things you can do to make the most of the student evaluation process include:   

• Explain how evals are used. Tell students what happens to the data, when you get the feedback, how you use that feedback, how others use it. Be transparent about the process, but remain impartial so you get the most useful and honest feedback. Some instructors, especially those from under-represented backgrounds and who might experience bias in evaluations, can invite more senior colleagues in their department come in to explain this process and purpose to their students, and to vouch for the faculty member’s credibility and value to the university.  
• Provide time in class for them to fill out the evaluation. By providing time in class, you will very likely improve your response rate and thereby increase the range of responses / quality of your data.  
• Explain your evaluation goals and help your students see how the evaluation helps with your specific class. Tell students how you use evaluation data to improve your teaching, tell them what specific things you might want to know about, and thank them for taking the time to make your class even better. 
• Review key learnings. People often have a better sense of how much they have learned after they have had time to reflect on their learning. If you want an accurate idea of the overall learning in your class, try to offer cumulative review experiences before students fill out the course evaluation. One way to do that is to have a whole-class discussion. You can also ask students to build a concept map of all they have learned during the semester. 

Seek Further Feedback 

Ask them how the class can be improved. Tell students that you value their feedback and often use student input to make the class better each semester. You can ask them what assignments, activities, and readings were particularly helpful for their learning. If you want an example of structured survey questions you could ask, check out the ForwardFOCUS questionnaire.

Write a letter to another student. You can ask students what advice they’d like to pass on to future students. 

Do you have a particularly effective course end-of-class activity you’d like to share? Submit a short description to @email!