8 Things Your Students Are Afraid to Tell You

The I Love EDTECH blog lists 8 Things Your Students Are Afraid to Tell You which makes for interesting reading - the article is written for a K12 audience, but I believe that lessons could be learned for third level in the same way. The 8 "things" are:

1. I do care about my grades
2. I want a choice in my education
3. I could teach you a thing or two if you'd just listen
4. Respect is a two way street
5. What you say is just as important as how you say it
6. I want to learn
7. Take home test = Google it
8. You impact my life more than you know

Image link to SimpleK12.

Go to the web link above to read the whole article - I'll not reproduce it here. But take the first thing "I do care about my grades" - many students openly convey to me that all they care about is hitting that magical 40% pass mark. This can be true for 1st and 2nd year students. Award year students are naturally more focussed on getting better grades. Even though it may look/feel cool to not care - I believe that many students do actually like to see higher grades in their results.

"Thing" number 6 is "I want to learn". It's hard to accept that this is true when some students skip classes/tutorials, hand in assignments late, and generally disengage. But as the article states the "hard part is figuring out how to teach the material in a way that will keep them wanting more" - this is a challenge for us all. Let's hope we are up to it, because if we really believe the "8 Things Your Students Are Afraid to Tell You" - students will respond if we are aware of this too.