Laying foundations: how to keep first-year students invested in their learning

When it comes to designing a foundational course within limited class time, it’s always a tug-of-war between stacking the content or keeping things basic. First-year students – regardless of age or technical background – are still adapting to university life, transitioning into the independent learners who can acquire new skills on their own and survive in an ever-changing landscape. Our goal as educators is to share our knowledge while showing them how to learn and also provide a good learning experience for students. You don’t want them to be so overwhelmed that they switch majors altogether.

In short, how can we keep students challenged while helping them gain confidence in their own abilities? 

Optimise limited class time 

When designing a foundation course curriculum for my coding modules, I prioritise my topics into “must have” and “good to have” and carve out time for students to apply the core skills that they learn.

All classes at Singapore Management University (SMU) are allocated three contact hours per week for each module. One of the techniques I use to optimise learning is the flipped classroom, using short videos or readings that are to be completed before class – perhaps during students’ commute to campus. “Novices” (those students without a background in coding) can watch them repeatedly, whereas the “experts” (those with some background) can skim through quickly. Students then complete a self-check quiz of multiple-choice and short-answer questions. They can repeat until they achieve 100 per cent. 

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In class, I go through the common mistakes made in their attempts during the quiz or use errors from my experience of teaching previous classes. In programming, these could be language-specific traps or concepts that require more explanation. The rest of the class time is for hands-on activities such as analysing and evaluating which programming constructs to use and in which order. These exercises focus on the higher-order thinking skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy. These activities quickly identify novices who need more support. 

Setting up students to learn to learn

We have a high teaching-staff-to-student ratio of one to four. Our team of teaching assistants and two faculty provides good support for first-year students, especially for courses that require hands-on activities to keep our students constantly on-task. Students are also encouraged to support their peers, rather than solving the problem for their peers. This helps them on the “learning to learn” journey. 

To tailor learning to each student, I have questions that are worth one, two or three stars based on the level of difficulty. All students must submit a set of mandatory questions, which are mostly one-star questions. The motivated learners will often finish the more complex questions. Experts who wish to advance beyond the course can tackle out-of-scope questions as well. 

Have fun to keep class safe

Novice learners start a class with excitement but can be discouraged after hitting a wall. For that necessary spark of motivation to get them out from the valley of despair, it can help to think about reducing the professor-teacher gap. 

Be open to being an “edu-tainer”, for want of a better word. In foundation courses, a live demo can be more engaging, more fun, than a deck of slides. Let students see your thought process as you tackle the problem using the concepts you have taught. You can make mistakes intentionally or unintentionally. Students will learn that it is OK to make mistakes, and they get to see how you debug. You are signalling that you are no different from the students. This creates a safe environment for students to try, make mistakes and learn. 

I also award points for watching the videos and completing the quiz, asking questions in class (for shy students!), submitting the mandatory questions in the weekly in-class exercise, and being in the top five in the weekly Kahoot quiz. The point is to use the in-class time to build a good foundation for concepts they will cover in more advanced courses later.

If your university provides the recording infrastructure in the classroom, record the classes. From my experience, even though only a small group of students will go back and rewatch the videos for any parts that they have missed, it is a good fallback mechanism that all students appreciate. Using messaging tools such as Telegram can also be helpful to facilitate a comfortable private space for students to ask questions one on one, but only when necessary.

Use feedback about your teaching to help you understand students

Students always want to know how they are progressing in the course – and this is especially true at the beginning of their university journey. Timely feedback on work allows them to seek help early if they are failing. Students who are doing well will gain confidence and be motivated to work harder. 

In my introductory programming class, students submit weekly non-graded in-class exercises. The teaching assistants give feedback on how to improve the readability, efficiency and understandability of their code. 

Another way to collect feedback as an instructor is to use an exit ticket for students to answer at the end of the class. The questions I use in my exit ticket include:

• How well did you understand the course materials?
• What are the important things you learned today?
• If you have doubts about a specific concept, please state below.
• Share a suggestion to help you learn better. 

If multiple students highlight common issues, you can go through them in the next class. Otherwise, reply to them individually. Every few weeks, a formative assessment gives students a clear view of how they are coping with the course so far. I am also working to give them an estimated course grade at the end of each major assessment. 

Designing and teaching foundation year courses can pay huge dividends if you can keep students invested in their learning. All you need is a bit of empathy and two-way feedback to keep the support system strong. 

Yeow Leong Lee is a principal lecturer of computer science and director of Undergraduate Matters at Singapore Management University.

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