Developing Pathways to Success in the Classroom
This is the fourth in a series of articles designed for new students. If you are an incoming freshman or parent of one, you may want to check out my previous articles on registering for your first semester classes, how to spend your first week on campus, and a particularly good companion to this article, how to embrace failure.
By Xavier Royer — August 9, 2022
This is the fourth in a series of articles designed for new students. If you are an incoming freshman or parent of one, you may want to check out my previous articles on registering for your first semester classes, how to spend your first week on campus, and a particularly good companion to this article, how to embrace failure.
My senior year as an undergrad, I had the opportunity to be a teaching assistant for a particularly tough professor. It was an honors course, and many students were accustomed to earning A’s with a fairly baseline amount of effort. As I sat in the corner of the class, I witnessed many faces turn pale as the professor presented the syllabus, including the mountain of reading assignments and harsh grading policy. While I did grading and led a few lectures, my most impactful responsibility as a TA was offering a lifeline to these students. As the stressed students came to me for help, I found myself giving them all the same advice. "The Pathway to Success," as I call it, is a strategy I still share with my students. The core idea behind developing a Pathway to Success is to take an unruly course and break it down into smaller chunks, which allows students to be more efficient with their time and effort.
The first step in creating a Pathway to Success is reading the syllabus. Seriously, read it. Ignoring the syllabus is a great way for students to find nasty surprises at the end of the term. The assignments, readings, other course materials, and grading structure should be detailed. More than just a course schedule, a syllabus outlines the instructor's expectations for the student. In other words, students should not have to guess what it takes to earn their desired grade if they read the syllabus carefully. While courses sometimes deviate from the syllabus (inclement weather is a common culprit), it is rare for it to change drastically. Reading the syllabi closely can help those challenging courses look more manageable. For example, many of the honors students delighted in the realization that participation accounted for about a quarter of their grade. This meant they could ace 25% of the course by showing up and raising their hand consistently.
The heavily weighted participation grade is an example of step two in the Pathway to Success, find slam dunks and lay-ups. A "slam dunk" is any grade that is "free" or completely effort based. Participation is a slam dunk because students can do it regardless of skill level and often with minimal preparation. Many extra credit opportunities, such as seeing a campus speaker outside of class hours, fall into this category. "Lay-ups" are assignments that should be free points but are vulnerable to points being lost due to laziness or procrastination. A common lay-up assignment is a discussion board post because they usually do not take much time and have fairly straightforward grading criteria. Identifying the "slam dunks" and "lay-ups" will often help cut the grade book down to size.
After the "easy" assignments have been accounted for, the magic in the Pathway to Success is to schedule and plan for what is left. Likely, these will be the big assignments like tests, papers, and projects. Students should begin attacking those assignments ASAP. This does not mean writing the midterm paper before the end of August, but it is never too early to start planning around these assignments and identifying resources to make those assignments easier. Some resources students may begin familiarizing themselves with are campus writing or tutoring centers, classmates who make good study partners, and resources through the campus library (research librarians are criminally underutilized). By thinking through the logistics of the writing or studying process early, students can reserve their mental bandwidth for the actual work. Otherwise, the scramble to make appointments or find suitable office hours may distract and stress students leading to less effective preparation and likely a worse grade.
A Pathway to Success has three basic parts:
Read the syllabus and develop an in-depth understanding of the instructors' expectations to eliminate potential surprises.
Find the slam dunks and lay-ups, the easier assignments that a student will ensure they get full credit on to lower the stakes of larger assignments.
Attack challenging assignments early to prepare and reduce future stress. The Pathway to Success is an excellent method for approaching those more challenging courses. It allows students to compartmentalize the logistics of the course and focus on the material.
Xavier Royer
I am currently a full time instructor at a William Penn University, a small private university in Iowa. I am the lone political science faculty member there. In my time teaching, I have already connected with an incredible cohort of students in ways I could never have expected. Partnering with SAGE will allow me the opportunity to help even more students across the globe navigate those tricky questions.
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