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Successful Students Do Not Do What They Should: An Inspirational Seminar for the Classroom C.J.B. Macnab Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Calgary

Abstract

Most engineering instructors are encouraged to achieve teaching excellence. But how can instructors encourage students to achieve learning excellence? This seminar can easily be used by any instructor, in any course, to motivate students to undertake successful learning strategies. This paper outlines and gives the rational behind a presentation that can be found at http://www.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/Macnab/howToExcel.ppt. Any interested professors can give this 50-minute presentation to their class, or use this paper as inspiration to create their own seminar.

Introduction

How can students find success and excel in university? The answer would at first appear to be of interest mainly to students. However, successful students cause less work for instructors and administrators. Successful students are also the ones who make the teaching experience enjoyable and rewarding for professors. But few students, left to their own devices, will acquire the skills they need to do this. Why not help them out a little? It is true there are many resources available to students, such as books on study skills [4, 6, 7, 8] and books on learning styles [3]. It is also true that very few students will investigate them without some inspiration.

Students easily fall into patterns of behavior that prevent them from acquiring new skills. Students who do not think critically about their actions will simply do what they think they should do. In the students’ past teachers and parents have given expectations to them on school attendance and study habits. Rather than explaining the rational behind such expectations, too often enforcement is the only consideration. The typical methods for enforcing expectations are guilt (European-descended cultures) and shame (the rest of the world). The most common expression of expectations come in the form “You should” (act in a certain way). Many students end up with a set of imaginary rules in their heads on how to attend school. For the purposes of this paper the following definition is provided:

Definition An imaginary rule has no consequence for breaking the rule other than guilt or shame.

Regardless of which expectations are are helpful for student learning and which are not, students

Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright c 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

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Macnab, C. (2005, June), Successful Students Do Not Do What They Should: An Inspirational Seminar For The Classroom Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--15223