In a recent post on Tomorrow’s Professor, the article considered the personalisation of learning and offers a strategy which the author posits as ways to individualise learning and teaching. Further I think that it also includes a number of strategies that may well encourage students to do the weekly readings.
Individualising contact
The strategy he describes is one which not only engages students in the class discussion but is also a way of encouraging the completion of the pre-reading. In this strategy he asks students to email him no more than 250 words on the reading which can take the form of questions or comments. He will then review these and ask students to pose questions in the class based on their analysis or questions.
Seeding discussion
The author points out that this is a way of co-creating the lesson plan where students have a voice and are able to raise particular issues that they are concerned with through their analysis of the reading.
Co-creating lesson plans
As the students send their comments and questions in the author responds to the individual submissions and develops the lesson plans with student reaction and content in mind. As he points out in the piece, students are “nudged” to do the reading as it has consequences on how the lesson is constructed, and they are aware that their input matters. Further it develops the students sense of “worth” that their voice counts.
This strategy is one of many ideas in the Tomorrow’s Professor site, it is a great resource you can subscribe to here.