Will This Be on the Test? Creating Clear Guidelines for Students

"Will this be on the test?"

Teach for a day and you'll hear this phrase. The good news: they aren't just being annoying. They really need to know.

We all need guidelines. Without them, we're left guessing what's expected of us.

In the classroom, the need for guidelines becomes quickly evident in our students, but as we begin to evaluate our students' work, our need for guidelines becomes evident as well. (Did I tell them to do it this way? I thought I said...) If guidelines aren't clearly set, teachers and students alike can quickly lose sanity.

What do I post guidelines for? Just about everything, including:

• syllabus/general course expectations
• assignments
• attendance and participation

What do these guidelines include? What my expectations are of them (criteria of evaluation), and how they will be evaluated (how well they met that criteria). The trick is: keep your expectations concise. The more concise, the more likely they will read and follow them. (I use brief lists.)

Here's a few ways I make my guidelines clear:

1. I say them in class--usually more than once.
2. I show them on a PowerPoint slide in front of them as I explain the guidelines.
3. I post them online, in an online course management program (Desire2Learn, Angel).

Clear expectations take the guesswork out of classroom management and evaluation. When I student says, "Oh, I didn't know..." you can point them back to the places where they should should have seen and heard the guidelines.

Clear guidelines not only tells students how they will be graded, but it tells us as instructors how to evaluate. Since I've begun making my expectations clear, I can't say that my grading pile has gotten any smaller, but it has gotten easier to manage.