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Building and Sustaining Class Community – At the Class’ End

Before your course ends, ask students to reflect on their experience. Asking students to think about their thinking and learning strengthens their metacognitive skills, which in turn improves their ability to transfer the knowledge they gained in your course to future courses and contexts (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000).

Making a Meme

At the end of the semester, Professor Claire Kamp Dush challenges her students in Family Development to create and share a meme about one of the course’s key ideas. Dr. Kamp Dush’s assignment asks students to:

  1. Choose a topic or concept discussed during semester.
  2. Make a meme to represent the topic or concept. Use imgflip or another tool to generate their meme.
  3. Write a short paragraph explaining the meme.
  4. Post the meme and paragraph to a discussion in the CarmenCanvas course.

See the student examples:

First example of a student-produced meme and analytical paragraph describing the meme.
Second example of a student-produced meme and analytical paragraph describing the meme.

Writing a Reflection

Asking students to write a reflection on what they learned can be a powerful way to conclude a course. Consider using the following prompts (Audette, 2016):

Most Important Thing Learned

Ask your students to reflect on and write about the most important thing that they’ve learned in the course. Encourage them to think about how their thinking changed as a result of learning this concept. This allows you to determine which concepts students are taking away and whether your learning goals were accomplished.”

Learning Reflections

During one of your final class periods, have students reflect on the learning process throughout your course. Have them write a letter to themselves about what they’ve learned, or have them address the letter to students taking the course the next time you teach it. If addressing the letters to themselves, ask students to write about how they will take this new knowledge and apply it to their lives or future coursework. If addressing it to future students, ask them to discuss strategies that helped them be successful in the course and what they might have done differently if they had known then what they know now.”

Resources

Audette, A. (2016, November 28). Techniques for end-of-semester reflection and review.

Brown, J.D., Brown, A.L., & Cocking, R.R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.