A well-structured course can minimize student questions and uncertainty. Structure can help students understand the overall goals of the course and specific activities, what to expect during class sessions, how to best succeed on assignments, and more. When students struggle with aspects of the course you don’t expect – like interpreting instructions or understanding prompts – they will have less bandwidth to “struggle productively” with your course material. Research indicates that course structure can benefit all students, especially students from backgrounds that are marginalized at UW-Madison. This page offers strategies from research literature and our L&S colleagues that support instructors in creating structure to support students.
Pick one Mini Discussion below and include a 10-15 minute conversation in your next group meeting.
1. Structure the Start and End of Class Sessions
Beginning and ending class sessions with predictable activities can manage student expectations and provide comforting repeating patterns.
What we do at the start of every class in the Art and Science of Human Flourishing is we just do about 1 to 2 minutes of a very basic kind of awareness practice, a basic kind of mindful awareness practice that just allows the students to settle. And at the end of class, when they’re all about to try to get up and leave, we do the same thing, actually.
Excerpt from L&S Exchange Episode 2: Just Be Where Your Feet Are: Student Belonging and Flourishing on Campus with Professor John Dunne, Distinguished Professor of Contemplative Humanities in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
Discussion Questions
- What benefits for student belonging and learning do you see in this example?
- How do you start and end your class sessions? Why?
- How might you provide more structure to the beginning or ending of your class sessions?
2. Design Your Course with High Structure
Hogan and Sathy argue for “high structure” in course design as an equitable strategy that can help students know and use best practices for successful learning. They recommend scaffolding three course elements so that students practice learning before, during, and after class:
- Regular required, graded preparatory assignments before class (such as a reading quiz)
- Regular student participation during class (such as clicker questions, worksheet, or case study)
- Regular required, graded review assignments after class (such as practice exam problems)
Discussion Questions
- Does your course offer students opportunities to practice skills before, during, and after class? Why or why not?
- What is one element you might add or change to make your course more structured?
3. Make Assignments More Transparent
Often some instructors that we work with want students to struggle with a prompt and think it through, but sometimes they don’t realize that students are struggling because the prompt isn’t clear. So what we often suggest is that instructors consider increasing the transparency of assignments by making clear the purpose, the genre, the steps to complete, and the criteria for success so that students really understand what they’re being asked. They can grapple with a challenging problem that requires critical thinking to solve, but they don’t need to grapple with the opacity of a particular assignment prompt.
Excerpt from L&S Exchange Episode 9: Writing Across the Curriculum in the Age of AI with Emily Hall, Director of Writing Across the Curriculum
Discussion Questions
Consider one main assignment in your course.
- What is the purpose of the assignment? Do you think this purpose is clearly described for students? What evidence do you have to support this?
- What is one way you could more clearly communicate the purpose, steps, and success criteria for this assignment to students?
4. Provide Flexibility Within Structure
Gil Moreu and UW-Madison Psychology Professor Markus Brauer synthesize educational research to identify twenty easily implementable inclusive practices for college instructors. They recommend incorporating flexibility into assignment schedules as a way to reduce student anxiety, help students balance their coursework with other obligations and needs, and improve student satisfaction with the course.
Structure and flexibility don’t need to be in opposition to one another within course design. Structured courses and assignments can incorporate bounded flexibility by default or by student request. Moreu and Brauer suggest structured ways that flexibility can be incorporated into assignments.
For example, instructors can allow students to hand in one out of six assignments per semester up to 48 hours late or count only the best five out of six assignments. Alternatively, instructors can give out 12 assignments throughout the semester, ask students to hand in six, and then count only the best five.
Discussion Questions
- Do you offer flexibility within your assignments? Why or why not?
- How can you communicate to students about structure and flexibility in your course?
5. Create a Course Rhythm
Diagramming the weekly (or per unit) rhythm of your course can help both instructors and students understand how activities fit together and plan their time. Establishing a clear and repeatable “rhythm” can help students structure their participation.
Building a course around an established weekly schedule that consists of the same, or similar, elements (for example, assessments, readings, assignment types, and/or class activities) provides structure and predictability that helps students with time management and therefore enables them to engage more deeply with the course material.
Discussion Questions
- How might sharing a regular rhythm with students promote inclusion within your course?
- How might designing your course with a regular rhythm promote student learning?