Much attention continues to be directed at those freshman experience programs in college. As important as that time is, it’s not the only portion of a student’s career to which attention should be directed. True, seniors are no longer likely to drop out of college, but they face a transition just as compelling as the one that brings them from high school to college. They are about to depart from college to professional lives. It is a time for reflection, integration, and closure.

I’m going to take a blog break for the next couple of weeks. I’ll be back with more entries the first week in January. This blog is just about a year old—I’ve been enjoying doing the entries. Thanks for reading and thanks especially to those of you who’ve posted comments and sent emails about various blog entries. I see this blog as having great potential for sharing good ideas and information succinctly. Sometimes that all it takes … a couple of paragraphs and there’s something new to think about or a reminder of something that hasn’t been thought about for a while. If you have content ideas or suggestions about how I could make the blog better, those would be most welcome.

We get a lot of submissions to the newsletter describing various and sundry games that faculty have devised to help students review, gain confidence in dealing with new vocabulary, apply material they have learned to different problems, and get involved and engaged with content. Some of the games follow popular TV shows like Jeopardy or Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Others mirror other forms of cultural entertainment like speed dating, and some are totally unique.

Do students have the right to remain silent in class? I continue to struggle with that question. It definitely depends on the course. If you want to learn French, you really can’t do that without speaking. But what about history or environmental biology?

Although faculty would like to think optimistically, most know that when it comes to student learning and how much content students take with them from a course, even one in their major, reality dashes optimism. This grim fact was confirmed in a study of students enrolled in a business consumer behavior course.

Jennifer Moore, an assistant professor of elementary education at a small teaching-focused university in Alabama had several “intellectual awakenings” when she recently took three graduate courses simultaneously. Her institution needed a reading specialist and she looked on taking the required courses as an opportunity. One of the three courses was offered online; the other two in the more traditional lecture format. Here’s how she describes one of her “intellectual awakenings.”

Social loafing is the research jargon for group members who don’t carry their weight—the free riders, the ones that hard-working group members hate and the ones that make faculty wonder if it’s ethically responsible to use group work.

Teaching first-semester students has its own special challenges. The students all start out optimistic, but soon, many start making poor decisions such as skipping class, not doing the reading, not participating or even paying attention, and missing small and not-so-small assignments.

Cramming—now there’s a timely topic given the fast approaching end of fall courses. Do students cram for your exams? For the exams of your colleagues? In those bygone days, did you ever resort to cramming?