Maximizing the Last Day
By Ireta Ekstrom, CMU Instructional Developer

The last day of class – sometimes it seems that there are two divergent choices: 1) hand out the student evaluations, say “have a nice break” and leave or 2) talk really fast and try to pack all of those gems that didn’t make it into the rest of the semester into the last 40 minutes or so. Perhaps a better way of gracefully closing out the course is by using one of the following possibilities.

Have students write the three most important ideas, concepts or skills they learned. Keep it to a brief 10 minutes or so. Collect the papers at the end of class for a grade, if you like. Two or three volunteers can share what they wrote or everyone shares one of their three items. In larger classes students may group according to topic and articulate a single version of the items, then share with the class.

Ask the students to design the final exam. Students frame the question topics and develop a list of terms they should be able to define, although the professor writes the actual questions. Students have not only reviewed the course, they have determined what they know and need to know for the final exam.

Have students to write a letter to the people taking the class in the next semester and give advice on how to do well in the course. Instructors note that this is a good method of synthesizing what has been learned and helps the students realize growth in the subject. After using this method, one professor noted that, “It was really heartwarming to see them come up with things like, ‘have faith in yourself. You can do this’ or ‘this class is hard but totally worth it’ or ‘this class will really help you be open-minded -- be ready to learn a lot!’ Even things like ‘it will be easier to write the papers if you start thinking about them early’ were helpful. . . . Then I saved the lists and handed them out to the next class at the beginning of the next semester.”

Some professors combine writing and discussion about their new ideas and how thinking has changed. Students can write or discuss how they will take this information into their lives outside class and use it. According to Lang (2006), the nice thing about this method is that there are no right/wrong answers yet it imparts a sense of usefulness and closure to the semester.

For future classes, another idea is to have students describe what they hope to learn on the first day of class. On the last day, the same form is handed back to students and they are asked to tell if they did learn those things, or learned something new (and perhaps more important or relevant).

None of these takes a long time to organize, yet each one could offer huge benefits. We offer discrete bits of knowledge to students (called courses) over four or so years. Sometimes it is not easy for students to put them into context or transfer what they have learned into a useable form for another class or life outside class. Processing new learning and integrating knowledge and expertise into daily life may or may not be something that students are able to do at this stage of their lives. By helping them learn how to learn, learn how to process and learn how to transfer that learning into other classes and eventually the workplace we teach far more than a subject, we teach a life skill.

Creating a plan for closing out a course can encapsulate a semester’s worth of important ideas, summarize them and emphasize to students that they did, indeed learn something. It also gives you insight into what they found important in the class – is it what you thought you were teaching? If not, you have some time to reflect and make some changes before greeting that next classroom full of students.
For more information on this topic check out FaCIT’s “Take 5 for Teaching:  The Last Day of Class” 

Sources:
Angelo, T. & Cross, K.P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college teachers. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Lang, J.M. (2006, December 1). Finishing strong. [Electronic version]. Chronicle of Higher Education, p. C2.