Elly R. Truitt

One of the most hard-won perspectives that I have learned over twenty-five years of teaching college students is that I teach the students in front of me. Not the students I thought I would have, the ones I wish I had, the ones I had last year, or last semester. Today, I find that the students in front of me are increasingly anxious, at the expense of their curiosity, tolerance for intellectual risk and discomfort, and confidence in themselves as learners. This anxiety can manifest in different ways, including an over-reliance on seeking approval, often couched as a request for “clarification;” a reluctance to use resources that require face-to-face interaction (talking to a librarian, going to the Weingarten Center); contesting grades; rote transcription of lecture/course material in the hope that replication will produce mastery; aggression or hostility, which can look like the student who cries in your office every week or the student who complains to your head of department about your teaching; and disappearance/avoidance. However it manifests, this anxiety interrupts learning because of how it stifles curiosity, confidence, and the ability to take intellectual risks and tolerate cognitive discomfort. Fostering student autonomy can improve their confidence and willingness to take risks, and if they are less anxious, they can be more open to ideas and to discomfort. Below are some strategies that I have developed to foster student autonomy and increase their confidence in themselves as learners.

Foster autonomy through course design and course policy: Designing your syllabi, assignments, and course policies with an eye to empowering students to take a more active role in their learning will acculturate them to this role and give them opportunities to practice and experiment with making choices about their learning. There are a number of ways that you can do this, depending on the other factors and needs of your course. 

• Designing an attendance policy that gives students one or two classes that they can miss without penalty gives them the option of making decisions that align with their priorities (other classes, well-being, work). 
• If your course assessment is structured around regular quizzes or problem sets, you can give students a “pass” for a week of their choosing, so that if they’re sick or have some other assignment or commitment, they can exercise their option. You can also give students a choice of when to submit assignments, so that they can think about what their schedule is like from a holistic perspective, and make a decision accordingly (caveat: I have done this and some students find the lack of a firm due date very anxiety-producing).
• Giving students options on assignments—different formats, problem sets, questions, experiments, anything—is another way to foster their autonomy, because it forces them to make a decision that relates to their learning. 
• Recruit students to help design course policies. A few years ago, I started designing the policy on extensions for assignments in collaboration with the students. I dedicate about 20 minutes of class time to have a discussion about what an extension policy is for, what kind of possibilities exist for a policy, and what seems reasonable and equitable. I add my own thoughts and put all the proposals on Canvas for a 48-hour comment period. There has never been any additional comment, and the students often come up with really good ideas about a policy for submitting late work. Once we have all agreed, I write up the policy and put it on the course website. An added benefit of doing this is that the students, as co-authors of the policy, feel bound to it, and don’t send panicked emails at the eleventh (or twelfth) hour asking for exceptions.

Foster autonomy through assignments and in-class activities: One way of fostering student autonomy is through giving them choices, either related to assignments or course material. Another is by designing assignments and learning activities in which autonomy is necessary. I have done this with assignments, activities, and deliverables in classes ranging from first-year seminars to large intro lecture courses to upper-level seminars, and even capstone courses. This has looked like:

• Having students work in small groups to design (with feedback and revision) weekly quizzes on the reading and lecture material. This requires them to know the material; to make judgements about what questions, facts, ideas, or concepts are the most important; and to shift from passive reception of learning to active meta-cognition. I also have the students write exam questions whenever I teach a course with a final examination; this allows me to see what course material they think is important and it is an excellent review exercise for them.
• Self-assessment on their own work. I do this in conjunction with peer review, asking the students to read a colleague’s work and prepare 1-2 paragraphs of feedback, which they share with both me and their colleague, and then turning their attention back to their own work, with the same reader-centered perspective, rather than their writing-centered perspective. I prepare a set of questions for them to answer as they read their own work and critique it. They answer their questions on the worksheet, which is what I collect and read. This exercise can be very effective, and it also can produce some very uncomfortable emotions in the students, as they can find non-judgmental self-critique to be difficult to access.
• Giving students the opportunity to rewrite any (or all) of their papers. This is tricky in terms of the time spent assessing student work and is only workable if you have help with grading or fewer than thirty students. But giving students this option fosters their autonomy by giving them more flexibility in how they approach the assignments and allocate their attention. The knowledge that they can choose to rewrite the paper later for a higher grade lowers the stakes of the assignment and can make them more willing to experiment with ideas. A bonus is that allowing this also habituates students to the necessity of revision as a part of the thinking process.
• Give students opportunities to learn in class without screens and from each other. Having students talk to one another in small groups about some aspect of the course material is one of the most powerful settings for learning, because learning is a relational activity. Ceding control of the lectern and letting the students talk to each other about the material shifts the classroom dynamic. It highlights the fact that autonomy is not confused with control or self-involvement; rather it is something we exercise in community and that we learn best when we learn from one another.

While these practices do not solve every challenge that student anxieties cause, they do allow my students to begin to take responsibility for their learning and for their place in the world with others.  These practices also allow me to support the students in front of me to become the students I want to be teaching.

Elly R. Truitt is an associate professor in the history & sociology of science department in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences.

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This essay continues the series that began in the fall of 1994 as the joint creation of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Lindback Society for Distinguished Teaching. 

See https://almanac.upenn.edu/talk-about-teaching-and-learning-archive for previous essays.