Parting Ways: Ending Your Course

Tami J. Eggleston, Gabie E. Smith

Access full article here. Excerpts below.

Much emphasis has been placed on the use of activities at the beginning of a course to provide opportunities for introductions, begin to create a comfortable classroom atmosphere to encourage discussion and learning, or develop a sense of community and group identity. In many teaching books (e.g., McKeachie, 1999) there is an entire chapter devoted to getting started and what to do on the first day of a course such as breaking the ice, introducing the teacher and textbook, and allowing time for questions. Much less attention has been given to the equally important task of providing closure at the end of a course or seminar.

After a great deal of time developing a sense of comfort and community in the classroom, ignoring class endings seems awkward and abrupt to both students and faculty. Use of “parting-ways” techniques:

• Provides emotional and psychological closure to the classroom thereby reducing awkwardness.
• Acts as an opportune time to summarize central ideas and review content.
• Wraps up the class in ways that add to students’ entire semester-long experience and sense of accomplishment.
• Stimulates interest in the topic area and possibly major.
• Increases the connection between faculty and students by recognizing the importance of taking time to say good-bye.

… IT IS IMPORTANT TO PROVIDE CLOSURE
ACADEMICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY

Parting-ways can serve many purposes depending on the specific dynamics of the course, the goals of the instructor, and time available. End of the class activities may:

• Summarize the course material or act as a review of the course goals and objectives and what students have learned, or the course’s most important ideas. Most textbook chapters provide a summary at the end of each chapter, instructors should think of a way to provide a summary to the class.
• Give students some memento from the course experience. Just as with a memorable trip, people enjoy having something to remember important events in their life.
• Provide an opportunity for faculty and students to say good-bye. After all, you have spent a lot of time together. If a classroom community has been established, then time needs to be dedicated to end the class.
• Contribute to a sense of accomplishment. In one sense an activity can put closure on the class from an academic or learning based perspective. Completing your class should be seen as something worthwhile and important.
• Create the feeling that the class has come to a culmination and it is time to move on.

ACADEMIC PARTING WAYS

Projects, Letters, Brochures

• Write a letter detailing their own development in the course and what they have learned.
• Write “letters to successors” to students enrolled in the course in the future, detailing what can be gained from the course as well as broader advice on being a successful student.
• Review the course concepts through completion of a project, such as developing an informational brochure for incoming students.

Pre-Post Tests and Video Summaries

• We administer “intuition” tests at the beginning of the semester that consist of true-false items to assess students’ initial ideas, myths, and common sense beliefs about psychology.
• Have your students complete the same set of questions during the first and last weeks of a course. Students receive their pre-tests back and can be asked to write a reflection paper on how their perceptions of the topic area have changed over the semester. Students often make such comments as “Wow, I didn’t realize how much I learned this semester,” “I can’t believe that I thought that.”
• Distribute a 2-5 page essay at the beginning of class discussing a variety of psychological topics (e.g., classical conditioning). Tell the students to highlight in yellow everything that they do not fully understand. Chances are most of the page will be highlighted. At the end of the semester, redistribute the essay and ask them to highlight all that they do not fully understand with a different colored highlighter. Students will be impressed with this visual demonstration of how much they have learned.

Lists, Games, and Objectives

• Lists of names and research studies. In many courses professors provide students with numerous names and/or research studies throughout the semester. A fun and educational way to review these lists is to have students, meeting in small groups, compile their own “Top 10” lists of the most important or significant studies or theories discussed. Allow the students to share their lists and argue with other groups about the rankings.
• Review session as a game.
• Revisit course goals and objectives. Specifically, a professor could show how each objective was met using the assigned readings and specific activities. This may allow students to reflect on what and how much they have learned. Students may provide other examples of which the teacher was unaware.

Meaningful Projects

• Invite an outside group for comprehensive project presentations. Final group presentations to the class and to relevant others in the university community communicate to students that their work is real and interesting to others.

Emotional Parting Ways

Parting-ways can be elaborate but the simple can have great power. Taking the time to say “good bye” and “thank you” to students can be very effective. One professor discussed standing at the front of the room and after thanking students for their contributions and hard work, applauding, literally, the students for their participation in the class.

Something To Take With Them: Reflections, Quotes, & Parables

• Wagenheim (1994) suggests having students complete sentence stems such as, “Something I have learned about myself _____________,” or “Something I have learned about groups _____________________.” These sentence stems could then be shared with other students and kept as a written reflection of the course.
• Particularly meaningful quotes can be distributed to students, or put on an overhead at the end of the last day of the course or during the final as a way of ending the class.
• Paul Berghoof reported reading a story or a parable as a way to end the course (Pescosolido & Aminzade, 1999). Because of student stress during finals week, this parable may have a greater impact if it is relatively short and read the week before finals.

Keep in Mind the Following

This column had as one of its goals to inspire teachers to consider how they and the students part ways as a course ends. The following considerations are important to keep in mind when making decisions about ending the class.

• Relevance to the course. The activity will be viewed as more meaningful if it linked and related to your course content. Service learning at a nursing home, for example, seems much more appropriate for an Adult Development or Gerontology course than for a Tests and Measurement class.
• Your own style. Certain activities are not for all instructors. Just as we all have our preferences for lecture styles, group discussions, and other pedagogical activities, find activities that fit your unique teaching style.
• Type of Closure (academic or psychological and emotional). At the end of the semester, many instructors are busy and may not take the time to explore how they would like to end their classes. Faculty members will need to decide if they are more interested in an academic review of the material and course objectives or psychological and emotional parting-ways. Some may desire both types of closures and need to do two activities.
• If no community, no need for closure. In some classes due to time constraints, meeting times, the course content or class size, students may not have a developed a sense of community. In that case there is less need for psychological or emotional closure. An academic activity will probably be the most applicable. Distance learning and virtual computer classes may require less closure and a different type of activity would be appropriate (for example, an electronic thank you card sent to students in a virtual class would seem very appropriate).
• Time investment. Some activities take more time to develop and carry out in class. Some will need to be included in your syllabus to allow for students to complete them and understand how they contribute to a final grade. It may be beneficial to start with the small, easy, and time efficient techniques before moving to more elaborate activities.
• Small versus large classes. It is important to modify your ending activity based on the size of your class. Individual certificates and top 10 lists may work better in a smaller class whereas fortunes seem suitable for larger classes.
• Course and campus climate. Courses that are personal in nature and where a great deal of sharing has taken place (for example, many clinical and counseling or human sexuality classes) may need a more complex activity than less personal classes that tend to have less sharing (for example, a physiological psychology class). In addition, some college campuses portray themselves as “caring” and “student centered” and parting-ways activities seem especially useful on such campuses or for such faculty.

Good Luck as you integrate parting-ways into your classroom. Here is a quote for you, our reader:

“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”

– B. F. Skinner

TAMI EGGLESTON is an assistant professor of psychology at McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois. She teaches introduction to psychology, social psychology, biopsychology, human sexuality, tests and measurement, and SPSS.

GABIE SMITH is an assistant professor at Elon University in Elon, North Carolina. She teaches health psychology, research methods, general psychology, and human sexuality.