How professors keep college students engaged before finals
- Tessah Good
- 15 minutes ago
- 2 min read
It’s finals week at SU, and it’s not just students who are preparing. Here is an inside take on how professors keep students engaged the week before finals and how their students feel about it.
Why it matters: Student burnout increases as finals approach, making classroom engagement more challenging.
Why Now: Students are feeling tired and burned out as the semester comes to an end.
Professors are having to find creative ways to keep students active in the classroom during the final week of classes.
The big picture: Student engagement statistics show active learning approaches can reduce failure rates by more than 33% compared with traditional lecturing, highlighting the impact of hands-on teaching.
Driving the news: Theater Professor Jessica Shoemaker engages her students by requiring mandatory rehearsals for their upcoming showcase.
She combines her THEA 344 Directing class and Theater Professor John Raley’s THEA 312 Lighting Design class for a fully student-run performance.
Directing students present scenes they’ve developed throughout the semester, while lighting design students demonstrate techniques they’ve learned in class.
Image courtesy of Tessah Good. Honors Professor Alissa Elliott wrapped up the semester by bringing her HONR 111 class together for a final discussion designed to keep students active and increase participation.
Honors Professor Alissa Elliott. Image courtesy of Tessah Good. She encouraged students to share elevator pitches reflecting on their final thoughts about the course, their final paper and their next steps in the Clarke Honors College.
Image courtesy of Tessah Good.
What they are saying: “I have the extra benefit of having big projects at the end of the semester that help keep students engaged because they're getting to showcase and hone their work,” Shoemaker said. “I am very honest about the fact that I want to be on break too.
I am very excited for the semester to be over as well, but one of the skills we have to develop is learning how to be present in the moment and finish strong, even when we are tired.”
“For one I hate to end on a half empty room,” Elliott said. “We don't have an exam in the exam period, so I wanted to kind of incentivize them to stay in touch, to show back up, and get that feedback and think about research possibilities.
So, I wanted to put a kind of mandatory discussion right at the end of the class.”
The other side: “It definitely keeps me active and gives me a dedicated working space,” Theater major Matthew Secrest said. “Technically, this is my final for this class, but it gives me a space to know I’m working for these four hours, and I can use this time to just lock in everything else.”
“Professor Elliott’s last class and the discussion was honestly wonderful, because I was able to finally hear the conclusion of all my friends' papers after the entire semester of progress we had and hear how they progressed and what those papers mean to them,” Honors student Dom Barberesi said.
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By TESSAH GOOD
Editor-in-Chief