The following tips were adapted from materials developed by Doug Holton, PhD. They are intended to help faculty support students at the midpoint of the semester who are struggling in class:
Boost engagement and faculty-student interaction with some of these easy-to-use ideas to improve your students' participation, attitude, and learning from EngageEngineering. There are ideas that will help make students more comfortable with reaching out to you for help and coming to office hours.
Proactively reach out to meet with or email students who struggled on your first quiz or exam or assignment. You might share these tips for effective study skills and overcoming. This can help students improve significantly. See the study “Transforming the Lowest-Performing Students: An Intervention That Worked” - in particular the graph on the 4th page that shows improvement from the first to the second exam.
Use wise feedback - use growth mindset language in your feedback to students.
Teach effective learning strategies to your class by giving a lesson after the first exam (when students are more ready to hear this). Here’s an example video presentation and slides on effective learning strategies (under the Support Material section) from Saundra McGuire.
Try the two-stage exam technique . Students take a quiz or exam first individually, and then a second time in a group. This can prevent struggling students from falling further and further behind, since they can learn from each other the things they missed in the first stage. And you don’t have to spend so much time reviewing the exam yourself. Here’s a video of it in action, as well as more tips for success.