Student Guide Corner

I have long asserted that the most important days of any semester are the 2-4 days immediately after the first test.  So many good things and so many bad things can happen in this short period of time. They can make the semester more wonderful or they can ruin the semester.  It is the point where the group is of no importance but the individuals are of maximum importance. Because of the importance of this period, I have started (as of this semester) doing two things.   I sent my students the following email immediately after their first test with the subject line �Please Read.�   I want to get their attention.   Then, a couple of days later when I get ready to return the graded exams, I take the first 5-10 minutes of class time to talk with them about my view of the learning process.   I will describe that talk in my next blog posting in a few days. Email to my students: I have not looked at the test yet but I will try to get an answer s...

If you have followed this blog for a while, you know that I try to use the summer to get the students ready for the fall semester.   I want everyone to be ready on the first day to take off and fly.  Time is short.  I want to use it all and use it effectively.  Consequently, I send periodic emails to my new students from May through August although I am never sure whether they pay close attention or not.  However, one email does seem to catch their attention.    Last week, I cut and pasted one of the questions included on the final exam last spring into an email.   I then sent it to the new students to give them a feel for what they are going to learn this fall.  Most students do not understand in advance the purpose of a course.  A final exam problem gives them an illustration of what they will be able to do after we spend the semester working together.   The reality of seeing a question that the previous class had t...

If I offered you $1,000 to teach my dog (Fido) to roll over, how would you go about doing it?   Even if you have never taught an animal to do anything, do you think you could come up with logical and reasonable steps?  Sure you could.  For that kind of incentive, my guess is that we would all probably do a pretty decent job.  It might take awhile but we could do it. I have written well over 200 blog postings about teaching during the last 6-7 years.   One particular entry from early in 2010 has really been on my mind recently�probably because a new school year is starting and I�m thinking deeply about teaching my 56 students.   In that original blog, I talked about teaching Fido to roll over.  Earlier today, I went back and reread this old post.   I loved the idea but I did not seem to develop my thoughts particularly well.  I am not sure I knew what I wanted to say.  Heck, I was only 62 at the time.  Maybe I hav...

I am beginning an experiment today to help more of my students be successful in the classroom. If you look on the upper left hand side of this page, you should see a link titled �FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING � 2nd Edition.� If you click on that link, you will come to a page that has a series of audio clips between 8 and 11 minutes in length. These audio clips were created by me to accompany the Financial Accounting textbook that I have written with CJ Skender at UNC (and published by FlatWorldKnowledge). Although these audio files are specifically designed for our book, they could probably be used quite well with any book. Debits are debits and credits are credits in every textbook. Right now, I have five audio files posted but I hope to have many more soon. If you are teaching financial accounting, please feel free to suggest that your students listen to these files to see if they are helpful. Heck, they are free. What do they have to lose except for a few minutes of their time? Each fil...

A few weeks ago, I wrote about sending out an initial email to start reprogramming my students to be the type of students that I wanted them to be.  Below is the second step in this process.   It is my second email to the students for the fall semester.   I emailed this note to my students this morning. To: Accounting 302 Students From: JH Okay, I�m sending out a bunch of material to you folks occasionally over the course of the summer. You already have the course outline and I assume you have looked over that pretty carefully by now. Attached is something entirely different. Everyone knows this class is challenging and that making an A takes an excellent effort. I want to help you understand (before we get started) what you need to do in order to do well in this course. So, every semester, I ask the 11 � 25 percent of the students who make an A to write a paragraph or two to explain how they managed to do so well. I cut and paste all the student responses into ...