Recognise, respond and reflect: spot students struggling in the classroom

How can we spot the signs of students struggling? In-person teaching makes it easy to gauge students’ body language and emotional states but with asynchronous teaching we need to rely on other indicators of disengagement. 

Emotional and psychological cues, such as noticeable hygiene changes and fatigue, can be hard to notice in large cohort classes as well as online lessons. In that case, we rely on academic metrics such as frequency and quality of class contributions; timeliness and consistency of online submissions; attendance and engagement in learning activities; and inconsistencies in academic performance. 

Digital indicators can work in a similar way. Consistently late submissions and students’ non-attendance or withdrawal from activities can offer insight without breaching their confidentiality. 

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For a holistic view of student progress, track behavioural and academic data in line with one another. Embed regular student well-being check-ins into courses as standard academic practice, and encourage students to see them as compulsory activities rather than pointless meetings. 

How to win back struggling students

Once you’ve noticed the signs of disengagement, how do you get them re-engaged? Show that behavioural indicators are aligned with academic progress – for example, by linking well-being check-ins to academic performance through assessments. To do this, embed compulsory, synchronous learning activities in your courses, to track and leverage as prompts. Follow up with students who aren’t meeting the required attendance threshold (for example, an 80 per cent rate). 

Integrate institutional systems that monitor and track metrics for professional behaviour in courses, to keep educators working towards it. This can seem draconian but these systems can capture tangible outcomes, such as non-attendance, and a concerned educator can use this to start a conversation with a student. This interventional nurturing, in turn, fosters more openness from students about their experience.

Accredited programmes at our university, such as medicine, integrate this as part of their professionalism and leadership curriculum, prescribed by the Australian Medical Council. To practice medicine, medical students need to understand the important of turning up and engaging professionally.

Balance professionalism with care

In higher education, support for adult learners is different from pastoral care at primary and secondary school levels – they have more autonomy, concerns about privacy and diverse life circumstances. So, to support nuanced student needs, we have to put clear institutional protocols in place for educators. 

These triage pathways can include training staff to recognise the point to hand over to professional services for more complex issues. This is the sort of thing that comes with experience, but junior or sessional staff can benefit from learning how to reinforce professional boundaries while offering sympathy, to avoid overstepping their educator role. 

Also, fostering collaboration between academics and formal support services is crucial. When pastoral care is an institutional priority, communication channels between front-line educators and leaders ensure awareness and uptake of support initiatives. For example, the data collated from centralised processes, such as early alert systems that indicate student experience, can be incredibly useful to course co-ordinators and deliverers. Bridge the gap between grassroots educators and senior leadership.

For authentic student engagement, educators must be emotionally equipped to notice and respond to student well-being concerns through active listening. Recognising subtle signs of struggling students requires sensitivity to nuanced behaviours, through a genuine sense of positionality and collegiality among educators and students. 

We tend to forget that academic success does not necessarily translate to emotional well-being. These students might be harder to identify, so this will require educators to engage sensitively. Initiate conversations through open-ended questions, without intruding, while curating safe ways within classes for students to voluntarily seek help. Create a mutually transparent teaching environment that emphasises the human aspect of education. Even with hybrid teaching, educators sharing the same personal experiences and anecdotes as they would in the physical classroom can help address these challenges. Developing relational pedagogy by being approachable and personable is key to encouraging students to seek help.

Overall, educators have a responsibility to ensure we develop graduates academically, emotionally and socially through intentional and interventional support throughout their education. The core ethos of student support can be summarised by the following actions: notice, listen, reflect and act.

Viythia Katharesan, Danijela Menicanin and Nicola Eastaff-Leung are senior lecturers and Lilli Stephenson is lecturer, all at the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences; Alexander Gerrie is lecturer and Melissa Arnold-Ujvari is program director, both at the School of Nursing and Midwifery; and Beatriz Jimenez is senior lecturer at the School of Physics, Chemistry and Earth Sciences, all part of the Effective & Engaging Teaching Community of Practice at Adelaide University.

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