Using Students as Catchers in the Rye?

If you have, say, 40 students in a class, how can you keep track of all of them?

You'd like to keep tabs on them, right? If one doesn't show up for a few classes, you'd like to know why, but is it really practical to email or call them? Not really.

Here's an idea that Peter Burton mentioned to me this morning, and I thought I'd share it here:

Use student groups as a way to support student retention.

How would this work?

1. After the Add/Drop period (i.e. the second week of class), assign students to a "support group." An ideal size for this group might be six members. (So in a class of 40, you'd have seven support groups.)

2. Members in the group exchange contact information -- phone numbers, email, etc.

3. When a member misses a class, other members in the group will contact that person to make sure they're okay, and to give them the information they missed in class. (This should eliminate students who come back to class the next period and ask the instructor: "Did I miss anything important??")

4. To make sure that students take their "support" role seriously, tie their grade (probably through the form of extra credit) to overall group retention. That is, if all members of a group complete the class, award that group 25 extra points, for example. If 5 out of 6 members complete the class, award 10 extra points. Less than 5? Then just thank the group for its effort!

Anyway, I thought this idea had a lot of potential, and I would encourage you to consider doing something like this. I'm sure something similar could be developed for online classes, too.

As always, if you try this idea, let us know how it works for you.