Time Management

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Help students stay on track with assignments by assisting with their time management to reduce stress. Examples to aid students in time management include the following:

Assignment Timelines

• Using sign-posts, or smaller deadlines for parts of a long assignment.
• Provide estimates of how much time specific aspects of an assignment would be needed. You can provide your own estimate (and generally consider 4 times the length of time it would take you) or generate an estimate by surveying your students.
• Help with goal setting to help motivate students to complete assignments.
  • Research on goal setting suggests that few people follow through with goals unless they create a plan to execute the goal. Educational researcher, José Antonio Bowen, suggests ways that students can study smarter to increase their effectiveness by helping students create a plan to approach studying for their courses.

Help with Prioritization

• In-class and in the syllabus, help students to know what material to prioritize. This can be drawing their attention to the major topics you want them to review from a reading, directing them to spend more time on problems versus reading, or other instructions on where to spend time versus what to skim or use as a resource. Additionally, starting class or ending a class session having students generate a brief summary of the material covered in the prior or current session can help correct any errors and reinforce the big ideas.

Win the Day

• This is a strategy to teach time management overall by daily goal setting.
• Goal setting is simply identifying specific tasks or goals you hope to achieve and creating a plan to tackle them. Setting goals can increase motivation, confidence, and a sense of fulfillment, meaning, and accomplishment.
• Where to start:
  • Identify 3 tasks you want to get done by tomorrow.
  • List a small reward you can give yourself for completing each goal. This may be 20 minutes of screen time, grabbing a coffee with a friend, or another treat.