Best Student Experiences


By Jay Pastrana and WAC Staff, Dec 2006

Do you want to find out what kinds of classroom activities, assignments, and experiences get students excited? Just ask them! We did.

As an informal writing exercise last spring, Professor Steven Nardi (English) asked students in his American Literature II class to answer the following question: What was your best experience as a student at Medgar Evers College? Students were given ten minutes to write, and Prof. Nardi asked them not to attach their names to the paper. Below is a brief description of two of the most common themes that emerged from the 18 students who submitted responses to Prof. Nardi’s task. (Please note that responses were not necessarily about Prof. Nardi himself or about his class.)

More than half of the students mentioned individual characteristics associated with a particular professor.
For example, some responses included:
“The professor was funny, effective and friendly. She made you want to come to class everyday… She made the class come to life.”
“I still recollect the care [she showed] and the trust she [had with] her students.”
“…faculty after faculty approached me showing me a tremendous amount of love.”
“…and how he pushed us to delve deep to find its [literary text] meaning…”

Another theme that was expressed by a majority of the students was a personal life connection. This included a connection to the student’s personal life experience or a personal connection to a professor or course content. Some responses that indicated this included:
“As a result, I was able to connect my upbringing [to] the protagonist in the novel.”
“…I have yet to experience that level of interaction in college again.”
“…the professor has never forgotten me, and I have never forgotten him.”
“It gave me a sense that they really cared. And where I’m from, I rarely got that.”
“As a Dominican, this story continues to impact my life.”

Other themes that were identified from the writings of students included: 1) A field trip; 2) A specific course; 3) Helping others (as part of the classroom experience); and 4) A specific article, book, or film that was discussed in class.

Designed as an in-class exercise to empower students to write, the “Best Experience” task asks students about the best experience they had as a student in MEC. Such knowledge has the potential to inform the development of subsequent writing assignments and class content or design. It also serves as a way to find out what students think works best in a classroom setting. As Louise Giddings (Education) put it during a WAC-sponsored workshop last spring, “It is important for learners to be metacognitive and to bring forth what engages them most in learning. As we help students understand this process of self knowledge, we help them realize ways to develop learning potentials.”

By understanding what kinds of activities get students excited or leave a valuable impression on students, faculty can harness these in order to develop future classroom environments. Although, as any seasoned teacher can tell you, showing such things as “care,” “trust,” and “love” in the classroom cannot necessarily be taught, there are multiple ways in which to engage students in the classroom. WAC@MEC can help by breaking down the barriers that often get in the way of connection and communication in the classroom. For instance, if you would like to know about the types of exercises that have left positive impressions on students within your own class, the writing prompt could look like the following: What was your best experience as a student in this class? or Which types of classroom exercises did you enjoy the most in this class?

At first glance, a very basic WAC-influenced classroom strategy, like an informal writing assignment asking about best classroom experiences, may seem inappropriate for your students. In fact, one of the common retorts from faculty who actually spend some time discussing WAC-related techniques includes: “But you don’t have MY students.” In response to these concerns, WAC@MEC is enlisting help from faculty: Tell us what gets your students excited.

To participate in WAC@MEC’s Best Experience Project, contact us at wac@mec.cuny.edu. We can help you to develop future writing assignments or even future courses. And what better way to do so than with the input, words, and experiences of students themselves?

“…I have yet to experience that level of interaction in college again.”



One of the common retorts from faculty who have spent some time discussing WAC-related techniques is, “But you don’t have MY students.”