I listened to the latest episode of Kristen Stephen-Martinez's CS Ed Podcast. The episode focused on Professor Emeritus, William G. Griswold, of UCSD's practice of requiring students meet with him outside of class early during the semester. These meetings weren't about class material but rather to foster a better connection and to increase student engagement.

Good episode. Take a listen.

The class in question was an upper division software engineering class - mostly majors but a significant percent of non-majors. Due to class size, individual meetings were impractical so students met in small groups.

One interesting thing that came up, but it's really not a surprise was that in spite of this being an upper division class, one third of the students had never spoken to a CS professor prior to these required meetings. Another interesting part of the discussion involved AI but I'll get to that later.

I love this practice.

Clearly Professor Griswold cares about his students and understands the importance of making connections. I also love the small group aspect of these meetings as it makes the meetings less intimidating and also helps develop connections from student to student as well as student to instructor. It also didn't seem to be a huge extra expense in time. By scheduling these meetings early, they can essentially fill in for office hours which, for many instructors are sparsely attended, particularly early in the semester.

Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that too many college instructors would implement such a practice because. I'll keep my reasons to myself so as to not offend anyone.

When I taught at Hunter, I would encourage students to come to office hours but due to my specific situation, I didn't feel a need to use office hours to build a connection. I was running a special honors program and would be running special events throughout the semester with the kids so we all had plenty of opportunities to get to know each other.

When I started teaching at Stuy, around 1993, I tried a similar practice, but in high school, it just wasn't practical. Instead of around 200 students, the number Griswold cited, I had about 150 but I couldn't do group meetings since I was teaching regents math and the discussions would frequently have a component about the students work. High School teachers also just don't have the time or space. I taught 5 out of 8 periods and had a professional period where I was tasked to do something by the school. That left 40 minutes for lunch and 40 for prep - not enough to even get grading and lesson planning done let alone meeting students. Couldn't really do it after school either. Besides me no longer being on the clock, can't ask students to arbitrarily stay.

So, while I love the practice, in high school, it's largely a no go unless the school actually sets up a system where these connections can be made. Back in the day, we had homeroom - 10 minutes every day with the same homeroom teacher. Not the same as connecting with all your instructors but it did, if the teacher and class wanted, allow for connections within that cohort. Unfortunately, at least at Stuy, daily homeroom is no more. Other schools have "advisory" periods which can function similarly but I think they're too few and far between. The human side of education has consistently been marginalized for more test prep and teaching for jobs.

That human side brings me to another point of the podcast - the rise if genAI, both as a resource for students on their own and genAI TAs and tutors.

In the podcast it was noted that students usually won't go to a professor until after they've exhausted other resources including genAI. With AI tutors and TAs it's even worse - with them, institutions are effectively encouraging students to avoid human interactions.

I mentioned this in my last post - how the big difference at Stuy was that kids are so much more self absorbed in their phones and other devices and not interacting with each other. That's also a theme I keep hearing across education - that kids don't know how to interact with each other nor with adults. This is why things like advisory or regular homeroom in high school and practices like Prof. Griswold's are so important - so much more important than people realize.

I've long maintained that connections and relationships are critical in education so thanks to William G. Griswold for your practice and for sharing it and thanks to Kristen Stephens-Martinez for providing the platform.