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The First Day of Class: Learning Names
“One of the sweetest sounds I have ever heard is the spoken word echoing my name.”
Anonymous
What’s in a Name?
Have you ever thought about what you do when you hear your name called? If you are like most people, you turn your attention to the source of the voice. As instructors, we can capitalize on this response in the classroom. Why is this important? Evidence suggests students are more engaged and perceive the classroom to be more interactive when the instructor and other students call them by their name (Smith & Malec, 1995).
Why is Learning Names Important?
Much has been written in the past few years about helping instructors learn student names, particularly as college classrooms seek to become effective learning communities. These communities depend on interactions between all of the members. Learning students’ names on the first day of class sets the standard that interpersonal interaction is expected and that the interactions will be purposeful, respectful and individualized. Building interactive learning communities with functional student-to-student interactions and student-teacher interactions motivates students to come to class, work with their peers to learn, and share personal perspectives and experiences that enhance student learning.
As you consider strategies to learn your students’ names emphasize that it is important for the students to learn each others’ names as well. Using names in class is an effective way to engage students in sharing their experiences and perspectives. So, an important part of the first day of class includes strategies that help you and class members to learn each others’ names and begin to develop the essential relationships that foster attention to task, interaction and goal achievement.
Strategies
A review of Barbara Gross Davis (2009), Tools for Teaching and nine teaching and learning websites and articles provided these top five strategies for learning and using student names:
1. Use name tags or name tents. A number of variations are associated with this strategy. Most sources recommend the instructor have students make name tags/tents the first day of class and turn them in at the end of class. At the next class meeting, the instructor can distribute the name tags/tents or ask a student to distribute them, saying the name as the tag is handed to the correct student. This approach works well for classes with less than 25 students.
2. Use photos. Sources of photos abound on today’s campus. Additionally, the means to capture photos is not highly demanding for instructors or students. Some instructors find associating the student’s name with their photo to be more useful in remembering names. Variations on this approach exist as well. Several resources suggest placing the photos on an index card along with other information that would help to make a student memorable. One resource suggested asking students to create a “passport” that included a picture of themselves, perhaps including a photo that showcases something interesting about the student such as the student with a pet. Another interesting variation of this approach, if group work is being used in the class, is to take a group photo of the team members and use these photos to break the task of remembering names into smaller chunks. Some facultyvideotape student’s individually in the classroom as they introduce themselves.
Barbara Wildemuth, in the School of Information and Library Sciences, describes using another interesting variation of this popular strategy. “One time I taught a class where a very large portion of the class grade was based on in-class participation, so I needed to learn names very quickly. There were 30 students in the class, so it wasn't too many to keep straight, but that would normally take me 3 weeks to learn. At the end of the first day of class, I asked each student to pair up with one other student that they thought I might confuse them with. It might be because of appearance, or having the same name, or any reason they thought relevant. I then took snapshots of them in pairs, and took down the list of names. That really helped me sort out the look-alikes or all the Jennifer's in the class.” One important consideration in using photos or digital video recordings of students is to give them the opportunity to “opt out.” Students may have very good reasons why they do not want their photos taken.
3. Use seating charts. Use a seating chart for the first 2-3 weeks of class. Explain to the students that this approach helps make learning names a bit easier because everyone can use location as a cue to remember a person’s name.
4. Alliterating adjectives. This strategy uses repetition and a mnemonic to facilitate remembering names. Ask students to select an adjective that begins with the same letter as their name that describes a personal characteristic. One example might be Talkative Todd. This can be made into a fun activity by asking students to introduce themselves, and then repeat the names and adjectives of the students who have already introduced themselves. Plain Jane Brown in the School of Journalism uses alliterating adjectives in her classes of up to 24 students, “We have met many Queen Elizabeths and Contrary Marys, as well as students named for TV characters…I find that even years later other students and I still refer to the memory devices, so Sheetal is still
lethal and Brooke is still babbling.”
5. Have students give their name each time they speak in class. This approach plays on repetition and can also be used to encourage students to speak up in class. Be sure to give them additional directions that they need to ask a question, respond to a comment or add a different perspective in each class meeting so everyone has a chance to hear their name.
A Name is Important
These are just a few strategies to get you started thinking about how you can learn student’s names and how you can integrate the activity into your first few classes and throughout your course. Additionally, these strategies were selected because they can be used in large or small classes and they can be easily adapted.
The benefits of learning and using student names are many. Doing so encourages the perception by students that the instructor and other students care about them as individuals. It increases rapport with the instructor and other students and reduces students’ perceptions of isolation and anonymity. Plus, using individuals’ names creates an overall sense of community. The outcomes in a class where the class members, including the instructor, learn names are generally seen as more positive for both the students and the instructor.
References
Davis, B. G. (2009). Tools for teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Smith, D. H., & Malec, M. A. (1995). Learning students' names in sociology classes: Interactive tactics, who uses them and when. Teaching Sociology, 23(July), 280-286.
Other strategies from Carolina Faculty
Julie Page
Nursing
I inherited this strategy from Jane Kaufman. I ask students the first day of class to help me get to know them by completing an index card for me. I pass out the index cards and ask them for three things about them that will help me remember them, and a picture. Then each week I introduce them (to myself and their classmates); usually about four per class. I don’t get through the whole class, since there are more than 100 students, but I do tend to remember those students’ names since I see them in class, and connect their information and picture on the card with a live person. At the end of the semester, I pass on the information to the teacher of their next nursing class.
Kenneth Janken
African-American Studies
My strategy for learning students' names (and connecting them to faces) isn't very sophisticated. I call the roll every day and for the most part I am successful within the first three weeks or so. It is helpful for a few reasons. Making dents in the anonymity of a course of between 50 and 60 students seems to make a marginal difference in student accountability. Learning their names and keeping track of their attendance also helps me to identify students with difficulties and steer them toward academic advising, the dean of students office, or other spots on campus that may be able to help them.
Sue Tolleson-Rinehart
Pediatrics
I run my classes (generally of up to about 25 students) as general seminars, so I expect all to participate. I do these things to learn names as quickly as possible:
1. I ask everyone to bear with me early on, as I must work my brain intensively in order to learn their names quickly. I tell them the pain of bearing with me will not last too long!
2. I call the role assiduously for the first 2 or 3 meetings. On the first day of class, I call the roll and, after the first 5-6 names I go back and look at, and address, each of the first 5 people. Then I resume, and after 10-12 names I quickly try to point out all 10-12 once more ... and so on until I've gotten to the end. I teach a 3-hour seminar and we always take a break about halfway through. I begin the second half of the first class by calling the roll again, this time, politely pointing to each student and waiting for his/her assent rather than asking them to say "here."
3. For the first several classes, I warn everyone who wants to speak that s/he needs to hold her/his thought while I TRY to figure out who s/he is. Someone raises her hand to contribute, and before she speaks, she waits: I say "yes...you are Jane?" She says "Yes!" And then she makes her contribution. I ask them to give me three tries to get the name right: "You are...Sarah?" She shakes her head no. "You are Jane?" "Yes!" -- after three failed attempts -- I usually don't have to use up three tries -- they can have mercy on me and everyone else in the class and identify themselves!
Using these strategies, and with the class' good-humored indulgence, I have everybody’s name solidly registered in my mind within just a couple of classes. I then go on using their names frequently, so as to keep that register in good order!
Maria Ferris
Pediatrics
It is difficult to learn names in a large class. One strategy I do is to ask them to sit in the same seat every class, to allow my brain to learn their names. In my opinion, it is OK to tell the students that you are “human.”
Another strategy is to shake hands, and repeating their name when I say “nice to meet you.” If the name is difficult, or I am meeting too many people at the same time, I would give me a mental pause by asking someone “Is it Kathy with a K or C?” as they answer the question, I am reinforcing their name in my brain.
Dulcie Murdock Straughan
JOMC
First, I think it’s really important that we learn our students’ names as fast as possible---the end-of-semester comments from students on student evals. Show how important that is to them to be seen as an individual. When I teach an intro class in the J –School that typically has about 90 people in it, I make a copy of the class roll with pictures and study it before the class even meets for the first time. I use it the first day to call the roll. And I ask students what they like to be called. During the second week of class, students form groups of 5-6 members each. They’ll stay in that group for the entire semester and complete a public relations project where they develop a pr plan for an actual client—typically a non-profit or campus organization. At the time they form groups I bring my old Polaroid into class and take a picture of them in their group. I then get them to write their names above/beside their picture within the group. I’ve found that that helps tremendously---and it’s easier (for me, anyway) to learn folks’ names in groups of 5-6 at a time. I just take the Polaroids home with me and glance at them in the evenings for a few nights (no pressure) and I will have learned them by the end of the second week in class.
Nina Furry
Romance Languages French
We often begin the semester in French classes by having students meet and find out information about each other, including their names, and then have them communicate this information by introducing each other to the class, all in the foreign language. Other students are asked to report back information they have heard about students they did not interview or present themselves, reinforcing the names.
In classes that average 20 students, this helps the instructor learn students' names quickly and encourages students to learn each others' names. Knowing students' names is helpful from a purely practical standpoint (calling on individuals, keeping track of individual participation, returning papers, etc.) but seems important to engaging students in the learning process since one's name is such a fundamental part of one's identity: students are not anonymous or invisible in the classroom and what they say matters.
Jane Brown
JOMC
In smaller classes (and even as large as 24), I spend 1/2 of the first day's class or the second day learning first names. I encourage everyone in the class to learn at least the first name by getting each student to give us a memory device. I start by saying I am Plain Jane Brown. We've met many Queen Elizabeths and Contrary Marys as well as students named for TV characters (my favorite was a student who said her three older brothers got to name her for the TV character, She-ra). In my First Year Seminar on media effects on adolescents' health, each student introduced him/herself by creating a "Who am I?" collage using images cut from favorite magazines. The exercise helped create an immediately intimate feeling. I find that even years later other students and I still refer to the memory devices, so Sheetal is still lethal and Brooke is still babbling.
Glynis Cowell
Romance Languages – Spanish
We teach our graduate teaching fellows that it is extremely important to learn student names immediately to lower the affective filter and begin to build classroom community from the first day. It also encourages students to learn each others’ names. Some strategies for small classes like our language classes: take group photo of students and have them autograph it, have students bring in a photo of themselves and attach it to the index card with all the first-day info we collect, pass out blank index cards and have students create name plates they put on their desks for the first week, collect homework and return it calling out each name, use their names a lot in asking questions, etc.
