Using interviews to assess and mentor students

Have you considered adding five-minute student interviews to your teaching toolkit? Before you calculate how long it will take to interview all of your students and dismiss the idea immediately, consider how student interviews provide a unique setting and opportunity for you to teach students one-on-one.

Extensive research confirms the value of student-teacher interaction. Sandy Astin is widely applauded What matters in college reported that student-faculty interaction had “significant positive correlations with every academic achievement outcome: college GPA, degree earned, graduation with honors, and enrollment in graduate or professional school” (383).

In our experience, we have found that student interviews are a very effective alternative or supplemental assessment method and teaching tool that students find valuable. We asked nearly 400 students enrolled in general education courses what benefits they get from faculty interviews, and they reported that interviews allow them to get immediate feedback, provide a unique setting to explain their work, and help them feel more accountable and responsible for coursework. It’s a commendable set of benefits. Here are the learning experiences we think the interviews support:

1. Execution: Short interviews can provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate skills. They may be particularly appropriate in courses such as music, physical education, science, language, nursing, etc., where the mastery of specific skills is an integral requirement of the course. A brief discussion of the student’s performance may follow if appropriate.
2. Reporting: As a complement to other traditional assessment methods, interviews can quickly identify what students have done as well as what they know. In some courses it may be appropriate to conduct longer interviews in small groups (perhaps for team project reports), which require less time than individual interviews. Feedback interviews have worked well for us in several courses, including a core software engineering course where groups of students had to demonstrate and explain their software, and in a general humanities course where individual students shared what they experienced while completing a selected by them a personal development project.
3. Mentorship: Interviews provide an opportunity for educators to compliment, help, correct, address problems and opportunities, and demonstrate interest. All interviews may include a mentoring component, but may be conducted exclusively for this purpose. Unlike testing and reporting interviews, which are often scheduled for all students, mentoring interviews can be arranged more selectively with a subset of students—those who have improved a lot, those who need to improve a lot, or those who have done something extraordinary.

Unlike other types of meetings that students and faculty hold in faculty offices, interviews are planned in advance, have stated goals, and are generally more formal. Successful student interviews require advance preparation and planning by both the instructor and the student. Here are some suggestions from our experience:

• Interview Early: There is a temptation to wait and interview students at the end of the semester. There are more course experiences to discuss at this time. But then both students and teachers are stressed and pressed for time. Instead, we found it better to schedule interviews early in the semester to reduce the impact on our schedules and provide students with feedback earlier in our course.
• Clarify expectations: The idea of ​​being “interviewed” by the professor makes many students nervous. Reduce stress by eliminating ambiguity. Explain the purpose of the interview. Help students understand how to prepare for the interview and what to expect when it happens.
• Be flexible: Interviews challenge faculty members to connect with all kinds of students. It needs flexibility. Faculty should allow students to be who they are—with a variety of communication skills, enthusiasm, and dress. Part of the agenda is to help them learn to communicate comfortably with experts and those they perceive as authority figures.
• Stick to the schedule: Students value one-on-one time with their tutor, but usually value quality time over quantity. Students are busy people too. Five minutes is not much. If you need more time, don’t rush – schedule a second interview instead. Use a stopwatch or fine timer to keep up with the schedule. Leave a few minutes between interviews so you can move around and be attentive to each student.
• Keep the focus: Use your time well. Eliminate distractions. Limit pleasantries and chatter appropriately. Maintain eye contact. Call the students by name. Ask engaging questions.
• Keep appreciating simply: Consider creating self-assessment rubrics for students to complete and submit prior to the interview. Evaluate their performance during the interview. You can also assign one of three grades: Pass (the student was on time and prepared), Fail (the student was late and/or not prepared), and Fail (the student did not schedule or attend the scheduled interview).

We have found interviews to be beneficial to both us and our students. They can help us more accurately assess student learning and performance. In some courses, providing immediate face-to-face feedback takes less time than preparing written critiques of student work. Problems and misunderstandings can sometimes be identified and resolved before they become larger. Unlike static written assessments, where one format must fit all students, interviews provide greater scope for adaptation and on-the-spot adjustments. Interviews are also a good way to get to know your students better.

We recognize that including student interviews can require significant time and effort, which means that interviewing is not always feasible or appropriate. But these are interactions that students value and learn from. Our experience, backed by many years of student assessment feedback, is that the time and effort required to interview students is an investment worth making.

Barbara Morgan Gardner, Ph.D., is an assistant professor and Kenneth L. Alford, Ph.D., is a professor at Brigham Young University. Barbara Gardner can be reached at Barbara_Morgan@byu.edu and Ken Alford can be found at Ken_Alford@byu.edu.

This article first appeared in The teacher professor on October 25, 2016 © Magna Publications. All rights reserved.

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