Ykhjuy

I will be teaching a course which starts in a few weeks.
To save time,
I would like to ask the students to read the lab notes
before coming to the first class,
so that we can use the time in the first class efficiently.

Question:
Is it unreasonable to ask students
to read the lab notes for the first class
before coming to the first class?

Some relevant information:

• The lecture notes are quite short.
  They are around 10 pages long,
  and it should take students at most 1–2 hours to read them.


• My plan is to post the lecture notes online.
  I will make an announcement in the learning management system
  to notify the students that I expect them to read the lecture notes
  before coming to class.


• The course will be taught as a lab course,
  i.e., students will spend 3 hours each week in the computer lab
  learning basic computer programming and data analysis.
  Throughout the rest of the course,
  students will be expected to read the lab notes as a sort of "pre-lab"
  to prepare them to handle the material in the lab.

In my opinion, not really.

Disclaimer: I am a student in the Netherlands, different universities and countries might work differently.

In all the courses I've followed I can't remember a single one that expected me to prepare for the first class. Usually the first half of the first lecture of a course is dedicated to explaining how the course works, what is expected of you, and anything else related to organization. Most students, including myself, usually don't even register in the online environment where the teaching material is posted before the first lecture.

You could argue that maybe this shouldn't be the case, and that students should be more diligent. And naturally, it is up to you whether you want to take this view and potentially punish students who didn't prepare. Practically though, most students are probably just going to miss it, or skip it.

If you do decide to have students prepare for the first lecture, make sure to clearly note this in the course guide/emails/online announcements. And also note the potential consequences for students who do not prepare.

I suspect that you will get about the same response that you would get to any similar request during the term. Some will do it - most likely those who need it least - and others won't. There are a lot of reasons beyond slacking why they won't. They have other commitments for their time and effort between terms.

So, my advice would be to make the request, but don't assume that it is honored. Find a way in class that you can proceed without disadvantaging some of the students. One way is to start out with pairing in the first exercises. One member of a pair might be able to bring her/his partner up to speed. Another way is to spend part of the first class discussing the notes explicitly. If the scale is reasonable, make this an interactive exercise.

Another way is to provide an ungraded quiz that you use solely to let the students know if they have any gaps that they should fill quickly. Make it clear that if they do well on the quiz they are prepared to continue, but otherwise they need to quickly bring themselves up to speed - via the notes.

Actually, maybe the response would be a bit less than normal, given that this is, to them, an unusual request.

If you are a relatively new teacher, I'll note that your students are not like you, unless this is an advanced graduate course. Very few of them, anyway. You are who and where you are because of certain characteristics and habits that the vast majority of your students don't share. It is always a good idea to remember that. You are not teaching people just like you. They probably don't learn in the same way that you learn. Explore Learning Modalities for a discussion of that. You have succeeded. They haven't (yet). Moreover their success won't be like yours for the most part.