Solving Student Registration Issues, Part II

The post of last week offered guidance regarding a student who unexpectedly show up. The following post has suggestions on what to do about supplies and the need to stay in touch with the Community Learning office.

1. Supplies. If you have a class that requires supplies to complete a project and the student came without the required supplies, you can:

• Share supplies (for a fee to the student) or perhaps talk to other students in the class who came prepared and would be willing to share supplies for a fee (always emphasize that the supplies need to be reimbursed).
• If there is a second class or there is a lunch break, perhaps the student without supplies could purchase some before coming back to class.

2. Be in touch with the CL office on the days before your class.

• Your programmer will send you a roster in a timely manner. We try to give you enough time to prepare supplies. However, the earlier we send a roster, the better the chance that additions or subtractions will occur making your original roster less accurate.
• Students can “register” online 24 hours a day. Our website does tell them their registration will not be complete until our office contacts them to confirm. However, we do see larger numbers of students registering online for a class the night before the class begins. This can be challenging for you, especially if you are teaching an early morning or a weekend day class.

Finally, remember to follow up immediately after class with your programmer with questions, concerns and convey the names of all students in question.

Again, a special thanks to Glenda and Rachel for this two part post.

Solving Student Registration Issues, Part I

Community Learning participants are registering later and later for classes. This is a broad trend and not unique to COCC. We want our students to be able to register as late as possible but, as instructors, you will need to have a strategy for what to do when the number of students in your class is greater than the number of students for whom you prepared materials. Here is what to do about students with registration issues:

• If a student shows up in class and says they have registered, take their word for it. Please take their name and daytime phone number so that your programmer can follow-up.


• If the class is full with a wait list, we always follow the wait list procedure of first on, first called.


• If they have not registered, politely explain that you are unable to take a registration at class and unfortunately they cannot attend without pre-registration. This is a liability issue for the college.

What to do with students who have registered but are not on your roster.

• If you have prepared extra handouts, great! If not, explain that you received your roster before their registration was processed and consequently were unable to prepare materials. Offer to email or mail handouts after the class, arrange for them to work with another student if possible and either share or observe.


• Remaining positive and focusing on the overall quality of the class will help you avoid getting derailed by additional students.

This is a two part post. Next Monday, we will discuss the issues of supplies and communication with the department.

Thanks to Glenda and Rachel for this information.

More Icebreakers

Creating a sense of community in a classroom can be a challenge. One of the time-honored means is to employ an icebreaker activity during the first meeting.

Fifteen icebreakers, some new, some refurbished, are offered by Business Training Works. Instructions on how to conduct the activity and materials needed are provided. Take a look by clicking here.

A special thanks goes to Beth Wickham for bringing the 15 to our attention.

Additional icebreaker ideas can be found by clicking on icebreakers in the Labels area on the right side of the screen. You may need to scroll to find it.

Classroom Handouts Go Green

Printing handouts for class requires a lot of ink and resources. If interested in saving as much as 20% of your ink and becoming more Green, continue reading.

The February, 2009, issue of the Sunriver Scene contained an article titled “Less is More When it Comes to Fonts.” It focused on a relatively new font developed by Spranq Web Design called Ecofont. Although there have been several fonts that claim to save ink, Ecofont really does and it is also readable.

Ecofont is san serif, True Type, Open source, and free. For those who do not know much about fonts, focus on the word free. It works best with MS Office 2007, Open Office, and Apple Works. The savings is derived from the individual letters having holes in them. The holes represent the ink savings. I have been using a font size of 14 to 10 pts and it is quite readable, even with my inexpensive printer. The image below shows the font at various sizes.


Downloading the font is easy, particularly if you follow the directions. Click here to download.

Instructions for installing the font on a PC can be found by clicking here and going to Font Install.

In that the department strongly encourages handouts, this font can save you ink and money.