The Value of Meeting Individually with Students Early in a Term.

TLDR: This article evaluated the effects of university instructors meeting individually with students early in a term to discuss the students' career goals and plans and how those may relate to the course and found that almost all students who attended a meeting thought that the meeting helped establish rapport with the instructor and provided them with useful information.

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of university instructors meeting individually with students early in a term to discuss the students’ career goals and plans and how those may relate to the course. Two psychology instructors set up individual 15-minute meetings with students. Evaluation of the meetings involved evaluation questionnaires anonymously completed by the students. Responses from students in a psychology course at a public university in Australia (N = 29) and students in psychology courses at a private university in the USA (Ns = 21 and 28) indicated that almost all students who attended a meeting thought that the meeting helped establish rapport with the instructor and that the meeting provided them with useful information. The evaluation results suggest that meeting individually with students in courses leads to benefits for the students and is feasible, at least with classes of fewer than 30 students. Meeting Individually 3 The Value of Meeting Individually with Students Early in a Term Clinical psychologists have often stated the importance of establishing rapport with psychotherapy clients and building a therapeutic alliance (Martin, Garske, & Davis, 2000; Sharf, Primavera, & Diener, (2010). Rapport tends to develop when a therapist listens attentively and shows interest in the welfare of the other person, thereby creating the potential for greater mutual understanding and future positive interactions based on trust, interpersonal comfort, and shared goals (Martin et al., 2000; Rogers, 1995). Educators too have noted the importance of establishing rapport (e.g., Buskist & Saville, 2001; Lowman, 1995) as part of what might be called building an educational alliance with students. There may be many ways for psychology instructors to establish an educational alliance with students in a course. This article is about the value of a rare instructor behavior that appears to have never been evaluated: Meeting individually with students soon after the start of a term. We hypothesized that an instructor’s meeting individually with undergraduate students would contribute to establishing rapport and provide students with valuable information. The meetings involved discussing with the students their career goals and plans and how these relate to the course. Method