Professor Rhett Allain blogs about physics in an interesting and useful way at Dot Physics. Recently he noted that he was terrible at learning student names. His suggestions:
I have students sitting at tables (in this class and in labs). As they are working on something, I go around and write down who is sitting where. Yes, this means that you have to actually ask each student what their names is (I hate that part). After I have a “seating chart” I just keep practicing while they are working. If a student talks to me, I make sure and use their name. I will look it up on the seating chart if I have to. This just takes a couple of class times of practice till I have them all (well, most of them) memorized...
Although he notes this takes time, he says "Afterwards, I feel much better about it. It makes the class seem more friendly."
Here are some more tips to help. After all, we expect our students to learn theories, concepts, definitions, etc. Why wouldn’t we expect ourselves to learn their names? It’s important to them and makes it much easier to manage the classroom.
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