Effective interventionsWith student

Effective interventions
With students who are feeling overwhelmed, a productive start can be made by getting them to list all their current tasks. Often students avoid confronting the scale of the work they need to complete, and a perfectly achievable list begins to feel unachievable because it is not properly known. Putting it on paper starts to get things back under control and re-establishes a sense of proportion. If the list is achievable, tasks can be broken down into less daunting chunks, and a work schedule planned: if it is unachievable, it can be prioritised and decisions made about which tasks will remain undone. If students are feeling extremely anxious, it can be helpful to identify with them one task that they can do immediately to break the circle of inaction.
Difficulties in prioritising can arise if the student is lacking in confidence, or new to university. Students can feel under pressure from some tutors who insist that the tasks they have set are essential for success in the course. Students accustomed to being more directed in their previous education experience will have particular difficulties if they are getting similar messages from more than one tutor – how should they decide which to do first? Listing their tasks and putting them in columns (now, soon and later) is helpful, but how can you help them to develop criteria for those decisions? One strategy is to ask students to set their tasks in the context of the goals they are helping them to achieve. Once they have established what their goals are (e.g. get a good degree, understand this topic, gain information to write my essay), they need to ask, how does this task help you to reach them? And what will happen if you don’t do it now – or at all?
Deadlines and word counts can be used as tools to help students use time appropriately when writing assignments. Suggesting that students set their own early or staged deadlines for completion is now standard advice. However, few students set deadlines to start tasks. Completion deadlines can be daunting as they imply a set time when work will be perfect – start deadlines take some of that pressure away, implying rather ‘time when I have to move on’, and are motivating because they provide something new to look forward to. Suggesting that students work out a rough division of their word count for each section of their work and work to that can help them to understand the scope of the work they are being asked to achieve. It also maintains their focus, discourages waffle and over-writing (with concomitant editing time needed to be added), and can be a useful tool in breaking procrastination cycles by offering small achievable targets.
Working on developing study practices to achieve the most effective use of available time is clearly a productive and desirable aim, but learning developers seldom have the resources to spend lengthy periods of dedicated development time with individual students. Ideally students would see the benefit of developing more effective practices