Learning students' names

[CommonFishDiseases]

Teaching my first module this term... 2 seminar groups, 20+ students in each. Has anyone got tips for learning their names?! I am awful with names and a bit worried about seeming uncaring or how I will pose questions to individuals in the seminar if I haven't learnt their names...!

[Summerswallow]

Um, I don't learn names although I do print out a list with photos on it and keep it by my side in class. I have over 100 students, obviously a few stand out and I get to know as many as possible as we go along but I don't say their names, I don't pose questions to individuals like that but ask for their contributions/feedback and ask them to ensure everyone in the group speaks in turn. Probably not the right way to do it, but learning 100 names at the start is just too much effort for me. Smaller groups like Masters I would know the names after the first session, up to say 10 or so.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Begin by writing their names on a bit of paper in the order they're sitting. Do the thing where you call them by name a lot while they're sitting in that order.

Try to make them sit in the same places each week.

If all else fails use the photos on the system.

[CommonFishDiseases]

Is it too childish to ask them to wear name stickers? I've been in toddler groups a lot lately....

[ZuzuMyLittleGingersnap]

OP,

If you've a visual-type memory/ good imagination, my technique for quickly learning anyone's name:

Link them to a public figure; the most memorable person you can think of who shares the same name (adding something with which they're synonymous).

E.g. you need to memorise Charles, Isaac, Maggie and Emily...

Vividly picture, and commit to memory:

• Your student, Charles, walking round Highgrove, complimenting Prince Charles on his organic plants, whilst sharing Duchy Originals biscuits.
  

• Your student, Isaac, sitting with Isaac Newton beneath the famous tree, as both are conked on the head by falling apples (artistic licence).
  

• Your student, Maggie, in full period costume exchanging waspish comments with Maggie Smith at Downton Abbey.
  

• Your student, Emily, watching Emily Bronte working away at her Wuthering Heights manuscript, against dramatic Yorkshire Moors scenery.
  

You get the drift...

Sounds like an awful lot of effort, but it very quickly becomes second nature the more you practise, I promise.

Note:
If you need surnames too, then just add a 3rd famous person who always follows behind...
so, your student, Charles Jackson: use example no1. above, but with Michael Jackson moonwalking after Prince Charles too (there's an image!).

Obviously it's trickier with very unusual names, but then they tend to stick in your mind anyway. I suppose, too, if your class contains 3 lads named Charles, but each with a different surname, that might get complicated. Hmm.

But it works for me most of the time. Try it.

[try2hard]

I have over 500 students who I see weekly so it's too much to remember but I find asking goes a long way and looking like you're trying to remember

[Marasme]

I always ask "tell me your name again please" to whichever student I speak to in class (even for question time, contribution)
eventually, most stick (I deal with ~100)

[queenofthedump]

Yes, I agree with pp who says to keep asking. Every time a students speaks to me in the first couple of weeks I ask myself whether I know their name. If I don't then I ask them. Then I make a conscious effort to address them by name within the following ten minutes or so.

[Deianira]

I promise mine that I will know them within a couple of weeks, but so they'll have to keep reminding me for those first 2/3 weeks - and they're usually extremely good-natured about that because they can see me making the effort. They want to know that we're trying, rather than just not caring who they are, I think.

Photo sheets can help, although for non-first years they've changed so much that the photos aren't as helpful as they could be! I do have colleagues who use seating plans for the first couple of weeks too, but I find that if you make the classroom setup too much like school, it makes it hard to then get them to the 'independent discussion' aspect of being university students.

[geekaMaxima]

Am I the only one who just doesn't even try to remember students' names..?

My final year project/dissertation students, yes - I'll make an effort to remember them as I speak to them one-on-one and I'm often writing references for them years later.

But students in a seminar of 15-20 students I see every couple of weeks for one module? I'll remember who asked what or who never speaks, but rarely their names. And in a lecture of 100-300 students? Not a hope. Maybe it's because we have a big undergraduate cohort and lots of team-teaching but I usually only see a given student for a few weeks here and there during their degree. They're a sea of faces rather than individuals unless they knock on my door.

[user918273645]

A good tip for departments/institutions: make photos of students available next to their names on your intranets/VLEs. Institutions usually do have student photos for id cards and these can be passed across to departmental VLEs. Even better if these photos are updated each academic year!

[Summerswallow]

Geeka I am the same- dissertation students, or students I have a lot of contact with I know, the rest, too big classes and I don't want to spend the whole time I'm interacting with them remembering names or getting them to sit in certain places. I look them up before they come to see me in office hours so I'm not clueless...

[ArbitraryName]

I can never remember students' names. Unless they're unforgettable for some reason (usually not positive). I just warn them that I'm crap with names and will forget their names pretty much immediately (especially as I see them in large groups generally). I make a joke about how they'll never learn to spell my name while doing it.

I had a colleague who got them to wear name badges all the time. The students never minded. I found it fairly useless as I couldn't read their badges from the front of the class generally.

[ArbitraryName]

The problem I have with looking up student photos is that they very rarely look anything like the actual student. My students tend to go for a photo in full going out mode complete with duck face. So the photo actually makes it harder to recognise them.

[Ttbb]

What are the seating arrangements like. My university takes down students' names in the form of a list passed around the room at the beginning of each tutorial/seminar so that when you look at the list you can figure out who is sitting where.

[CommonFishDiseases]

Thank you for the tips everyone. Two weeks in and I am finding I'm slowly learning the names of those who engage with me (e.g. speak out in class) or those who said something interesting about themselves in Week 1 intro session. Associating their name with a fact about them is really helpful. Those who sit there silently looking grumpy will probably not have their names remembered by me!

[allegretto]

I have 150 students and no photos. It ain't gonna happen!