What's in a Name, Anyway?

Over at Dot Physics, Rhett is trying to learn his students' names:

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. There are always a couple of students that I just can't get.

I'm always amazed at how well the "seating chart" thing works. I don't need to assign seats, mind-- that's a little too elementary school for my tastes. But even without formally assigning seats, students always tend to sit in the same places, enough so that it's a good way to learn names-- "John Smith: Red Sox hat, sits in the back left; Jim Jones: Yankee hat, back right;..." (Hats are usually more or less constant, as well, to the point where I don't recognize some students without them.)

This is a life-saver, because I'm terrible with names. There are people who work here whose names I can never remember, even though I run into them regularly around campus. I live in terror of having to introduce people to each other.

Rhett has a couple of other suggestions, including using student pictures. He said it was a hassle to get those at his institution, but here, they're provided to us. The web-based course roster system we have includes the students' ID photos with their names.

This turns out to be less useful than you might think. Or, rather, it works well, but only for the intro classes. The problem is that student ID pictures are taken once, at the start of their first year. As long as you're teaching a class with mostly first-year students, they look enough like their ID pictures for the photo rosters to be useful.

By the time they're juniors or seniors, though, it's remarkable how many of the students look nothing at all like their first-year pictures. It's not terribly surprising-- people change a lot between 18 and 20, after all-- but it's a dramatic demonstration of just how much college students change over the years. The clean-cut, well-groomed students who showed up that first September have gained weight, grown facial hair, and developed radically different hairstyles.

Happily, the only classes I teach that are senior-heavy tend to be classes in the physics major, and by the time they're senior majors, I've seen those students around enough to know their names. At which point, the ID photos on the rosters are more for entertainment value than anything else.

More like this

One of my instructors at community college made us all write our names on an index card, then snapped a couple of polaroids of groups of us holding the cards up.

By MadGastronomer (not verified) on 15 Jan 2009 #permalink

Colleague at another institution taught a 350 student intro lecture section. He would go around to the labs with a polaroid camera and take student pictures. He would post these on a board in his office and memorize them. He would call on students by name in lecture. That's way above my pay grade!

By Jim Thomerson (not verified) on 15 Jan 2009 #permalink

In graduate school several of my professors handed out or had us make table tents with our names on the front and back (so our classmates could also use them). We were expected to bring them to class with us.

Some colleges (probably only small ones) publish a booklet of pictures of all the first year students from pictures that students sent in with some required documents early on. They were of course mostly senior class year book photos. Most of use didn't even show up on campus looking like that. Our was called the zoo book. Some places called them face books because that was back in the pre-web days. Now that I think about it profs must have used those too since they seemed to learn names pretty quickly. I'm sure they were challenging.

Another technique used by some professors I've had in this second instantiation of my Grad School experience follows. Prof distributes folded cover stock to each student, and magic marker. Students each write their first names in large font on front and back of the name tags, so that names are visible from front of classroom and from behind. Professor makes an effort to address each student in each class, using name tags. Students are encouraged to use nametags also to refer to other students by name. Then at end of class, each student places assignment due that day under the nametag. Professor collects assignment and nametags, and nametags with no assignments allow identification of who was absent.

I've spoken with another Physics prof about the subjective phenomenon that we have trouble remembering student names and correlated with faces at start of new semester, and then somehow, after the first few and a plateau, the rest click into place later in the semester, as if a phase change had taken place.

When I took "Modern Physics" we had about 40 students in a room that would seat about 300. We almost always sat in the exact same seats, except for days that we would conspire to get the entire class to flip seats left/right or move everyone to the back of the room before the professor came in.

On that note, have your classes ever done anything interesting or odd? In that same modern physics class we would periodically give standing ovations at the end of lectures. We'd tell the professor afterwards that it was a particularly good one. (While that wasn't really true, he was a good teacher and we all did genuinely like the class.)

Finally, from my own experience with names and running physics lab sections. Each semester I would have 50 to 120 students that I helped 3 hours a week in basic physics labs. I'm terrible with names, and had only about a dozen chances to see each student before the semester was over. For me, the trick was to learn a unique fact about a person to then remember their name. Maybe they play the bassoon, or are half Swedish, or want to be a podiatrist. But for whatever reason, once my brain made the connection I could remember their names. For students that I was still having trouble with after 3 or 4 weeks, I would make them start telling me strange things about them, until enough details stuck.

Re: seating charts: in law school, what would happen is that a map of the classroom would be passed around on day one. Students filled in their names in the appropriate seats, and then were expected to stay in that seat (or roughly, anyway).

By Richard Campbell (not verified) on 15 Jan 2009 #permalink

Re: the fear of having to introduce people to each other - the trick is to have co-conspirators who know what to do. When you're talking with person A whom you _do_ know, but you are approaching person B whom you _should_ know but can't remember (or conversely, person B is approaching you), quickly mention to A that you can't remember B's name while still out of earshot. Then say hello to B like you're old buddies or something and start chatting. A should know to wait a moment and then introduce himself, which almost always prompts B to introduce themselves. Then apologize profusely for failing to make the introductions.

I'm bad with names, as well. I use Dennis' method often.

The method that works best for me is that, since I assign homework daily and thus return it daily, I hand it back to each person individually. By the end of the first week I usually will know everyone in a 40-person class. To help me, since I run interactive classes that include discussion, I will often refer to students by name when answering their questions or I will use students as examples (e.g. "Bob's skiing down a hill..." - that sort of thing).

When I was an undergraduate, I did free tutoring sessions for the into physics classes. The trick to name learning was simple: Is the tutoree a pretty girl? learn her name. No? Then don't bother.

When tutoring for physics, this drastically reduces the number of names you must learn.

When meeting somebody for the first time, always contrive to have them give their name first. Let's say the person is named Phil. You immediately respond "Hey, that's a coincidence, my name is also Phil!" Don't bother trying to remember their name.

Later, if you run into this person again, they'll greet you with "Hi, Phil!"...

...and now you know their name.

You have to think these thing through.

The start of year photos are particularly horrific here in York.

They are taken in the middle of Freshers week. That is the time when a few thousand 18ish year olds are away from home for the first time, surrounded by other 18ish year olds, several campus bars, older students including several whose job it is to get Freshers drunk, and a city that knows what is going on and has the drink offers ready.

Needless to say, few people are happy with their photos.

Mine included a black eye picked up before I came, and short cropped hair which I haven't cut since (that was over three years ago now). A couple of friends came off even worse. I always meant to have a new version taken the next time the photographer was in, but they never bothered changing the photographs, and seem to have entirely given up now. Not surprised after our lot.

I'm horrific with names as well. So bad I'm actually considering Emory's suggestion.

By Paul Schofield (not verified) on 16 Jan 2009 #permalink

I've also used Facebook to help put faces to names, although you are likely to learn what your students look like drunk and/or in their underwear.

Re #10:

In 1929, Dirac sailed from America to Japan with Werner Heisenberg. During the trip, Heisenberg spent the evenings dancing while Dirac looked on, puzzled. Eventually Dirac asked his friend why he danced. Heisenberg replied, "Well, when there are nice girls it is a pleasure to dance." After thinking for 5 minutes, Dirac said: "But how do you know beforehand that the girls are nice?"

[7 Jan 2009 New Scientist, sidebar to review of new biography of Dirac]

We have photo rosters, and they are the greatest thing since sliced bread. They are great in lab (I just note which lab bench each student is at), and OK in lecture. In a large class, it takes me quite some time to sort them out. I look at it before handing back work to students, and use the first exam as an opportunity to see how many I can match up. I have an entire hour to look at their faces, so I put it to good use.

Our college makes them remove their hats for their photos, but I also find distinctive hats or hair color the easiest thing to learn. (I rarely have more than one student with green hair. Your mileage might vary.)

One thing I recommend doing is keeping a copy of the photo roster in your files for the day you get a request for a recommendation. I write their course score (out of 100) next to their name, and the combination of photo and score usually generates excellent recall of just who that student was.