Submitted by: Jennifer Brewer, jbrewer1@uca.edu on 08/31/2026
Faculty for Successful Students – Weeks 2 & 3!
Help Students Beat the Clock ⏰
We made it through Week 1! The syllabi have been distributed, the rosters are beginning to settle, and everyone has definitely read every word of every course policy.
Right?
Moving along…
This Week’s Faculty for Successful Students Focus: Encourage Time Management
College students have a lot of competition for their time—and first-year students are often still figuring out just how much outside-of-class time college coursework requires.
A few ways you can Reinforce Success:
- Help students estimate how much time they should plan to spend on coursework outside of class. A typical three-credit-hour course may require around six additional hours each week for reading, studying, assignments, and preparation.
- Give students a few minutes to look ahead at upcoming assignments and deadlines—especially when a larger project is approaching.
- Break major assignments into smaller milestones when appropriate so students can practice planning rather than discovering the entire project 36 hours before it is due.
- Talk explicitly about how you would approach planning for an assignment. What should students do first? How long might each step take? When should they begin?
- Remind students that time management is a skill—not something everyone magically arrives at college already knowing how to do.
Small conversations about planning can help students move from “I have plenty of time” to “Maybe I shouldn’t start this at 11:47 p.m.”
💡 Brightspace Byte: Put the Calendar to Work
Brightspace can help students see what’s coming before “coming” becomes “due in 37 minutes.”
- Encourage students to make the Brightspace Calendar part of their regular routine. Due dates entered in Brightspace are automatically added to the calendar, giving students one place to see deadlines across their courses.
- Students can also add their own events, so they can use the Calendar to plan study sessions, project work, appointments, or other reminders alongside their course deadlines.
- One quick thing you can do this week: Show students where the Calendar is and ask them to look at what’s coming up. Even better, give them a minute in class to open it.
That tiny investment of class time may save everyone some deadline-related drama later.
🍽️ Bear Bites: Beat the Clock – Helping Students Plan for Success
Tuesday, September 1 | 12:15–1:30 p.m.
Christian Cafeteria Executive Dining Room
Facilitator: Amy Baldwin
“I didn’t have enough time.”
If you teach, chances are good you’ve heard that sentence once. Or twice. Or 847 times.
Join us for lunch and conversation about practical ways to help students plan their time, manage priorities, estimate how long coursework will take, and make more realistic decisions about their schedules.
Bring your own ideas, hear what colleagues are doing, and pick up a few strategies you might want to try with your students.
Lunch is provided!
🔗 Keep These Handy
Faculty for Successful Students Webpage
Faculty Slides for Classroom Use
The Weeks 2 & 3 slide is ready to project as students arrive—or to include with your weekly messaging in an online course. And yes, we continue to believe students are reading it. We have chosen optimism.
Thank you for helping students develop habits that can make the semester a little more manageable—and their learning a lot more successful.