Managing Expectations¶
Expectation management is a basic survival skill of teachers.
As described in ../fundamentals/students.md, students have different needs: proceeding on a learning path, passing an exam, solving a business problem, having a good time and many more. If participants feel their expectations are not met, they get distracted easily, and it becomes more difficult to learn anything. On the other hand, expectations that are met, boost their motivation and makes their learning more productive. Thus, meeting expectations makes your job easier, more rewarding and helps your career in the long run.
One key part of expectation management is learning what your students expect in the first place. In a programming course, it also means learning about the existing skills of your participants, and how broadly the skills are distributed among the class.
A second part is to communicate clearly what they can expect from you and what not. Many inexperienced teachers try to make everybody happy. This is often only possible at the cost of overexhausting yourself. It is entirely fine to say clearly that there are things that you can’t or won’t do (unless it was promised to them earlier).
Expectation management was one of the most important skills that I learned while transitioning from academic teaching to freelance work. In the following chapters you find techniques to gather information about student expectations and to communicate yours in way that fosters a positive climate.