The end of the year is always an exciting time, particularly for students who excitedly wait for Christmas and the holidays to come around, but it is also a time when students begin to lack motivation and when the exhaustion of the year sets in. Making the lessons memorable and exciting is crucial in this period, especially when effort in the sessions and homework gradually becomes minimal. Before hosting a termly meeting at the Earlwood centre, I thought long and hard about how we as tutors could bring excitement into the session while prioritising the academic challenges our students face. I thought about all of the times I had seen memes and funny videos, and pictures online describing the content I had learnt at university and comparing it to real-life scenarios, which had helped me to remember the content I had struggled with even after my exams. Then I began to consider how many students use the media and technology and how they typically talk about what’s trending online in our sessions. I started to get creative and considered making numerous memes that included characters like Batman or commonly seen memes on the internet to remind students of concepts they had struggled with throughout the year by writing the reminders on the memes/pictures. I presented this idea at the meeting and hoped for more suggestions, and the magnificent group of tutors at Earlwood suggested many ideas, such as coming up with a rap they could work on with their student, creating an essay soup with the essay components as the ingredients, rhyming, and funny acronyms. These ideas came from tutors who teach an array of subjects and can apply to any subject. Overall, creativity is proven crucial to ensuring student engagement, especially with the end of the year approaching and fatigue being high.

Marina Nouris