Students expect an instructor to treat everyone in the class equally. Few professors intentionally favor certain students over others, but it is probably impossible not to like some students more than others. Differences in liking may foster differences in interactions, such as allowing certain students to dominate discussions. Even subtle differences in how students are treated may lead to perceptions of partiality where none exist. To avoid those perceptions, carefully monitor your behavior and interactions with all students.

Respect is a matter of treating students politely. Students expect an instructor to listen to, carefully consider and give thoughtful replies to their ideas, even when they challenge the instructor's views. An instructor who is perceived as impatient or demeaning — either directly through comments or indirectly through tone of voice, facial expressions or posture — loses students' respect. Should you face disrespect, try to remain civil and calm, thereby modeling the appropriate behavior for students. It is always appropriate to meet privately with an offending student, during which you can be more direct in communicating expectations for classroom deportment.

Students expect their instructors to care about them and their academic performance. You can demonstrate such concern by learning and using students' names, talking to them before and after class, carefully answering questions and inviting students who appear to be having problems with the course to discuss those problems and potential solutions. You also can express concern by giving due consideration to student complaints, taking remedial action when the complaints are valid, and carefully explaining your position when the complaints are not valid.

Integrity means being consistent and truthful, and explaining policies, procedures and decisions, and why they are necessary. For example, you can justify an attendance policy because attendance is correlated with increased learning and better grades. Explaining the educational goals of various types of assignments can also be effective. Integrity also involves delivering promised rewards and penalties, and admitting ignorance when appropriate.

Propriety means acting in a socially acceptable manner and not offending students' sensibilities. Most students find it inappropriate in most or all circumstances for an instructor to tell an off-color story or joke. Students also expect instructors to respect their privacy and not require them to reveal highly personal information in a class discussion. Finally, students expect instructors to maintain an appropriate social distance.

Although many students can perceive a reasonable workload as too heavy (due to employment, extracurricular activities, or low aptitude for the type of work done in the course), some workloads can in fact be too heavy. If the knowledge base is rapidly expanding and you feel pressed to include everything you think must be covered in a course, many students may feel overloaded. It's important to consider student ability when designing a course. A course for the general student population should be less technical than one designed for majors. It's also important to remember that many first year students are learning study skills along with the course content, and the difficulty of the course should be calibrated accordingly.

Three factors help a test appear fair to students.

1. All the material on the test is relevant to the course's objectives and was covered in lectures, readings or both. If you reuse test questions, double-check them to ensure their currency with revised lectures or changed textbooks.
2. The test is appropriate in difficulty for the course. Students are especially offended by tests that seem designed to flunk people out of a course for the convenience of the faculty.
3. The test is well designed, with clearly phrased questions and, on multiple-choice tests, clearly phrased response options.

Providing prompt, constructive feedback on the results of tests and assignments is pedagogically sound and helps students perceive you as being fair and concerned about their progress. Feedback should not only tell students the questions they got right or wrong, but also explain why wrong answers are incorrect, especially for items missed by a substantial number of students. This type of feedback takes relatively little time even in large classes and provides large dividends in terms of student good will.

In addition to providing feedback to students, you also should solicit and respond to feedback from students. For example, give serious consideration to student complaints that a test question was ambiguous or had more than one correct answer, and take remedial action when such complaints are valid. When distributing assignments, make sure students understand the grading criteria, and be sure to solicit and answer questions about the requirements, procedures, deadlines and outcomes.

A department, college, or university may have specific policies concerning the distribution of each grade that may be given. When there is no formal policy, the actual distributions of grades in similar courses provide informal guidelines. Students compare grades with peers and will likely feel cheated if their grades for comparable performance are lower than those of students in similar courses taught by other instructors. Students who feel cheated may reciprocate by cheating.

Tests, term papers, homework, presentations and other assignments should yield accurate information about student performance. Continually review and update assessment instruments to ensure their accuracy. If you reuse test questions, check them when changing textbooks or moving to a new edition of the current book. Exam and quiz questions that are poorly worded, ambiguous or were not covered in class or in assigned readings also reduce the accuracy of assessment. It is useful to have a student who has completed the course read questions for clarity.

Some students do better on objective tests, others on term papers or essay tests. Consequently, accurate evaluation of student performance provides students a variety of ways to show their learning so strengths can offset weaknesses. Similarly, multiple evaluations provide more accurate information about student performance than just one measure.

The course syllabus should inform students what assessment instruments you will use and the weight each will have in determining course grades. Students also should know how grades will be determined, such as being based on preset cut-off scores or based on their relative ranking in the class (grading on the curve), and the reasons for using that grading method.

Students want their grades to reflect their performance, not the performance of other students. Grades based on preset cutoffs may be more satisfying to students than grades based on performance relative to the class mean. Students also expect to be graded individually for their contribution to group work. Individual performance on a collaborative project could include peer assessments or individual papers based on the assignment.

Students expect grading policies to be firm. If you must make alterations, you should fully explain the changes and reasons for them. Ideally, the revised policy should benefit students, such as a new opportunity to gain points toward final grades. At a minimum, alterations in policies should at least balance costs and benefits.