How to tell which students are stuck in a hands-on class

Asking for help in front of a room costs something: you admit you're behind, you interrupt, and then you wait. Research on help-seeking finds that students often avoid asking even when they know they need help, especially when asking feels like admitting they can't keep up.

In a hands-on session that silence compounds. Each exercise builds on the last, so a student stuck on step two is lost on step three, and by the time they speak up they need more than a quick fix. Asking "any questions?" more often doesn't change this. Making a report cheaper than staying silent does.

Break the exercise into short steps and ask for one small action at the end of each: mark it done. A second action says "I need help". Both should take one tap or one sticky note, and neither should require speaking up.

Coding instructors have used a low-tech version for years: every learner gets two coloured sticky notes, one for "done" and one for "I need help", and puts the right one on their laptop. Greg Wilson notes that this works better than raised hands because it's discreet, so people actually do it; they can keep working while their flag is up; and the teacher can see the state of the whole room from the front.

• Keep each step to a few minutes of work, so the signal stays fresh.
• Say what "done" means: "you see your heading in the browser", not "you've read the step".
• Make asking for help private, so it isn't a public confession.

Once most of the class has marked a step done, the students who haven't are your list. Some are slower and fine; some are stuck and haven't said so. Go to them first, or send them a private message.

In Workshopy the room on each step shows this directly: one square per student, green when they pressed Done, a clock while they're still working, amber when they asked for help. The step outline beside it counts each step's done, working and stuck students, so you see a step where the class is piling up before anyone says a word.

Help whoever has waited longest first. A queue you can see keeps the loudest student from taking every turn. If three students are stuck on the same line, stop and explain it once to the whole room instead of three times.

In Workshopy, Need help on the student's screen sends you a request, with a note if they add one ("Where exactly is the head?"). The Help tab lists requests oldest first, each with Go to step and Resolve, and a request that has waited more than five minutes turns red.

The step where most students got stuck is the step to rewrite. It probably asks for two things at once, or assumes something you never taught. Workshopy's report shows, for every class you run, how many students finished each step, how many got stuck or asked for help, and how long they waited for an answer.