Ending Your Course with Intention and Meaningful Closure for Students

In previous articles, I shared how the first and last five minutes of class shape learning and retention (primacy and recency effect). In this edition, we’ll zoom out further and look at how we end an entire course. The end of a semester often arrives with stress, fatigue, and a shared sense of “let’s just get this done.” We feel it. Our students feel it. Between exams, evaluations, and lingering content, it’s easy for final class meetings to become rushed and transactional.

Yet these last sessions offer something far more meaningful: an opportunity to help students consolidate what they’ve learned and to leave the course with a sense of accomplishment, confidence, and closure (Shahid, 2025; Stone et al., 2020; Zakrajsek, 2025). A small amount of intentionality during this time can make a significant impact on retention and students’ emotional connection to their learning.

Here are a few suggestions

1. Revisit the Course Learning Outcomes
If you do nothing else, consider doing this. We spend considerable time designing outcomes and aligning content to them, yet we rarely ask students to reflect on whether—and how—they feel they’ve achieved them. Students often don’t realize the scope of their learning until they are given the chance to articulate it.

Invite students to review each outcome and reflect on their progress. This can be a group activity or an individual self-assessment. Ask them to:

• Identify what they learned that supports the outcome
• Link course activities, discussions, or assignments to it
• Retrieve one or two “most important” ideas from the course and connect them back to the outcome
• Note how the outcome relates to their development as future PAs

This combination of retrieval practice and reflection activates metacognition—reinforcing retention, strengthening connections to prior knowledge, and boosting students’ sense of accomplishment (Zhai et al., 2023).
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2. Create Emotional and Social Closure

The final day of class often ends with students packing up and heading out as quickly as possible. But a brief, deliberate moment of reflection can shift the tone entirely, helping students walk away feeling seen, validated, and successful.

Consider inviting them to share:

• Their biggest takeaway from the course
• A moment when something “clicked”
• Something they’re proud of accomplishing
• A peer who positively influenced their learning

Celebration is not just sentimental—it is part of healthy professional self-care. Acknowledging even small wins can help students build resilience in a demanding program (McNally, 2024).
You might also share your own reflections with the cohort: what stood out to you about this group, what impressed you, or what made this class unique. These moments of connection support closure and strengthen the learning community.
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3. Help Students Build Bridges Across Learning

Today’s learners often need more explicit support in connecting concepts across courses, semesters, and clinical contexts. While curriculum design plays a role, instructors can reinforce this integrative thinking through simple end-of-course activities.

Ask students to map out how this course connects to something they learned previously or in another class this semester. Prompts might include:

• Which skill or concept from this course deepened something you learned earlier?
• Where do you expect to apply this knowledge next?
• How do the course outcomes link to what you already know?

Students can complete this individually, but group sharing tends to enrich the experience. Hearing peers articulate connections often sparks new insights and deepens understanding—an example of how social-emotional engagement supports learning (Scager et al., 2016).
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Closing Thoughts

Ending a course with intention doesn’t require elaborate plans—just a few purposeful moments. When we give students space to reflect, celebrate, and connect the dots, we help them leave not only with knowledge, but with confidence in their growth and clarity about where they’re headed next. Meaningful closure reinforces past learning, strengthens future learning, and ensures students walk away feeling the success they’ve earned.

References

McNally, M. A. (2024, June 12). From small steps to big wins: The importance of celebrating. Psychology Today.  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/empower-your-mind/202406/from-small-steps-to-big-wins-the-importance-of-celebrating 

Scager, K., Boonstra, J., Peeters, T., Vulperhorst, J., & Wiegant, F. Collaborative learning in higher education: Evoking positive interdependence. CBE Life Sciences Education, 15(4), ar69. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-07-0219 

Shahid, A. (2025, December 1). The final stretch: Designing a meaningful course ending. Faculty Focus.  https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/course-design-ideas/the-final-stretch-designing-a-meaningful-course-ending/ 

Stone, G. A., Powell, G. M., & McGuire F.A. (2020).  Beginners are many but enders are few: How to end a course well and why it matters. SCHOLE: A Journal of Leisure Studies and Recreation Education 37 (3): 194–200. https://doi.org/10.1080/1937156X.2020.1760745.  

Zakrajsek, T. (2025, April 4). Don’t just fade to black: Ending a course with purpose. The Scholarly Teacher.  https://www.scholarlyteacher.com/post/don-t-just-fade-to-black-ending-a-course-with-purpose/ 

Zhai, N., Huang, Y., Ma, X., & Chen, J. (2023). Can reflective Interventions improve students’ academic achievement? A Meta-analysis. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 49.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2023.101373