Orienting and Engaging Students in
Learning-Centered Education
Facilitator: Jerry
Sue Thornton
Recorder: Pamela
Haney
Resource: K. Patricia Cross
During the seminar session
Orienting and Engaging Students in Learning-Centered Education,
participants identified and defined three areas of critical problems and issues
for students: (1) student goals and success, (2) orientation, and (3) systems
of a learning-centered college/student services. Following the discussion,
participants offered comments and generated solutions to these critical
problems and issues.
·
How do you identify
the different characteristics and meet the needs of full-time and part-time
students in a learning-centered way?
·
What are our
expectations regarding learning for students and faculty?
·
There is a need to
challenge the learning of students and faculty.
·
There should be a
Partnership Model between students and the college; students deliver 50% of the
success equation and the college delivers 50%.
·
Know the difference
between covering a course and deepening a course, and how this relates to
student success.
·
To assess student
goals identify populations of students at our colleges.
·
It is important to
study the following student populations: long-term, returning, transition,
enrichment, full-time and part-time.
·
Develop outreach
programs with high schools and junior high schools.
·
Examine if the
college meets the needs of students.
These needs may be educational, social, or financial.
·
Build a student
portfolio.
·
Implement the student
portfolio as an ongoing process. The
student portfolio should be in place at or before entry into the college. It is feasible for the student portfolio to
begin in high school.
·
The student portfolio
can be an on-line and/or written process.
·
A portfolio lends
itself to lifelong learning, and “marketability” when looking for work.
·
Provide continuous
updating of the student portfolio.
·
Examine the needs of
full-time and part-time students.
·
Implement a peer
mentoring process that encourages students to mentor other students.
·
Assess student goals.
·
Assess the college’s
ability to deliver a student centered and driven environment.
·
Colleges should
engage in a "Holistic Approach" of orienting students. Review the policies, practices, and
procedures of orienting students.
·
How do we encourage
students to learn during orientation?
·
Orientation must take
place in the classroom and outside of the classroom.
·
There should be a
college connection with orienting students.
The connection involves student engagement, student responsibility,
knowing the student starting point when arriving at college, steering the
student away from a passive mentality, and looking at a whole individualized
learning plan of the student.
·
There should be an
awareness of the different populations of students we serve.
·
Colleges should
increase the awareness of the services they provide for students.
·
All students need
orientation and a sense of belonging.
·
There is a need for
continued orientation, especially in the first year experience.
·
Engagement for
students should begin during recruitment and continue.
·
Stop viewing students
as a problem. Review the language used
at our colleges.
·
There should be an
accessibility of staff to provide services for students.
·
When thinking of
student engagement, get out-of-the-box in terms of an industrial model.
·
Orientation should be
“Holistic” and “Continuous.”
·
In the orientation
process address the whole student through academic and social integration.
·
Identify critical
times in the life of the student and ways to assist the student.
·
Identify student
needs at intervals. The following are
suggestions for handling the identification of student needs: (1) student services can provide tracking
systems, (2) system of management through the classroom, (2) paired-cohort
group of orientation, (3) the student portfolio, (4) matching student
expectations with college expectations, (5) focusing on the learner providing
information to students, and (6) learning reports.
·
Use a student survey
or tracking system to measure non-cognitive areas of students. The student is engaged in a contextualized,
authentic, learning experience that is impacted by attitudes, perceptions, and
interests.
·
Use the portfolio to
assess the quality of the learning experience of the student.
·
Colleges should
review issues of facilities, staffing, and policies, procedures, and practices.
·
Consider developing
an "Early Alert System" for students.
·
Embrace the challenge
to review the reallocation of funds at your college. Look at different ways of using college resources.
·
Colleges should
encourage coordination; involving more areas and people in programs to increase
efficiency and productivity.
·
The justification for
"how we will benefit students" should be examined.
·
Student outcomes
should be reviewed.
·
What is it that we
can achieve as a college and how can we remain practical to make it happen?
·
Examine what key
institutional policies and practices have been linked to student success.
·
Create partnerships
with various constituents within the college.
·
Develop linked
courses. Provide an opportunity for
others to engage in classes.
·
Use instruments as
diagnostic tools that enable students to develop new learning strategies and
cultural influences of learning.
·
Implement the concept
of the “Life Map.”
·
Follow-up with
technology.
·
Develop programs or
use programs that are in place to determine if students are ready for distance
learning.
·
Examine how we place
students, advise students, and when to advise students.
·
Determine whom you
should partner with as a college.
·
Implement an Early
Alert System and incorporate policies for repeaters and retention policies.
·
Encourage policy
development at colleges.
·
Send out the midterm
progress report earlier in the semester.
·
Incorporate Student
Success Day. This day allows students
an opportunity to “catch-up” on assignments and meet with faculty. There is no instruction on this day. Encourage faculty to remain available for
students on this day.
·
Faculty must play a
role in recognizing early warning systems and intervene when appropriate.
·
View support staff as
part of faculty in their roles of helping students.
·
Examine the issue of
the underprepard student.
·
Define enrollment at
colleges. Does open enrollment mean
there is an open door policy for seriously underprepared students?
As we attempt to solve the
problems and issues that students face it is important to examine how we can
meet student needs through a learning centered approach. Engage students in active and enriched
learning and maintain a relationship with students. Provide the orientation of students as a continuous process and
encourage all involved to view “learning as a journey” in enhancing
student success.
Creating Learning-Centered Programs for
Underprepared Students
Facilitator: Jerry Sue Thornton
Recorder: Kathy Goettsch
Key
Questions
1. What structures, policies and processes have proven
to be most critical in promoting the success of underprepared students?
2. What are the keys to creating information systems
adequate to the need to track student progress and success? What performance indicators will help know
how effective its approaches actually are?
3. What diagnostic tools are being used for effective
assessment of student skills upon entry and appropriate placement in courses?
4. In what ways are colleges effectively working with
middle and high schools to improve student preparation?
Assignment: Discuss relevant issues, best practices,
strategies for success, guidelines and framework to share.
·
In most community
colleges, 65-75% of students will possess some dimension of underpreparedness.
·
Dimensions/facets of
underpreparedness include:
·
The issue of
underpreparedness is everyone’s business
·
How do you assess
student needs? Assessment should occur
on many different levels using a variety of tools. There should be a menu of assessment which uses multiple
measures.
·
As an institution
that is learning-centered, there should be resources devoted to assessment
issues. A learning-centered college
also needs to provide diagnostic assessment, not just placement assessment.
·
Colleges should
consider ways to mobilize the staff around partnerships. The college should create a culture that
actively supports programs for underprepared students.
·
There should be clear
exit criteria from courses and programs serving underprepared students.
·
Consideration should
be given to open-entry/open-exit services and to learning-community approaches.
These two approaches are different from each other but both have value.
·
Programmatic
transitions should be clearly outlined for students. Course sequencing becomes critical in the student journey.
·
Since there are so
many dimensions to underpreparedness, each learning college needs to decide
what dimensions it will serve. Once
that is decided, programs and services, staffing issues, and exit criteria and
learning outcomes can be clearly articulated.
·
A learning college
needs to define for itself the concepts of developmental, remediation, and
enrichment. These are not synonymous
terms.
Learning
communities are vital to the engagement of students in learning. It is important for students to connect with
each other in a process where they feel more in control over what is happening
to them.
Some ideas to consider:
·
developmental ed
students in cohorts.
·
reading portfolio,
“who am I as a reader?”
·
community service and
service learning should be paired with developmental ed
·
personal education
plan for every student
·
successful use of
Intro to American Pluralism and developmental reading course
·
“How To Learn” course
(Learning as Journey)
·
paired courses should
be marketed better; higher success rate and retention rate from pairing
·
lab courses for
developmental ed students with scheduled entry into the lab but open exit
·
Consider creative
out-of-box scheduling to include variable credit, break semester barriers, and
variable entry.
·
Consider issues of
type/process in assessing learning to include testing and re-testing policies.