“A learning college will make a commitment and provide
solutions that make it possible for every student to have a meaningful
plan-to-graduate on file as early as possible in their academic career, perhaps
by the fifteenth credit hour.
Connection
and direction have proven to be very powerful ideas at
least fifteen hours of college credit
work, and declare a major, graduation rates approach ninety percent. All three
of these are closely related to connection and direction. Still, at
program is academic performance in the
first semester.” Shugart (Chapter 9)
“We
continue to enroll large numbers of students in order to produce relatively few
graduates. The fact is, if students survive the early experiences of a
community college, they tend to succeed at a rather high level, but very few
survive these early experiences. Despite many years of effort, most colleges
still churn large numbers of students in and out of the front door.
This
means that systemic improvements and investments at the thirtieth or fortieth
hour of the curriculum will have only very minor impact on the larger outcomes
of graduation, placement, and transfer. Even modest improvements, however,
early in the process could produce dramatic effects on these outcomes.
"Ensure that students experience
extraordinary learning success in their
earliest encounters with the college and establish a solid foundation for
success in future learning."An Essay by Ann
Puyana and Sandy Shugart
Like most colleges,
Connection and direction: key elements to
student persistence and success.
Research1 and our own internal data
suggest that students will persist longer (even through academic and personal
set-backs and stop-outs) and meet with greater success (more course completions
and higher passing rates) if they can establish both connection and direction
at the college as early as possible.
The need for connection is both intellectual and
emotional. The college setting feels like an alien culture to many newcomers,
with its particular architecture, uniquely shared behaviors and expectations, special
vocabulary, and layers of procedural bureaucracy. Beginnings can be daunting,
and a natural reaction to fear and discomfort is flight. To be willing to stay
and explore uncertain circumstances, one must feel first that the venture is
safe. ("No physical or psychological harm will come to me here.")
Beyond that basic level, however, staying in a new culture is further assured
by initial and increasing feelings of welcome, acceptance, and engagement.which in turn lead to acculturation and a sense
of belonging, of having a vital role in the new environment. The Peace Corps
uses the term "early returns" for volunteers who, mostly for
"culture shock" reasons, do not complete their two-year period of
service abroad. In our case, we have "early leavers" (no-shows,
withdrawals, drop-outs), often caused by similar feelings of cultural exclusion
and discomfort. Start Right commits
Another aspect of students' connection is with
self: feeling ready for and sensing real possibilities in the challenge they
have set before themselves. Of them, this requires initially a leap of faith
and much courage, and then a growing sense of independence and responsibility
for their decisions and commitments. Of us, it requires a genuine belief in the
potential of each individual to learn under the right circumstances, and a
willingness to help discover and develop those "right circumstances."
(The self-fulfilling expectations prophecy is widely held as true: children,
students, employees.rise or sink to the level of
belief in capacity and expectation of performance held of them, and in
turn by them.) Empowering the student self also requires us to recognize
them as adult partners in their education. From them, we can learn much about
what interests and motivates them, as well as what life experiences and
understandings they bring to this new learning. We can also enable deeper
learning by explicitly linking new information to prior knowledge and by
evolving our offerings from a collection of courses to a holistic,
interconnected curriculum. Finally, we can shepherd students to their
"learning edges," balance points between the known and the unknown
where intellectual challenge and support can foster and accelerate growth.
At Valencia, we are helping students to make
essential and meaningful connections in many ways, including: orientation and
course placement, the Student Success program, advisement and counseling, small
classes, frequent and helpful interactions with staff and instructors, career
guidance, tutoring and student support labs, technology access, linked courses,
and special courses for non-native speakers of English and for those who need
further preparation before enrolling in college-level courses. Furthermore, we
are responding to differences in learning styles and applying other effective
practices for adult learning, most notably through an institutional and
increasingly individual shift from teaching-centeredness to
learning-centeredness. Our Core Competencies (Think, Value, Communicate, Act) link course work to the over-arching abilities of an
"educated person," making it easier for us to build an integrated
experience for our students, and in turn for them to better understand the
interrelationship and transferability of knowledge and skills derived from
their "higher education." A coherent curriculum and genuine
engagement in the learning process, in addition to forming context and
connection, also contribute to the other key influence on student persistence
and success: direction.
Research findings1 tell us that
students who have a plan are much more likely to complete their education than
those who do not. Many students arrive at
At Valencia, LifeMap
("Life's a trip; you'll need directions") has become the formal
vehicle for our institutional goal of helping students get started on and then
further develop their life, career and educational plans. The various stages of
LifeMap reach back to before college (middle school
programming) and extend through graduation to transitions to work and/or
continued learning. With this dynamic metaphor now established, we want to
extend the success relationship between college academics and life planning
throughout the curricular and extra-curricular college experience, thus
empowering students to develop meaningful personal and professional directions
for themselves, and then to build the educational plans that will take them
there.
In summary, good educational practices, based in
the learning and retention research of our profession, obligate us to commit
our resources and energies to
. Build welcoming, dynamic,
inclusive learning communities
. Create the expectation and
resources for students to develop and implement career and educational plans
. Apply understandings of
learning styles and brain research to learning activities
. Foster student development through challenging standards
and effective support
. Engage adult students as
active partners in their learning
. Use early and frequent
feedback loops to exchange and apply information for improved teaching and
learning
. Assess outcomes and
research what's working and what's not throughout the college.
Bridging the gap between what we know about how
adults learn best and what we do about it in our practices is one of our
greatest individual professional and institutional challenges. It seems that
institutions have always asked, "Is this student really college
material?" Now society's evolving needs and our commitment to genuine
learning results press us to ask a more provocative question: "Is this
college really student material?" At