"I got good grades in all my other classes!" We hear this often from students who may for a variety of reasons feel challenged. I think what they are often times telling us is that "perception of their role and success as a student is shrinking (Academic Erosion).
Faculty can intervene in several ways:
1. Provide additional detailed feedback to the student explaining the assignment objectives and the areas of the assignment that did and did not meet the assignment objective. This shows the student that they matter and their needs are important. It also provides an additional learning opporutnity that can lead to improved performance on future assignments.
2. Be proactive with students who may be at academic risk: Reach out to those students whose participation level has changed, they are doing poorly with assignments, etc. Reach out and communicate with students, providing encouragement, additional assistance, referring to additional resources, etc. Keeping administration in the loop is important so the student feels welcome to contact a number of individuals willing to support them.
These are just 2 examples of some proceedural interventions we have in place. Our challenge in an online environment is that we can't see some of the visual clues indicating student frustration and stress. It is important for faculty in an online environment to learn to watch for the written clues, classroom partication, tone of classroom communication, etc. in order to be proactive. Faculty must also be sure that their written communication with students is individualized, friendly, encouraging and supportive. We do care about each and every one of our students and need to make sure we express it in everything we do.
Donna,
We too have something similiar. Each student has an advisor that works with them throughout their program. Faculty and advisors keep each other in the loop on any "at risk issues" that may arise. Student too can talk to their advisors about issues with the class and instructor. Working with this structure has greatly improved student retention.
I was with a school a couple of years ago where management decided to do something for incoming students at the very beginning to help students off to a good start.
We hired a "Success Coarch" whose job is to coach incoming students especially those who needed extra help with study skills, time management, test taking strategies, forming or joining study groups, critical thinking, or even basic math which many of them are lacking. All of these courses are made available to all current and incoming students students even if they haven't started school yet but are already enrolled. it is offered to current students usually before or after classes for all different sessions.
It works because it helps students alleviate their fears of failing. They seem more confident as they have acquired some knowledge that will help them be better students.
Fortunately because our campus is new we still have a student body of under 100 people. This allows me to monitor each students attendance and grades regularly. Whenever I notice that a student is slipping due to either academic erosion or stagnation I bring them into my office for a one on one sit down. I start by asking if they know why I wanted to speak with them and they usually do. Then we talk about what is causing the problem at hand and what solutions are available for the student. Doing this with students helps me to avoid putting students on academic probation and ultimately termination from the school. I tell myself as a student services coordinator that it is my job to do everything in my power to help students learn, graduate, and build a successful career for themselves and I think I encourage this every step of the way.
We do not have a licensed counselor on staff. We are fornuate to have the local Career Centers close that encourage us to send our students that need help to them.
An average month, we may have 2 people rotate in. This has been valuable to the success of our students graduating.
What do you mean by students being scored every day by their instructor? Is that a lot of work?
The scoring takes less than 10 minutes and is completed at the end of the day with each student. The scoring takes place immediately at the end of the day after the tasks has been completed
How often do students take advantage of the opportunity to rotate into other classes, Dawn?
What do you mean by students being scored every day by their instructor? Is that a lot of work?
Do you have a licensed counselor on staff?
How many other Forum participants have licensed counselors at their school? How do you use them?
Students are scored by their instructor every day on their performance, when an intervention is needed we have the ability to detect the need early. A student may become stagnated and develop a mental block regarding his/her ability to complete the course. Stagnation will prevent the student from advancing with the course, and interfere with his/her ability to obtain completion. When a student is having a challenge with a skill or task that is required for them to successfully pass the course; extra time is scheduled for the student to rotate in with an existing class that is performing the same skill or task. If the student is normally on a day schedule the student will be scheduled to rotate in with the weekend students; if weekend, then day schedule. This practice has helped with the completion and retention rate at our school. Additional costs are not incurred, neither the student nor the school; additionally it isn’t taking away from the existing students. Rotating students into additional training has provided invaluable with our reputation. The students obtaining the training, and the students observing this practice leave our school with the thought…”…that is one school that does
Here lately we have had to use the outside services more due to the issues that some our students are having. For example, we have a student that was very depressed and on the verge of taking his life we had him to to a professional at the VA hospital. He recieved the the help he needed and they are following up with him on regular bases. We are seeing and increase of students needing help in the area of housing and needing help with making ends meet. If the student is in house and needs on-going counseling, our ssc makes appointments with them on a regular bases to make sure that they are recieveing the help they need. She goes above and beyond what she is required to do.
How often do you use the outside professionals? How do handle the need for on-going counseling?
What we do are our campus for students that are under stress and want to leave school we first sit the student down to see what the problem is and how we can help them. Most of the time the student is overwhelmed because they have been out of schoof for awhile and it is hard for them to get back into the mode of studying. What we do is help the student rethink how they can work into their daily schedule studying. Which is done through a timeline. Sometimes we have students that are really in a bind, we send them to our ssc and she works with them to get them the help they need.
We use our Student Service coordinators to continually keep in touch with the students and help with problems that the students may be having. If the student's problems are beyond the scope of what the SSC’s are equipped to deal with they are directed to professional counselors. Our college has contracted with an outside firm that has professional counselors on staff to provide additional help to our students.
We have had SSCs for probably 4 years. Our retention rates are much better than the national average.
Their full-time job is to interact with the students. Students are assigned a specific coordinator, and coordinator have different focuses--for examples, there are special coordinators for first-quarter students. The ratio right now is 150 students per coordinator.
How long have you been doing this? What are the results?
we have many layers, student services coordinator, career services, dean and associate dean, and others on our staff that help with our student needs. we work together so the right person is handling the student issue. we meet in education once a week and the student service coordinator gives a report at that time with who she has meet with and we discuss how to handle each student on a individual basis.
Do these SSCs have other responsibilities? Are students assigned to specific Coordinators? How many students does a Coordinator support?
The school that I work for has a staff of Student Service Coordinators(SSCs) whose job is to interact with students who are not attending class, not turning in assignments, or who are not receiving passing grades on assignments. Students can also call or email an SSC with concerns about the class or the instructor.
Yes, these same services are available to all our faculty and staff including our adjunct faculty. All new hires are made aware of the services as they are oreinted in the hiring process.
