Supporting Student Success in the First Year

1. Supporting Student Success in the First Year

2. Supporting Student Success in First Year • New students - life perspectives • Changing student profiles • What are their needs/expectations? • Factors impacting persistence • Institutional conditions that lead to student success • Best practices

3. New Students Life Perspectives • They have never rolled down a car window • Tiananmen Square is the 2008 Olympics Venue, not the scene of a massacre • “Off the Hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone • Thanks to MySpace and Facebook, autobiography can happen in real time • WWW has been an online tool since they were born

4. Changing Student Profile • Millennial or Net Generation Students: • Special, sheltered, confident, team oriented, conventional, pressured, achieving • Highly impacted by technology • Connections to peers and the world via technology are unique • They are avid multi-taskers • High levels of communication with parents

5. Increasingly Diverse Student Body • Large percentage of our students are first generation • Increasing numbers of new Canadians are enrolling • Increasing population of students with disabilities from year to year • Increases in ethnic and cultural diverstiy

6. What Do New Students Need? • Significant body of research exists that examines factors that impact student retention and success • Ongoing dialogue concerning: • Impact of institutional characteristics vs. student characteristics • Relationship between academic and non-academic factors that impact persistence

7. Practices That Support First Year Persistence • Practices for the greatest contribution to student success: Academic Advising First Year Programs Learning Support

8. Impacts on First Year Persistence • Strong to moderate relationships: • Academic related skills (S) • Academic self-confidence (S) • Academic goals (S) • Institutional commitment (M) • Social support (M) • Institutional selectivity (contextual influences) (M) • Social involvement (M) • Financial support (contextual influences) (M)

9. Impacts on First Year Performance • Strong to moderate relationships: • Academic self-confidence (S) • Achievement motivation (S) • Financial support (M) • Academic goals (M) • Academic-related skills (M) • Social Involvement (M) • Institutional commitment (M) • Social support (M)

10. What do Students Need? • Our understanding that: • retention and success are two different outcomes • Academic and non-academic factors have different effects on persistence and performance

11. What Do Students Need? • Ongoing transition support • Collaborative efforts between faculty and service providers • Support in the formulation of educational and career goals • Quality, individual academic and social experiences with faculty, staff and other students

12. What do Students Expect? • Successful integration into the academic and social life of the institution • Engaging classroom and co-curricular activity as a norm of campus life • That the quality and value of the experience will mirror the costs of their education • Successful transition to employment upon completion of degree requirements

13. Conditions that Lead to Student Success • Lived educational philosophy • Unshakeable focus on student learning • Environments adapted for educational enrichment • Clearly marked pathways to student success • Improvement-oriented ethos

14. Conditions That Lead to Student Success • Shared responsibility for educational quality across campus • Student engagement , particularly when academic, interpersonal and extracurricular involvements are mutually reinforcing (Pascarella and Terenzini)

15. Challenges for Student Development and Support • Disconnect of commuter students • Customization of support for special populations • Documenting contributions to learning and success • Prevalence of mental health issues

16. Challenges for Student Development and Support • Increasing collaboration with faculties to facilitate student success • Lack of appropriate staffing resources in areas that provide support for educational/career goal-setting and for personal counselling

17. Documented Best Practices Supporting Student Success • Academic Advising including: • Advising interventions with select student populations • Integration of advising with first year transition programs • Advising programs that combine educational and career planning • Early alert systems

18. Documented Best Practices Supporting Student Success • First Year Programs including: • Orientation - both pre-term and extended • Summer bridge programs • First year seminars for credit • Mentoring • Learning Communities

19. Documented Best Practices Supporting Student Success • Learning Support including: • Supplemental instruction • Learning assistance centres • Summer bridge programs • Tutoring programs • Assistance with developing study groups

20. For Further Consideration How do we effectively move toward integrated efforts incorporating both curricular and co-curricular factors into the design and development of programs to create an engaging and supportive learning environment that addresses the social, emotional and academic needs of our students, in order maximize their potential for success?

21. Questions?Comments?Suggestions?