Search results for ""National Resource Center for The First Year Experience Students in Transition""

Surveys of employers continually highlight the need for better communication skills among recent college graduates. Yet, writing instruction in higher education serves far more than a transactional purpose. Writing facilitates learning, helps students gain skills in analysis and synthesis, and supports a range of other personal and intellectual developmental outcomes also important to employers. To that end, Writing in the Senior Capstone offers the rationale and practical guidance for infusing writing into culminating academic experiences for college seniors. Recognizing that writing-intensive capstones already exist on many campuses, the authors also offer a range of strategies and activities to support the development of independent senior projects, while honing students’ thinking, writing, and presentation skills. A valuable resource for any educator seeking to improve the writing and critical thinking skills of college seniors.

Read more less

Higher education institutions are more diverse than ever before, as are the students they serve. Because of this great diversity, there is no silver bullet—one approach—that will work for teaching all students in all circumstances. This book offers a succinct description of several pedagogical paths available to faculty that can actively engage all students. In addition to providing the most recent information on learning and assessment, individual chapters tackle different approaches, including critical pedagogy, contemplative pedagogy, strengths-based teaching, and cooperative/collaborative learning. While the discussion is grounded in theory, authors present examples of applying these approaches in physical and virtual learning environments. Paths to Learning is a valuable overview of engaging pedagogies for educators seeking to sharpen their teaching skills, which in turn, will help students become more confident and successful learners.

Read more less

Foundations for Critical Thinking explores the landscape of critical-thinking skill development and pedagogy through foundational chapters and institutional case studies involving a range of students in diverse settings. By establishing a link between active learning and improved critical thinking encourages all higher education professionals, in whatever context, to join the ongoing conversation regarding the state of today’s college students’ critical-thinking ability. Faculty will find strategies for developing successful teaching techniques to prepare students to face the challenges of a global economy and lead creative, productive, and fulfilling lives. Staff and administrators working with students in a variety of capacities will find insights for moving critical thinking development beyond the classroom.

Read more less

While the library is at the center of many campuses physically, it is often an overlooked and underused resource in improving the learning and success of first-year college students. In this new volume, librarians, classroom faculty, administrators, and higher education researchers come together to explore the potential of the library in shaping the student experience. Chapter authors explore structures and practices for helping students learn to navigate the college library; use the Internet effectively; and find, analyze, and incorporate information into their academic work - a critical foundation for college success. Thirteen case studies present detailed information on current practice from a variety of campus types.

Read more less

Colleges and universities are seeing increasing numbers of students with a range of disabilities enrolling in postsecondary education. Many of these disabilities are invisible and, despite their potential for negative impact on students’ academic and social adjustment, some students will choose not to identify as having a disability or request support. Approaching disability from the perspective of difference, the authors of this new volume offer guidance on creating more inclusive learning environments on campus so that all students—whether or not they have a recognized disability—have the opportunity to succeed. Strategies for supporting students with specific learning disabilities, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorder or who display learning and behavioral characteristics associated with these profiles are described. A valuable resource for instructors, advisors, academic support personnel, and others who work directly with college students.

Read more less

First-year seminars have been widely hailed as a high-impact educational practice, leading to improved academic performance, increased retention, and achievement of critical 21st Century learning outcomes. While the first-year seminar tends to be narrowly defined in the literature, national explorations of course structure and administration underscore the diversity of these curricular initiatives across and within individual campuses. What then are the common demoninators among these highly variable courses that contribute to their educational effectiveness?A new collection of case studies, representing a wide variety of institutional and seminar types seeks to address this question. Using Kuh and O’Donnell’s eight conditions of effective educational initiatives as a framework, authors describe the structure, pedagogy, and assessment strategies that lead to high-quality seminars. Introductory and concluding essays examine the structural conditions that are likely to support educational effectiveness in the seminar and describe the most commonly reported conditions across all cases. What Makes the First-Year Seminar High Impact? offers abundant models for ensuring the delivery of a high-quality educational experience to entering students.

Read more less

First-year seminars and learning communities are two of the most commonly offered high-impact practices on U.S. campuses. The goals of these initiatives are similar: helping students make connections to faculty and other students, improving academic performance, and increasing persistence and graduation. As such, it is not surprising that many institutions choose to embed first-year seminars in learning communities.A new volume explores the merger of these two high-impact practices. In particular, it offers insight into how institutions connect them and the impact of those combined structures on student learning and success. In addition to chapters highlighting strategies for designing, teaching in, and assessing combined programs, case studies offer practical insights into the structures of these programs in a variety of campus settings.

Read more less

Offering a primer on action research methodologies and examples of practice, Students in Transition: Research and Practice in Career Development responds to a dual challenge facing career development educators - designing cutting-edge career development interventions and demonstrating their effectiveness. Overviews of quantitative and qualitative measures and career development instruments are presented to assist educators in documenting the outcomes of their programs and initiatives. The case studies in the final sections of the volume describe the delivery and evaluation of a wide range of career initiatives offered in diverse settings and spanning the transition from high school to college through the senior year. Career services professionals and educators at all types of institutions will find empirical evidence, research methodologies, and practical strategies to guide program design, implementation, and evaluation.

Read more less

Designed for students and educational professionals researching students? movement into and through higher education, Crafting and Conducting Research on Student Transitions is a concise resource, describing both qualitative and quantitative methods. The authors walk readers through the process of selecting a topic, designing a study, and disseminating the research results on explorations of the college student experience from the first college year to beyond graduation. Ideal for use in graduate programs or professional writing groups and by educators who wish to contribute to this growing subspecialty of the higher education literature.

Read more less

Common reading programs are becoming a ubiquitous component of first-year experience initiatives. Sometimes controversial, these programs are designed to provide students an introduction to the intellectual expectations of college in an often-informal gathering of college faculty and peers. Yet, truly dynamic and successful programs move beyond book discussion groups to include students, faculty, staff, and the larger community in a wide range of social and intellectual activities. Laufgraben gathers examples from programs across the country to offer a concise and practical guide to planning, promoting, and assessing common reading initiatives.

Read more less

A Faculty and Staff Guide on Supporting Sophomore Student Success is part of a series of action-oriented guides intended to blend research and practice to enhance the professional development and capacity of faculty and staff toward the ultimate goal of increasing the learning, development, transition, and success of students during their time in college or university. More specifically, this guide uses Schaller's (2005) psychosocial developmental model, beginning with random exploration and concluding at commitment, as a framework and organizing structure to help advisors to interpret the experiences of students and then link those experiences to related learning outcomes.Throughout this guide, readers will find questions for reflection, specific strategies for advisors, and practical tools to use when working with students at the various developmental stages. These resources align with the developmental experiences for students at each psychosocial stage.

Read more less

Research suggests that as many as a quarter of all undergraduate students may find themselves on academic probation during their collegiate years. If students on probation choose to return to their institutions the semester following notification, they find themselves in a unique transitional period between poor academic performance and either dismissal or recovery. Effectively supporting students through this transition may help to decrease equity gaps in higher education. As recent literature implies, the same demographic factors that affect students' retention and persistence rates (e.g., gender, race and ethnicity, age) also affect the rate at which students find themselves on academic probation. This book serves as a resource for practitioners and institutional leaders. The volume presents a variety of interventions and institutional strategies for supporting the developmental and emotional needs of students on probation in the first year and beyond. The chapters in this book are the result of years of dedication and passion for supporting students on probation by the individual chapter authors. While the chapters reflect a culmination of combined decades of personal experiences and education, collectively they amount to the beginning of a conversation long past due.Scholarship on the impact of academic recovery models on student success and persistence is limited. Historically, attention and resources have been directed toward establishing and strengthening the first-year experience, sophomore programs, and student-success efforts to prevent students from ending up on academic probation. However, a focus on preventative measures without a consideration of academic recovery program design considering the successes of these programs is futile.This volume should be of interest to academics and practitioners focused on creating or refining institutional policies and interventions for students on academic probation. The aim is to provide readers with the language, tools, and theoretical points of view to advocate for and to design, reform, and/or execute high-quality, integrated academic recovery programs on campus. Historically, students on probation have been an understudied and underserved population, and this volume serves as a call to action.

Read more less

Analysis of bachelor’s degree completion suggests that only about a third of college graduates attend a single institution from start to finish. More than one quarter earn college credits from three or more schools before completing a degree. For most, these student-defined pathways lead to increased time-to-degree and higher costs. Many will simply drop out long before crossing the finish line. Ensuring college completion and success requires an understanding of the evolving nature of transfer transitions and a system-wide approach that reaches beyond two-year and four-year institutions to include high schools participating in dual enrollment programs and military college initiatives. A new edited collection offers insight into institutional and statewide partnerships that create clearly defined pathways to college graduation and career success for all students.

Read more less

In recent years, growth mindset, resilience, and belonging have become popular topics for research and practice among college educators. The authors of this new volume aim to deepen the conversation around these noncognitive factors that significantly impact student success. Along with offering support for the development of learning mindsets, this book contains strategies for faculty and staff to consider as they create initiatives, programs, and assessments for use in and outside the classroom. Informative features include: Learning Mindset Stories, highlighting how students, faculty, and staff members dealt with issues related to belonging, growth mindset, and resilience Campus Conversations, providing questions for generating discussion among faculty, staff, and students on what institutions can do to incorporate learning mindsets with an eye toward student success; and Next Steps, serving as a roadmap for implementing institutional change

Read more less

The first-year seminar continues to be a common structure for supporting student success in higher education. Yet, it represents only one of many first-year programs. With this in mind, the 2017 National Survey on The First-Year Experience marks a change from previous surveys administered by the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition by exploring a broad range of initiatives designed to support success in the first college year. Recognizing that individual first-year programs are connected to extensive bodies of literature and practice, authors representing diverse professional networks focused on college student success contribute their voices to the analyses and presentation of results. The report includes an overview of institutional attention to the first year and the prevalence of and connections between first-year programs, a review of the results relating to selected first-year programs, and implications for practice and future research.

Read more less

Senior capstone experiences, one of a number of high-impact educational practices promoted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, provide students with an opportunity to integrate and apply what they have learned throughout their undergraduate years. Participating in capstone experiences have been linked to engagement in deep learning and gains in personal and social development, practical competence, and general education. The 2016 National Survey of Senior Capstone Experiences is an institution-level study designed to gather a national profile of campus efforts to promote student success in the senior year. This research report presents findings related to institutional priorities for the senior year, the types of capstone experiences offered, and the organization and administration of select capstone experiences.

Read more less

The transition from high school to college is an important milestone, but it is only one of many steps in the journey through higher education. Interest in the many other transitions students make—through the sophomore year, from one institution to another, and out of college—has grown exponentially in the last decade. At the same time, educators recognize that each transition experience is unique, shaped by the individual student context. A new annotated bibliography helps researchers and practitioners navigate the emerging literature base on college student transitions beyond the first year, with special focus on adult learners, student veterans, and those studying in different cultures.

Read more less

For a quarter century, the National Resource Center has been examining the prevalence, structure, and administration of first-year seminars on American college campuses. The 2012-2013 administration of the National Survey of First-Year Seminars was expanded to explore the connection between the seminar and other high-impact practices in the first college year, including learning communities, service-learning, common reading programs, undergraduate research, and writing instruction. Findings are disaggregated by institutional characteristics and seminar type so that readers may easily identify the course features with the greatest relevance for their own context.

Read more less

Increasing pressures on colleges and universities to ensure degree completion and job placement as measures of success make it imperative that the path to graduation is clear and that seniors receive the support needed to earn a degree and make a successful transition to life beyond college. This new edited collection describes today’s college seniors and offers strategies for supporting them to graduation through high-impact educational initiatives. Contributors also address issues related to career development; workplace transitions; and opportunities for integration, reflection, closure, and ongoing engagement as students leave college. Educators charged with improving the end-of-college experience will find this an invaluable resource.

Read more less

On many campuses, graduate students are a prized resource, supporting faculty research and the undergraduate instructional mission. Yet, attrition rates among master's and doctoral students are often alarmingly high. The 50th installment of The First-Year Experience Monograph Series describes the challenges associated with entry into graduate study and offers information about new initiatives and programs designed to ease their transition -- from unique orientations and mentoring structures to transition courses and graduate student centers. The monograph is written for educators concerned about master's or doctoral students and their road to success.

Read more less

Traditionally, institutional supports for college student success have been concentrated in the first and senior years, though attention to the sophomore year has increased over the last two decades. Paying attention to the second college year is vitally important, as some evidence suggests students are more likely to leave their institution during this time than they are in the first year. The case studies of sophomore initiatives featured in this volume describe programs that build on institutional objectives for the first college year and prepare students for the transition to the major and, ultimately, graduation. Rich program descriptions and discussions of assessment provide practitioners focused on designing a cohesive undergraduate experience excellent models to guide their work.

Read more less

Examine the first-year student experience as so rarely seen from the community college perspective and increase the odds of the new-to-college students’ success. For three decades, U.S. higher education has paid increasing attention to the beginning college experience—to ensure that entering students make a successful transition to college. Yet, much of the extant research and practice literature focuses on the experience of first-year students entering four-year colleges and universities. Fulfilling the Promise of the Community College is an insightful publication that provides a thought-provoking, idea-inspiring look at the unique characteristics of the community college and its students. In addition, it explores the barriers to success these students face as well as strategies for ensuring that their higher education goals can be achieved. Authors describe successful adaptations of faculty development initiatives, first-year seminars, common reading programs, academic and career advising, learning communities, and STEM initiatives in the community college setting.

Read more less

Educators have long been concerned with retaining students and helping them succeed, but their focus has been primarily on first-year students. Recently, this focus has widened to include a frequently invisible population - second-year students. Shedding Light on Sophomores: An Exploration of the Second College Year turns our attention to this often-forgotten student population. This volume draws on campus-based and national research to describe the second college year and the initiatives designed to support it. Campus case studies offer a more detailed look at programs designed to help sophomores succeed, and a concluding chapter offers recommendations for the development of a range of initiatives in the second college year. Shedding Light on Sophomores offers a rich resource for any educator who cares about the status of second-year students and is committed to designing programs and services to support them.

Read more less

When it was originally released, Thriving in Transitions: A Research-Based Approach to College Student Success represented a paradigm shift in the student success literature, moving the student success conversation beyond college completion to focus on student characteristics that promote high levels of academic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal performance in the college environment. The authors contend that a focus on remediating student characteristics or merely encouraging specific behaviors is inadequate to promote success in college and beyond. Drawing on research on college student thriving completed since 2012, the newly revised collection presents six research studies describing the characteristics that predict thriving in different groups of college students, including first-year students, transfer students, high-risk students, students of color, sophomores, and seniors, and offers recommendations for helping students thrive in college and life. New to this edition is a chapter focused on the role of faculty in supporting college student thriving.

Read more less

The newest edition to the National Resource Center’s series on Special Student Populations focuses on supporting LGBTQ+ students on campus. Despite increasing visibility and acceptance in some spheres, many LGBTQ+ students continue to experience a negative climate on college campuses, presenting barriers to their academic and personal success. This volume explores the last decade of research on LGBTQ+ college students with an eye toward understanding their needs and the unique conditions related to their college success. The opening chapter offers useful definitions to help ground practitioners in the current conversation. Readers will also find examples of inclusive excellence and questions for guiding practice to promote a more inclusive learning environment not only for LGBTQ+ students but for all students on the campus.

Read more less

With the passage of the Post-9/11 GI Bill in 2008, more than 1.4 million service members and their families became eligible for higher education benefits, and veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan enrolled in colleges and universities in record numbers. The first wave of research about these new student veterans focused mostly on describing their characteristics and the transition from military service to civilian life and the college campus. This new edited collection presents findings from the second wave of research about student veterans, with a focus on data-driven evidence of academic success factors, including persistence, retention, degree completion, and employment after college.

Read more less

Academic advisors help students learn to make the most of their college years, not merely by completing requirements toward a degree but also by growing intellectually and developing all aspects of their identity. Yet, many professional and faculty advisors are new to academic advising and may feel ill-equipped to do more than help students register for classes. This new edited collection provides an overview of the theory and best practice undergirding advising today while exploring the transition challenges of a wide-range of first-year college students, including those attending two-year colleges, coming from underrepresented backgrounds, entering underprepared for college-level work, and/or experiencing academic failure.

Read more less

Less is known about the second college year compared to other transition points, and fewer high-impact initiatives and curricular programs tend to be offered to sophomores. To increase our knowledge of this important, but sometimes neglected, year on the collegiate journey, the National Survey of Sophomore-Year Initiatives and the Sophomore Experiences Survey. Researchers explored sophomore student characteristics, institutional efforts to support sophomores, and student perceptions of their learning and development. Divided into three sections, the report offers an overview of each survey instrument and an integrated discussion of findings and their implications for practice and ongoing research. The research report provides useful tools for institutions looking for benchmarks to create new sophomore-year programs or restructure existing initiatives.

Read more less

Welcoming Blue-Collar Scholars Into the Ivory Tower is the first volume in a series designed to explore how institutional policies, practices, and cultures shape learning, development, and success for students who have been historically underserved or given limited consideration in the design of higher education contexts Using the theory of social reproduction as a lens, Krista Soria explores working-class students’ access to and experiences in the academic and social spaces of the campus. Chapters focusing on the classroom and social settings offer recommendations for transforming the learning environment to better support students from working-class backgrounds. Strategies for increasing access, including precollege support networks, and creating inclusive campuses are also addressed. This compact, accessible volume provides both the theoretical grounding and the practical strategies educators need to create a welcoming environment for this underserved population.

Read more less

In an effort to capitalize on some of the more positive aspects of peer influences, colleges and universities have created a wide range of peer-to-peer education, leadership, and mentoring roles—especially in the first college year. Yet, the use of peers in first-year seminar instruction is still far from commonplace. Latino and Ashcraft offer guidance on defining the role of peers as co-instructors; recruiting, selecting, and training peer educators; facilitating relationship building within the instructional team; and assessing the impact of peer leaders on the course, the students served, and the peers themselves. Sample training agendas and activities, course syllabi, and evaluations are included.

Read more less

Guided by an understanding of adult development, the authors suggest strategies for designing and presenting a comprehensive faculty development program in support of the first-year seminar. Chapters focus on the organization of one-shot and ongoing development efforts, content for training programs, evaluation as a development activity, and strategies for recruiting and maintaining a dedicated instructor team. While focused on the first-year seminar, the volume offers useful insight for anyone charged with designing faculty development initiatives for first-year instructors.

Read more less

Organizing for Student Success draws on data from more than 50 institutions to provide insight into how university colleges are organized, the initiatives they house, and the practices in place to ensure their effectiveness. Twenty case studies from 15 different campuses offer an in-depth understanding of institutional practice. Ultimately, university colleges are not only a structure for organizing educational experiences but also a catalyst for creating institutional change. An invaluable resource for first-year experience steering committees, general education reform committees, and other groups or administrators charged with reorganizing and revitalizing the delivery of undergraduate education.

Read more less

Students around the globe have unique first-year experiences but struggle with many of the same challenges. This monograph focuses on their journeys and provides insights for educators interested in learning about how institutions across the globe provide supports to students dealing with first-year transition issues. Based on the successful Exploring the Evidence monograph series, Nutt and Calderon present the inaugural collection of international first-year initiatives, demonstrating the portability and adaptability of these strategies in a variety of institutional contexts. Cases from a dozen different countries touch on a wide range of topics, including: academic advising and support, early-warning systems for at-risk students, first-year seminars, learning communities, orientation or induction, peer mentoring, retention initiatives, self-regulated learning, and supplemental instruction.

Read more less