Hitting the Bull’s Eye: Are we on Target with Students?

1. Hitting the Bull’s Eye: Are we on Target with Students? Dr. Ann Groves Lloyd Associate Dean, Student Academic Affairs College of Letters & Science University of Wisconsin-Madison

2. Two Seminal Publications • AAC&U’s “Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College” (2002) • ACPA/NASPA’s, “Learning Reconsidered: A Campus-Wide Focus on the Student Experience” (2004) • Both publications call for a radical re-envisioning of the undergraduate experience

3. The Changing Landscape in Higher Education • Increased access to higher education (still issues of financial ability impede access) • Economic trends • Increased diversity on campuses • Emergence of for-profit and distance learning institutions • Increased demands for accountability • Globalization • Technology Learning Reconsidered, 2003, ACPA/NASPA

4. Charge from Greater Expectations • Colleges must create “intentional learners who can adapt to new environments, integrate knowledge from different sources, and continue learning throughout their lives.” • Intentional learners must also be: • Empowered • Informed • Responsible

5. Remove Barriers in our Institutions • End the fragmentation of the educational experience – disconnect between what happens in the classroom and the rest of a students’ life on campus • Develop systems to help students make sense of the seemingly disconnected experiences they’re having in college • Realize the many demands on students outside of the educational environment

6. Learning Reconsidered • Integrates challenges put forward in Greater Expectations • Posits that the focus of our efforts must “shift from information transfer to identity development (transformation).” • We must develop a single “map” of the undergraduate experience – one that integrates all experiences and provides the reflection necessary for transformation

7. Articulated and measurable outcomes essential • Faculty and student affairs professionals must be prepared to assess and change the way we do our work • View the entire campus as one large learning community – the “interconnectedness of student learning • Social Context • Academic Context • Institutional Context

8. Student Perspective • For a student, the following are constantly occurring and impacting one another • Identify formation • Emotional elements • Behavioral elements • Meaning making processes

9. Opportunities for Student Affairs • Take the lead in providing collaborative, innovative, integrated experiences • Clearly articulate and measure the learning outcomes of these experiences • Truly view ourselves as educators – equal partners in the developmental process our students go through at our institutions

10. Seven Broad Desired Learning Outcomes • Cognitive complexity • Knowledge acquisition, integration, and application • Humanitarianism • Civic engagement • Interpersonal and intrapersonal competence • Practical competence • Persistence and academic achievement

11. What Does all this Mean? Our target is changing depending on where our institution is at with this effort! We must clearly define what our target is and develop assessment instruments to help us determine how close we are to hitting the bull’s eye.

12. Our Challenges • Cleary articulate the mission and vision of our work and our role as educators in the student experience • Look at the undergraduate experience holistically and develop “maps” to make the experience purposefully transformational • Conduct thorough assessment of programs already in place

13. Monroe Community College – Good to Go Health Services/Wellness • College-wide initiative to encourage and promote healthy food choices among the college community • Cooperative effort between Health Services Department, Hospitality Management, and Health and Physical Education Department • Provide foundational step to providing and promoting healthy food choices

14. Monroe Community College – Academic Advisement Excellence program • Enriching Advisement workshop series for advisors on campus • Series of courses advisor take to enrich their capacity • Courses offered include, “Advising Students for Teacher Education Programs,” “Human Developmental Model as Applies to Developmental Advisement I,” and “Human Developmental Models as Applies to Developmental Advisement in Practice”

15. Example at UW-Madison • First-Year Interest Groups • Clusters of three classes brought together under a theme: • Statistics and the Political Process • Identity, Society, and Performance • Communication and Disability • Content of the courses is linked, with a writing intensive linking course included • Students immediately have a community, often residentially based, their first semester on campus

16. Comments from FIGS students • “Being in a FIG helped me to take my work seriously and learn how to really engage in classroom discussions…It helped me not to fail. The study groups were a gift from heaven…” • “Being in a FIG made a giant campus seem a little smaller and more comfortable. It made my transition to college a lot easier. I don't know how I would have survived without the FIG.” • “If I hadn't been in a FIG, I would not have excelled in my classes the way I did, I would not have made the friendships I have, nor would I have had the amazing student-faculty connection.”

17. FIGS – A First Step • The Futures Project in the Division of Student Academic Affairs, College of Letters & Science • Reassess how we do what we do and for whom • Permission from our Dean to reinvent the undergraduate experience • Using Greater Expectations and Learning Reconsidered as the foundation • Listening sessions with SAA staff, advisors outside the division, campus partners, faculty, etc. • A separate effort to engage students via surveys, focus groups, and advisory groups.

18. The Next Steps… • Are up to us! • Identify integrated programs that provide a transformational experience for students and replicate • Seek to get all campus partners engaged in the same process – in remapping the educational experience • Begin in your own backyard

19. Resources • Greater Expectations, 2002, www.greaterexpectations.org • Learning Reconsidered, 2004, http://www.myacpa.org/pub/documents/LearningReconsidered.pdf • Susan Salvador’s presentation, “Interconnectedness of Student Learning,” presented at CSPA NYS, 2005 • Coming soon – Learning Reconsidered II, examples of institutions putting LR into practice