Student success courses catch on, slowly, at community colleges | Inside Higher Ed

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College success courses continue to fight the legitimacy battle despite their proven track record of helping  students stay in college and graduate.

The arguments against success courses have remained the same over the last decade: they’re too expensive, they take away from other courses that students need to take in their program, students should come to college already knowing these skills.

If we are really interested in helping students persist and graduate, we need to look at what helps them and admit that success courses do this.  It’s time to stop putting these courses on trial.  They’ve already proven their worth.

 

Student success courses catch on, slowly, at community colleges | Inside Higher Ed.

Praise is Praise?

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When it comes to motivation, not all praise is the same.

 

It makes sense to me that if I want to spark motivation in my students, giving them feedback, as long as it’s positive, will help them feel motivated.  After all, praise is praise right? Maybe not.   Yesterday I listened to an excellent eSeminar, “The Science of Motivating Students for Success,” Christine Harrington, author of Student Success in College: Doing What Works!, To access the seminar go to:

 

http://community.cengage.com/Site/devstudies/m/mediagallery/1704.aspx?channel=Eloqua&elq_mid=2996&elq_cid=

 

One of the points she made related to the nature of praise and how different kinds of praise inspire more motivation than others.  For example, telling a student “You did a great job on this.  You’re clearly very bright.” vs. “You did a great job on this.  You clearly worked hard.” Results in differing levels of motivation for these students to persist, succeed, etc. 

 

Why might this be so?  The answer lies in the interplay between how a person explains his success and the type of feedback we give him.  Telling a student that she must be really smart gives her the message that the reason she did well was because of something internal to her but also something that is pretty fixed. Intelligence or ability is usually seen as unchangeable.  If, on the other hand, telling same student that she worked really hard gives her message that it’s still something internal, but it isn’t fixed.   If she keeps putting effort in, she will do well. Effort is changeable.  We can always choose to try harder.  Continue reading →

The Best of Intentions.

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I just came back from meeting a group of  students who will begin their first semester here next week.  There were eleven of them, most looking eager, some not so much.  I can’t help but wonder if they’ll all be here in May.  I’ve learned to be doubtful about this, but I’m trying hard not to predict the outcome.

On the first day of class I will ask them what’s the percentage of their commitment to staying in the class.  Last semester all but one of  said they were 100% committed. The one other said she was 95% committed. At the end of the semester, 9 out of 14 finished the course, as well as the entire semester.  So what happened to the other 5? Lots of things, mostly having to do with  complicated lives in one way or another.  This isn’t to say that the others had smooth sailing through the semester.

When I reflect on why some navigated well and others not, I look at some of the differences between the two groups.  One difference was their  maturity or the degree to which there was recognition of the ups and downs in life.  The successful students knew there would be obstacles, but planned for them in advance.

Another difference was the level of commitment to a clearly defined goal.  Those students who knew why they were here, no matter the reason, hung in.  Some students actually developed clearer goals during the semester and this helped them  turn things around.

The  two groups also differed in their ability to learn from both successes and “failures”.  Success taught some students that hard work and their own skills paid off and that failure wasn’t permanent and could be remidied with hard work and support.  In essence, the nine students who made it through their semester had challenges, both personally and academically, but knew and   learned how, in spite of the challenges,  to say on course.

Intention isn’t always enough.  I think this will be one of first lessons we talk about after all students most likely will tell me that their 100% committed.

A wonderful ending

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Last week my co-instructor and I finished our last college success class for a group of students who just completed their first semester here at BCC.  What makes this group unique is that all of them have earned GEDs.  They also have the other more typical  barriers our students face:  most are parents, all work, and  all have numerous challenges academically and personally.

In our final  class, they did a power point presentation called “My 32 Day Commitment”. Essentially, each student had to choose a short-term goal for the semester and spend 32 days taking a specific action to accomplish the goal.  Why 32 days?  Typically that’s how long it takes to develop a new habit and most of their goals were about developing new study habits to help them finish the semester.

This is an especially challenging project for a number of reasons one of which is knowing how to effectively choose a goal that was specific,  dated, measurable, and related to their education.  Over the semester we spent a good deal of time refining their goals.  In the end, what was most important was not so much the precision of the goal, but the fact that they were actually paying attention to school, in general.  Setting that intention helped all of them to finish and finish well.

One of the best parts of the presentations is listening to students talk about their experiences and the lessons they have learned over the semester:

My successes all started when I received my GED.I realized that I could do any thing I put my mind to. Here at bcc my success has been passing writing                 

I learned to be able  to get up enough courage to believe in myself and get my life in order.so that I could create a better future for myself and family.

My successes were completing and passing the quizzes. I felt successful when I realized I could accomplish whatever I put my mind to. 

™ I learned to get over my anxiety for writing and personal things outside of school.  I am no longer as anxious about writing and I completed this semester.  

One student added this song to her presentation.  I think it sums up her experience very well.

The Climb

They have climbed and will continue to do so.  Good luck to all my students.