5. Can developmental advising produce active learning?
According to Mathie (1993), active learning takes place when students
Rooney (1994) supported these principles within an advising context when he said “the student cannot simply be a passive receptacle of information. Instead, the student must be a partner in the teaching and learning process” (p. 35). Developmental advisers engage their advisees in exactly this manner.
Mathie described four strategies that can increase active learning and explained how the content and structure of specific types of classroom activities can facilitate active learning. A careful inspection of these factors reveals that developmental advisers utilize many of the same strategies and activities.
Mathie's first strategy to increase active learning is to provide students with an overview of the goals, procedures, and expectations of a course of study. A developmental adviser is in a perfect position to help advisees grasp the goals of their undergraduate education by explaining to them what they will learn in their required courses. He/she can do this by providing them with the student-learning outcomes of their department and their institution's rationale for general education requirements. These documents provide students with the conceptual framework of their curriculum and the specific reasons for mastering the materials in particular courses.
Without such a framework, most students take courses simply to satisfy requirements and amass credit hours. An adviser is often the only person in the position to help students gain a coherent overview of their curriculum, rather than seeing it as just a series of courses that can be listed on their transcripts. As Miller and Alberts (1994) have said, “Advising is the intersection of the teaching/learning experience” (p. 44).
Mathie's second strategy to increase active learning is to make students aware of exactly what is expected of them and what they can expect of their instructor during a course. Teachers use syllabi to communicate these expectations, but the advising process is not normally accompanied by a syllabus, although the concept of an advising syllabus has been discussed by Erickson and Strommer (1991) in their book Teaching College Freshmen. Advisers can help their advisees understand the mutual expectations of their relationship by providing a set of adviser and advisee responsibilities and explaining, as clearly as possible, the rights of advisees within the advising context.
Mathie's third strategy to increase active learning is to empower students by helping them understand that they can make choices in the classroom and that the consequences of these choices can have profound effects on their post-baccalaureate aspirations. Many students are unaccustomed to this type of freedom because their past educational experiences have been chosen for them by others (e.g., parents or counselors), so it is important not to overwhelm them with too many choices at first. A developmental adviser is in a perfect position to introduce advisees to their new freedom in a gradual manner that motivates them to exercise their choices with enthusiasm.
Prescriptive advisers assume that once a student decides upon a major, their job involves nothing more than recommending a set of courses each semester. A developmental adviser, on the other hand, can help advisees explore their life goals by initially asking them a series of broad questions such as the following:
How do you want to live your life?Advisers can help advisees gain insight into their level of collegiate development by becoming familiar with Perry's (1970) and Chickering's and Reisser's (1993) models of college student development and sharing this information with their advisees. These models are well known to student development personnel, but are relatively unknown within the faculty community and, therefore, almost never shared with students in academic situations.
Mathie's fourth strategy to increase active learning is to establish a learning climate that stresses student-teacher rapport so that students feel free to ask questions and participate in discussions and activities. She suggested that interacting informally with students and working with them on common concerns can facilitate the development of rapport and stated that “active caring enables students to engage in active learning more easily and fruitfully” (p. 188).
In their comprehensive study that summarized the results of twenty years of research on how college affects students, Pascarella and Terenzini (1991) reported that meaningful student-faculty contact outside the classroom produces numerous positive student outcomes (e.g., higher educational aspirations, more positive attitudes toward college, higher academic achievement, greater persistence, and increased intellectual and personal development).
Chickering and Gamson (1987) went so far as to assert that the most important factor in student motivation and involvement is frequent faculty-student interaction in and out of the classroom. Although the existence of this type of interaction is vitally important, its quality is even more crucial. Kramer, Tanner, and Peterson (1995) emphasized this when they said “faculty should develop a caring attitude and personal regard for students. Long after students have forgotten the information and advice faculty have given them, they will remember the gift of self” (p. 64).
It would appear that the more attached students feel to their teachers and advisers the more likely they are to exhibit the types of characteristics that will help them to succeed in college. Advisers can interact with advisees in a variety of ways to establish this attachment, such as participating in psychology club or Psy Chi activities. Helping to facilitate the programs of these organizations (e.g., Psy Chi's Adopt-A-Shelter Program) can bring faculty and students closer together in ways that are genuinely meaningful and satisfying to both groups.
The specific type, content, structure, and delivery of learning activities are also crucial factors that determine their ability to produce active learning. Mathie stressed that active learning activities must be prepared in advance before they are implemented when she said, “Active learning is not do-it-yourself learning; it must be planned thoroughly by the instructor” (p. 189).
Like well-planned classroom assignments, carefully crafted advising activities can produce active learning. Writing assignments that focus on students' academic and career plans can engage them in a process of compelling self-examination. An example of this type of assignment is a four-section paper required in a freshmen orientation course I teach and into which I enroll my advisees. The sections of this paper take the form of well-supported answers to the following four questions:
To write this paper, students must reflect on their current state of development, investigate the requirements of their current occupational choice, and develop a four-year plan of curricular and extracurricular activities that will prepare them for their occupation. Although this is a challenging task for freshmen, it is gratifying to read their final papers and to realize that many of the current generation of students can, in Mathie's words, “analyze their alternatives, apply them to concrete situations, merge them through synthesis, and weigh those contributions against specific evaluation criteria” (1993, p. 190).
As students progress – and their post-baccalaureate plans begin to increase in clarity – they can be challenged with tasks that require them to create their own structures. One method to accomplish this is to assign upperclass advisees the task of delving into the college catalog and choosing a unique set of electives that will strengthen their ability to accomplish their goals and establish their own academic uniqueness.
A wide variety of activities can promote active learning in the classroom according to Mathie (e.g., demonstrations and exercises, group projects, computer usage, research, field experiences, and undergraduate teaching assistantships). Developmental advisers have adapted these strategies to help their advisees learn actively during the advising process.
I use a demonstration during freshman group advising sessions in which I present my advisees with (1) copies of the requirements and student learning outcomes of the psychology department and the college's general education program and (2) a set of recent advertisements for job openings suitable for college graduates from the local newspaper.
I next ask them to
Then, I ask them to
Finally, I ask them to
My advisees leave this demonstration with a more informed and mature attitude toward their required courses and are able to articulate better reasons for taking them than “to get them out of the way” or “because they are required.”
Projects during which students collaborate to reach goals provide excellent opportunities for active learning both in the classroom (e.g., Benjamin, 1991) and during advising.
A collaborative activity I use is the Campus Opportunity or Resource Report (or COR report) required in my freshman orientation class. On the first day of class, I distribute a sheet on which fifteen campus offices or resources are listed (e.g., the Writing Center, the Career Services Office, and the Campus Security Office). Two students sign up for each COR report, and it is their duty to learn about that institutional resource by interviewing its director and presenting a five- to ten-minute mini-lecture to the class based on the information they gain from their interview. Although they are given wide latitude in terms of the format of their reports (e.g., one pair staged a puppet show and another pair performed a rap version), each mini-lecture must contain the name of the COR's director, its location, its hours of operation, and its services. The students in the class are tested on this information, so it is vitally important that the COR report presenters communicate their information clearly and accurately. An advantage of this type of activity is its authenticity. These students are responsible for actually teaching the material – not just talking about it – and their classmates take the presentations very seriously because they know their grades depend upon their ability to learn the material. These COR reports are always rated as the most valuable learning experience in the course on the end-of-semester student evaluations.
Computer activities can produce active learning if they engage students interactively rather than merely present information that is to be passively absorbed. I use an interactive computer application as an integral part of my individual advising process (Appleby, 1989). All my advisees have their own advising word-processor files located on the hard drive of the student-accessible computer in the psychology department, and they must update their advising files each semester and bring a hard copy of their updated files to our schedule-planning meeting.
I spend about forty-five minutes with each of my new freshman advisees explaining the nature and purpose of this advising file and helping them complete the demographic and professional goal sections. The most difficult part for most freshmen during this initial session is to articulate their professional goal in a sufficiently specific manner so that I can begin helping them construct a personalized curriculum that will enable them to accomplish their goal.
Advisees are free to change their professional goals at any time, but they must always have one. The first question I ask at the beginning of every schedule-planning meeting is “Do you still want to become a ________?” An affirmative answer signals that things are on track and that we can proceed in the direction set during previous meetings. A negative response is a sign that we must back up, determine the advisee's new direction, re-evaluate previous priorities and plans, and identify and evaluate new ones. It is at this point that I can be most effective in helping my advisees develop and practice decision-making and problem-solving skills.
Mathie clearly supports research as an endeavor that encourages active learning in academic situations, and I believe it can be an equally valuable experience if it is incorporated into advising activities. An example of advisee research reported by Herbstrith, Mauer, and Appleby (1990) led to the creation of the last page of my computer advising file that lists the most common applicant characteristics that graduate programs request letter-of-recommendation writers to evaluate. The first two authors were Julie Herbstrith and Beth Mauer, two of my junior-level advisees who wanted to know how to prepare themselves for successful entrance into graduate school. I suggested they request application materials from a large number of graduate programs and then content-analyze the letter of recommendation materials they received to identify the applicant characteristics letter-of-recommendation writers are requested to evaluate.
Four positive outcomes flowed from this research:
Active learning can also be facilitated by relevant field experiences. The opportunity to see how the knowledge and skills they have acquired in the classroom can be applied to the solution of real problems can lead students to increase their perception of the relevance of their courses. Strategies that help advisees learn about the world of work can also achieve this end. One such method I use involves alumni panels who speak to current students about their occupational fields. These panels, and a five-school cooperative jobs-for-psychology-majors conference (described by Wayne Weiten, 1993), have produced several internships.
It seems safe to conclude that developmental academic advising can foster active learning, but are the outcomes of active learning valuable to individual students and the greater society in which they live? The next section of my presentation will investigate this issue by addressing the question: Can academic advising increase human capital?
6. Can academic advising increase human capital?
Halpern (1993) stated that “The first and perhaps most persuasive reason for embarking on a nationwide effort to assess educational outcomes in higher education is the concern over a crisis in human capital” (pp. 23-24). This concern was echoed by Shaffer (1997) in his article entitled “A Human Capital Approach to Academic Advising,” in which he stated, “Human capital is created when people acquire transferable skills that can be applied in many settings and that can inform many different occupations” (p. 6), and he used the phrase “investment in human capital” to refer to any actions taken by individuals that can increase their productivity.
He noted formal education as a prime example of such an investment – in addition to adult education, on-the-job training, health, and geographic mobility – and listed a series of transferable skills that can be acquired during an undergraduate education, which employers indicate are crucial for prospective employees to possess (Carnevale, Gainer, & Meltzer, 1988). This list includes
Shaffer emphasized that effective academic advisers and effective teachers share many of the same qualities, including “actively involving students in identifying their interests, skills, and life goals” (p. 10). When advisers help their advisees think about their educations in this manner, the next logical step is to bring them to the point where they begin to ask themselves the following question when they are faced with educational decisions: “What does this choice contribute to the building of my human capital?” (p. 10). Shaffer is careful to state that this approach should not be adhered to slavishly, but that it is useful for students who must decide among classes that have higher and lower probabilities of helping them to increase their human capital (e.g., choosing to enroll in a section of History of the Modern World that involves a substantial writing component rather than in one that requires only objective tests).
Shaffer concludes his article by saying, “Each time the principle of maximizing human capital is considered, students are actively engaged in considering their futures and the preparatory role of their current educational activities. Such consideration is at the heart of the developmental model of academic advising” (p. 11). Because the average worker now changes careers four to six times during a lifetime (Rosenstock, 1991), it is imperative that students understand they can no longer earn a diploma and assume their education has ended. They must become wise investors in their own human capital if they wish to succeed, and advisers can help them to develop this wisdom.
Thus far, I have attempted to explain
In the next section, I would like to convince you that advising is a worthy form of scholarship.
References