Learning Assistance Association of New England

Oprah’s Book Club…NOT!: A Co-Requisite Approach to College Reading

Faculty often report that students are as novice at reading college-level texts as they are at writing about them.  Yet, where is “college-level reading” taught?  How are active reading strategies, analysis, and interpretation skills taught?  Book clubs are designed to expose students to active reading strategies and the idea of grit.  This presentation provides an overview of Bridgewater State’s co-requisite model in specific sections of first-year writing.  Each semester, 40-50 staff—from graduate assistants to upper level administrators—are enlisted from across campus to read alongside students for 12 weeks and lead them in discussion.  This provides students a unique opportunity to develop critical literacy skills.

Datamining the Narratives: What Do You Do with 20 Years of Stories?

We all collect stories; our offices are full of tutoring notes, teacher evaluations, and assessment essays.  We know these stories matter, but how can they be meaningfully turned into action?  In this interactive presentation, I will share my process of datamining my department’s narrative tutoring notes to extract quantitative information, which then informed our tutor training and faculty onboarding.  These methods can be a simple but powerful tool, as we seek to turn the knowledge we already hold into action.  This presentation will focus on a conversation with the audience about their research goals and possible approaches.

The Importance of Language in Science and Mathematics

Students tend to avoid using technical language in science and mathematics because they find it confusing and unnecessary.  In turn, our students consistently have difficulty comprehending directions and word problems in texts and on exams.  It is important for students to understand that speaking the language of science and mathematics is just as important as computing an answer.  In this workshop, we will explore why the language of science and mathematics can be difficult to understand, particularly for non-native English speakers.  Participants will engage in an activity in which they explore words that have multiple definitions depending on context.  We will reflect on the activity and discuss strategies we use to overcome this challenge.  These concepts can be applied to all disciplines.

Efficacy of Adaptive Technology in Introductory Quantitative Reasoning Course

In consecutive two-year periods, students in freshmen-level quantitative reasoning courses at Regis College, a four-year private university, utilized MyMathLab and Hawkes Learning.  We conducted a study in which we compared these two systems.  We analyzed and compared students’ performance and perceptions.  We found that while there was no statistically significant difference in student performance, there were benefits to using Hawkes Learning, including heightened enthusiasm and improved attitudes toward learning.  In this presentation, we’ll share our findings.

Sticks, Stones, and Wounds on the Soul: The Limiting and Liberating Effects of Language on Cognition

Many educational institutions have statements on diversity and inclusion, but what does it mean to embody this commitment in our everyday language?  How does adopting a language of inclusion affect how we see others and ourselves?  Humanizing our language builds emotional intelligence skills like empathy, resilience, and adaptability.  This presentation will begin by underscoring implicit or unconscious bias in our everyday language and its impact on cognition and policies and practices in education.  Using growth mindset as the framework for approaching language as an evolving code, this presentation will include strategies for training educational leaders and students on inclusive language, as well as space to probe, question, and dialogue about why we use the words we do when describing others.

Do I Have to Read This?  Teaching Critical Reading of Scholarly Articles

Do your students struggle with reading scholarly sources?  Do they know how to navigate the format and extract useful information?  In this session, we will share activities the presenters have found useful for teaching critical reading of scholarly articles to first-year students.  One activity challenges students to review an article quickly and summarize through poetry they create.  Another activity describes how to dissect a scholarly article.  Through participating in practical critical reading activities, session attendees will leave with new tools to help students achieve a basic level of competence and comfort reading research articles. There will be time for participants to share their ideas about teaching critical reading skills.

Changing the Conversation: The Strengths of Neurodiversity

Generation Z is not only the first generation of “digital natives” but also the first generation to grow up and be educated in an inclusive environment.  Yet the stigma of a specialized education stops many students from seeking accommodations when attending college.  How can students stop looking at their “disability” as something that must be overcome and embrace the areas of strength that are developed in the brain as a result of their neurodiversity?  In this presentation, we will not only discuss why neurodiversity should be encouraged on college campuses but also how to change the language used by students, faculty, and staff when discussing accommodations and learning differences.  A well-planned process that includes advertising, education, and open communication is key to having a campus that embraces neurodiversity.

Reflecting on Social Media and Using Social Media to Reflect

Social media informs and impacts our students’ lives in myriad ways.  Too often, though, students do not consciously reflect on the implications of social media.  In this presentation, we will explore how we can reflect on the sense of self (selves) we create through social media, as well as how we can use this reflection to move into larger analytical course objectives.  We will examine different social media platforms and reflect on notions of self, audience, platform, and meaning created.  The skill-building approach to social media that this exercise introduces can be applicable to other types of analysis.  My goal is for participants to walk away with concrete ideas for their classrooms that can easily be adapted to fit their needs.

Resolve to Evolve: How Evolutionary Adaptation Creates Revolutionary Access for First Year International and Underprepared Students 

Sheltered Instruction, a successful pedagogical approach for English language learners, includes learning strategies, linkages to students’ prior experience, modeling how to think through a task, and explicit, direct teaching of vocabulary.  In our presentation, we’ll describe how a First-Year Inquiry (FYI) course for limited English proficiency (LEP) students became a class that also benefitted underprepared native English speakers.  We will ask the audience to join us in envisioning future adaptations of this course.  Participants will also gain ideas about implementing similar initiatives at their institutions.  Come think with Franklin Pierce University faculty and Center for Academic Excellence staff as we resolve to evolve.

Creating Community to Support Student Success: A Multidimensional Training Approach for Supplemental Instruction and Peer Tutoring

Fostering connections with our students is often the cornerstone of the work we do, playing an important role in creating community within our institutions and impacting student success.  Our training program offers a consistent, interactive opportunity to actively engage with one another and program faculty.  The goal of our program is to develop effective peer tutors and use training as a way to build community that strengthens retention of all students.  We will outline the critical components needed to build an effective and inclusive training program and share data supporting the success of our methodology.  We will encourage participants to ask questions and to share their experiences.

Data Fuels the Future

Whether your goal is to address a certain issue or subgroup on campus or to impact your entire campus success rate, the story is often told in the data.  In the past five years, the Academic Achievement Center at the University of Connecticut has tripled its interactions and outreach with students by creating initiatives based upon data collected from various resources across campus.  In this session, we will help you determine what data is necessary and how to obtain the data on your campus; discuss ways to develop outreach efforts specifically designed to increase success based upon data gathered; and share ideas on how to develop and apply a data-driven plan for your own campus.

Gather Round!  Collaboration Provides Consistency to Academic Coaching

Given the varied experiences academic coaches bring to the workplace, it is important they collaborate in the development of academic coaching guidelines.  This past summer, staff at the Regis College Learning Commons gathered weekly in “Think Tank” sessions to discuss student coaching scenarios they encountered.  Our objective was to develop common solutions for coaches to use as guidelines.  In this workshop, participants will engage in our “Think Tank” process.  They will discuss a coaching scenario with a partner; come up with action steps, define group guidelines, and reflect on the experience in small groups; and then discuss similarities and differences with the full group.  At the end of the session, we will share guidelines we developed as a result of our work at Regis.

Twenty Ways to Engage Students in the Classroom: Using UDL as a Roadmap 

Students taking developmental English and math classes, coupled with credit-bearing courses like sociology, face a number of obstacles based on their particular needs.  How do we engage students in developmental courses, so all can learn and develop critical thinking skills?  This presentation will provide participants with twenty ways to engage students through the lens of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).  Specifically, we will focus on one of the three principles of UDL: the use of multiple means of engagement.  We have utilized each of these tools and activities in a cohort-linked learning community.  From low-tech to high-tech suggestions, these engaging activities, ideas, and strategies can be adapted to any classroom.

Engaging Students in Metacognitive Literacy: A Journey from Academic Probation to Academic Success  

At some point in their academic careers, students may experience self-doubt and academic paralysis that can lead to academic probation.  To reverse academic unravelling and accompanying feelings of shame, students benefit from a two-pronged approach to academic support.  Along with one-on-one coaching, students enrolled in a course as part of Merrimack College’s Phoenix Program participate in a skills- and theory-based curriculum.  This course highlights metacognitive strategies in order to help students overcome feelings of helplessness, poor study habits, and unsuccessful patterns of problem-solving, allowing them to discover a fresh perspective and renewed sense of academic potential.  Attendees will receive a folder containing the syllabus for our one-credit course, examples of metacognitive quizzes, and infographics of theorists discussed in class.

How Do We Want Students to Think About College Reading?

After a multi-year faculty learning community research project on college reading in science and history classes at our mid-size state university, we have a lot of information on students’ and professors’ beliefs about reading at the college level.  The next step is to turn this information into concrete advice for students as they approach reading in college classes.  Our findings support a way of thinking about reading that includes reading for argument, awareness of professors’ values, and advanced genre strategies.  We are developing strategies for talking with students about these ways of thinking about reading.  In this interactive presentation, we will briefly present our research findings, and then share the metacognitive strategies these findings point to.

Processing Slowness: Metacognition in the Writing Center

While students are generally rushing to “get to the answer,” academic support centers usually find themselves in the unfortunate role of being the “brakes”—encouraging students to not only pursue the end result but also take time to experience and evaluate the process by which they get to that result.  Often, this meeting of the desire for speed and the suggestion of slowness causes friction.  This presentation will focus on how we address issues of speed and slowness in both tutor training and student engagement.  I will also discuss the preliminary results we are collecting and using to assess the effectiveness of this training model.

Building the Academic Self: Benefits of Training Peer Educators in Metacognition

Training peer educators to support students’ metacognitive abilities also improves the peer educators’ ability to evaluate and adapt their own learning strategies.  Self-reflections and interviews show that with such training peer educators reflect on their own academic self-efficacy, ability to interact and communicate with peers, and the overall development of their academic selves.  Our session includes a brief presentation of our research, followed by an interactive session designed to help fellow practitioners incorporate the language of metacognition into their trainings for peer tutors, supplemental instruction leaders, peer mentors, and other peer educators.

Breakout session with keynote speaker Dr. Saundra McGuire

Increasing Student Motivation: Strategies that Work
Motivating today’s students to actively engage in learning activities proves challenging for most faculty. Very often millennial students do not respond as did students in the past to extrinsic motivators such as bonus quizzes and extra credit assignments. However, as James Raffini presents in 150 Ways to Increase Intrinsic Motivation in the Classroom, when the psychoacademic needs of students are met in creative ways, student motivation soars. This presentation will engage faculty in a discussion about how we address student needs for autonomy, competence, relatedness, self-esteem, and enjoyment in order to significantly increase student motivation.