Some Good Advice About Grad School

Some good advice about graduate school http://www.physlink.com/Education/grad_how2.cfm

Blog for educators using SL in the classroom

http://sloancslnet.ning.com /

Using Technology in Student Services

Here is a blog all about it!

http://tagsuccess.blogspot.com/

Open Your Mind

Open Your Mind-

Keep butting against its boundaries and eventually you will break through!

Completed all Blue 2.0 assignments!!!! Woot woot!

Thank you for your hardwork, Patsy. I've enjoyed learning some new skills.

I'm all atwitter....

I know people use this often with cell phones. Unfortunately, I don't have unlimited texts with my plan. Very fun!

google docs

I think google docs is another useful tool, particularly, because it is free and accessible to everyone.

Social Networking

I initially started using Facebook at the suggestion of my students at a previous university. I used it to post class photos from group activities and students used it to contact me. Since that time many family members have also become users. I think it is a very useful tool and very fun.

University Student Retention Begins in High School

The following is from the American Youth Policy Forum. The study tracked 8th graders through university degree completion from 1988 to 2000. The results of the study can be found here.

Of particular interest to me were the recommendations, from the study.


The study recommends, for example, that high school students log on to college and community college websites and search for examples of the type of examinations and assignments that await them to avoid any “disconnect” when they arrive on campus.

Adelman says colleges should become more involved in secondary school curriculum preparation and provide concrete examples of college assignments, exams, and labs. High school teachers, guidance counselors, parents, and students should have access to this open display of content standards, and it should be included in all recruitment and promotional literature. Institutions should limit no-penalty course withdrawals and no-credit course repeats, creatively increase the use of summer terms, monitor gateway course participation, and report rates of persistence.

I think making this info available to guidance counselors and high school teachers would enhance connections between UKY admissions staff and high schools.

Before Advising Conference at MSU

Michigan State University has an awesome process for incoming undeclared first year students including giving assignments to be completed before coming to orientation in the summer. Here is the link to their booklet https://www.msu.edu/unit/uud/documents/AOP%20Freshmen%20booklet%202008-2009.pdf

Assessment

The following was written by Crissy L. Davis about her efforts in assessment in academic advising. Specifically, it explains how rubrics can be a useful tool in the advising process. The full text can be found at http://www.nacada.ksu.edu/AAT/NW30_2.htm#10

Assessment

“As implied by the label, the designer starts the process by imagining a time when the course is over, say one to two years later, and then asking: What is it I hope that students will have learned, that will still be there and have value, several years after the course is over?” (Fink, 2003). Fink’s quote is also applicable to advising. Advisors do not have the luxury of teaching structured courses, but we do facilitate advising sessions. Just as assessment is critical in teaching, the same is true for advising. The ultimate goal of assessment is to determine if students attain an educational gain. Confirmation is visible when students apply skills learned during the first semester during subsequent semesters.

Based on the information I gathered and the knowledge I gained from the text, I created an academic advising rubric. I hope that this rubric will assist all advisors with the concept of Advising is Teaching.

What is an academic advising rubric?

An academic advising rubric is a basic, user-friendly matrix that assesses three competencies: Timeliness, Preparedness, and Communication-Written and Verbal. It is based on a four-point Lickert scale.

How can advisors use the academic advising rubric with students?

Advisors should:

1. disseminate the academic advising syllabus,
2. discuss the mission and goals of advising,
3. provide the students with a visual aid, i.e., the rubric,
4. explain how the rubric works, and
5. make sure that students understand how each component ( e.g., mission, syllabus, and outcomes) is connected to the rubric.

The academic advising rubric can be utilized after each advising session, and it does not require a lot of time. Recommendation: Students should know up front that this is how their progress will be monitored.

Why use the academic advising rubric?


Advisors can use the rubric to:

1. evaluate students’ performance (similar to employee evaluation). Advisors are preparing students for the future, in particular, the workforce. One significant factor about the workforce is evaluation.
2. close the feedback loop between advisor and advisee. According to Fink (2003), feedback should be: Frequent, Immediate, Discriminating (based on criteria and standards), and done Lovingly (or supportive). This is known as the FIDeLity feedback loop.
3. coordinate program evaluations and rubric data. After three to five years of usage a cross-analysis could be conducted on student satisfaction and individual evaluations.
4. communicate the significance of ACCOUNTABILITY. Providing the students with a visual aid and conversing about the level of responsibility, in relation to the rubric holds students accountable for their performance, or the lack thereof.


To view a copy of the academic advising rubric I designed, go to http://www.sccc.edu/academics/assessment/Resources/Rubrics/documents/cldadvrubric.pdf

National Resource Center for the First Year Experience and Students in Transition

I found this website to be very useful in thinking about our goals for the first year experience at UKY.

http://www.sc.edu/fye/index.html

Feed, wikis, tagging and social bookmarking

The assignments for this session were all new to me except subscribing to a feed. It is really easy to set up feeds for your igoogle page. I use igoogle almost like a private bookmark. I have feeds there from my blog and the Blue 2.0 blog so I can quickly link up to them from one convenient location.

Setting up the wiki account was easy. I have found it to be difficult to personalize the wiki "look". I like to have links between all of my pages to make it convenient to click from one to another, but my link to my blog ended up in a strange place. I'm not sure how to make it pretty!

Social bookmarking is a great way to share sites for at-risk student research. I can see how having a wiki for everyone on campus who is doing the similar work would be helpful.

Here are the links to my sites:
http://applesandanthropology.pbwiki.com/FrontPage
http://del.icio.us/shedorvin

Academic Risk and Resilience

After reading, "Academic Risk and Resilience:Implications for Advising at Small Colleges and Universities" by Victoria A. McGillin (http://www.nacada.ksu.edu/Clearinghouse/Research_Related/yellow.pdf), I have a few thoughts on the topic I'd like to share.

First, it seems that identifying and reaching the at-risk student is critical in the first semester. However, coordinating the identification of an at-risk student in this short time frame can be a very difficult task at a large university. This study found that academic advisors can play a key role as an academic coach and a person that the student can look to as one who is invested in his or her academic success.

Academic advisors are identified by the institution
and by students as the primary source of academic
coping assistance. As such, they function not
only as a form of social support but also as a critical
coach in learning, selecting, and implementing
academic coping strategies.

Second, this article demonstrates the importance of intervention before the students begin classes. In this study at Wheaton College, students that were identified as at-risk were offered the option of attending a 2-day Pre-College workshop that occurred just before new student orientation. Key elements of the workshop included peer mentoring by upper class students who had overcome learning disabilities, more intensive sessions on how to use campus services such as writing centers, tutoring and other forms of academic support, and strategic skill development.

Additionally, it would be interesting to see how many contacts in the first semester make a difference in the at-risk students' success and what exactly UK can do to promote student resiliency.

What do you think could be done in the first semester? or before? What is already being done for these students?

What is anthropology?

This video from McEwan College describes the breadth of the field of anthropology.




This video from MIT demonstrates how anthropological fieldwork is conducted.

Blue 2.0

I have been a distant fan of blogs and blogging for a couple of years. A few of my friends have blogs with a literary bent and several maintain family blogs. I created my own blog several months ago with more ideas than ambition apparently-- this is my first posting. I think it was relatively easy to set up--the more difficult aspects include choosing the optimal layout and title, and even more difficult, the topic.

I am going to use my blog to reflect on anthropology, its place in undergraduate education and my experience of being/becoming an anthropologist. It will also be a place for discussing best practices in undergraduate retention efforts.