Category: Evolution

Action Research, ADL Program, Advising, Collective, Contributions, ePortfolios, Evolution, Goals, Growth, Growth Mindset, Innovation Plan, Leadership, Learner's Mindset, Learning, Learning Community, Personal, Professional, Reflecting

Contributions, 5315

The Advisor That Cares

Measurement Strategy Course

  • Spring 2023
  • Course Number: EDLD 5315
  • Course Title: Assessing Digital Learning and Instruction

Contributions to learning and learning community

I am giving myself a score of 97 out of 100

Crediting Core Group Members: Annababette Diemecke, Ashleigh Carter, Kristin Winzer, Patrick Rodriguez, and Valary Patterson

Crediting Collective Members: https://advising.blog/collaborations/

Key and Supporting

Contributions

Since I am not pursuing the accelerated path to program completion, I do my best to welcome new members to the learning community and help foster connections for others interested in similar projects. Many of us have stayed active in our collaborative group through a Google Drive and a GroupMe chat, both of which I host for the group.

Our learning community is committed to supporting one another. I have witnessed the power of the collective as members with no common classes come together to troubleshoot a website issue or clarify an assignment. Anytime, day or night, someone is willing to give support. I am excited to help foster that learning environment for myself and my classmates. I always ensure that I provide helpful feed-forward to my core collaboration group and all the members of the ADL Collective GroupMe chat.

I continue to refine, revisit and revise all prior assignments throughout this course, and this session pushed me to look objectively at my innovation plan. Learning about action research, struggling through writing challenges, and putting everything together into the final compilation continues to make this experience authentic. I can see my innovation coming to life. I am prepared to implement the strategies learned throughout.

I dissected the assigned course readings and pursued my information on the topics of this session. Specifically, throughout my literature review, I continued to deepen my learning on my topic as I followed links from cited sources.

I always met the course activity deadlines and posted discussion prompts and replies in hopes of engaging in a dialog about the action research process.

I engaged in every opportunity presented by hosting Zoom sessions and attending all class meetings and office hours. I engage in chat threads to review assignments, clarify questions, and provide support. I always cite source material in blogs and discussion postings. I have actively shared additional sources of information on the topics we study to offer breadcrumbs to my classmates and future ADL students and to further my understanding. I have truly embraced the learners’ mindset.

Reflections

What Worked?

In the simplest terms? The Learners’ Mindset

Embracing the opportunity to learn even more about my innovation plan worked. Completing my second literature review was an immense learning experience overcoming fears and self-doubt.

Sharing my writing struggles through blogging was also helpful throughout the learning process. As I worked through learning about action research, I blogged about the experience and my thoughts on narrowing my topic. I see the benefits of doing the work and evaluating the learning process.

The support given and found throughout the ADL Cohort Collective GroupMe chat is still the most humbling thing to witness. I created this group chat after losing all the members of my first learning community. Out of a desperate need to find myself a learning community, I founded a support group that I hope will continue long after I complete the program.

What could be better?

The semester had an unusual survival feel to it. I found myself craving the discussions and interactions my classmates and I have had over the last several semesters. I am trying to determine if the course material had everyone deep in the research process or if it was the time of the year keeping everyone busy with work and family commitments.

I kept giving support and encouragement by checking in with community members. The term seemed detached, collectively.

We still came together when a member needed help, but there were fewer in-depth conversations about our projects. Again, likely because of the nature of academic research and writing. I would have liked to experience more discussion on each course component. We had a few Zoom sessions and worked through assignments, but I missed learning with my classmates at the level we had in the past.

Action Research, ADL Program, Advising, ePortfolios, Evolution, Goals, Growth, Growth Mindset, Humor, Innovation Plan, Leadership, Learner's Mindset, Learning, Learning Manifesto, Personal, Professional, Professional Learning, Reflecting, Research, Why

Believe it

The Advisor That Cares

You have to believe it.

Leaning into the learners’ mindset, I have to ask myself daily to believe and trust it.

I have been entirely transparent about my writing struggles. I voiced in class that I need more confidence in my understanding of the subject matter to give my analysis and knowledge of other authors’ statements and research. This lack of confidence sends me back to the research reading and collecting more information, sources, and additional research. I can cite sources all day, but when I have to draw connections between material and express my understanding, I trigger memories of my K-12 educational experience and lose confidence. Research can become my distraction technique (an observation grad school has illuminated) to avoid the vulnerability that is academic writing.

Since I have reviewed hundreds of pieces of literature on my innovation topic formally over the last year and four months but professionally for the previous nine years and ten months, this topic is truly a passion project of the heart. Born out of desperation to help students, the advocate in me also desperately wants this tool for advisors. We are in tear-filled meetings over a crisis of self-issues. Advisors watch the battle young adults face with themselves over your disappointment if they decide whether or not they are pursuing their goals and dreams or yours.

I desperately want advising to be about the transformative development I read about in the literature. I felt disappointed after my first literature review as I recognized I was not meeting the goals and standards set by my profession. I now see that I am efficient at prescriptive advising. From a medical professional background, procedural information transfer, triaging issues, and answering questions came naturally. I know how to connect students to policy and procedures. I efficiently direct them to their departmental information on degree plans and course information. I am helpful and efficient at answering questions with source links (because advisors are only as good as the accuracy of the published information). I have always had an efficiency perspective. Therefore, I formalized my advising process, communications, and documentation for record keeping.

An advising course provides advisors and students a voice to illuminate problems faced by learners as expressed through cohort/meta-major discussions and assessments. Advisors could improve resources with an advising course, grade book, discussion boards, collaborative group sessions, and modules on common issues. Flipped advising would allow that effort to improve even further through media and collaboration with an advising team. I suspect turnover is both from burnout and demoralization. Advising is a passion profession. Many interview questions touch on helping people achieve their goals. Yet it can become a repetitive process of covering the same policies, procedures, and systems instead of all the things it could be if these items didn’t consume advising interactions. The ability to extend the advising sessions and depth beyond a 30-minute advising appointment twice a semester (optimistically). How can we help transform learners’ lives in 1 hour a term? Flipped advising would help us meet those needs while also relieving us of so many of the repetitive interactions we have day after day. Those fulfilling aspects of developmental advising forge a bond between advisor and advisee. Those connections are the ones that make commencement so special and a commitment to this profession so worth it.

Advisors consistently wonder if their efforts improved outcomes, but the cyclical and reactive nature of the industry can have us moving on to the next initiative with no feedback on the last one. Smiling faces that thank you for supporting them while wearing caps and gowns sure go a long way in motivating outcomes and innovations.

So now, I need to support all those beliefs with evidence from the existing literature.

By golly, I think I understand the point of a literature review finally.

ADL Program, Evolution, Goals, Growth, Growth Mindset, Humor, Learner's Mindset, Learning, Personal, Research, Tips

Paraphrasing – Pros in Prose

The Advisor That Cares

Calling all paraphrasing pros!

First, I am looking for all of your tips and techniques for effective review of literature (literally, how you take notes while reviewing it).

  • Do you take notes as you go, one article at a time?
  • Do you make notes across multiple articles based on themes/topics? Do you create a page of notes on multiple articles under those different headings?
  • Do you write a summary as you review the piece of literature?
  • Do you record quotes that strike you throughout the review process or highlight those of particular relevance or interest?

Second, what is your method for synthesizing the information without stating someone else’s idea as your own?

  • Paranoid of plagiarism, my papers turn into direct quotes galore.
    • How do you paraphrase an article?
    • Do you summarize each section of the literature?
    • Do you summarize the overall point of the literature?
    • How do you review the article with your research topic in mind yet avoid biased material selections?

No, really. I want your tips and input.

I am desperate to improve in these areas.

Action Research, ADL Program, Advising, ePortfolios, Evolution, Goals, Growth, Growth Mindset, Humor, Innovation Plan, Leadership, Learner's Mindset, Learning, Personal, Professional, Professional Learning, Reflecting, Research

Academic Writing & Mindset

The Advisor That Cares

I greatly appreciate Dr. Meeuwse holding office hours. This has rejuvenized the collaborative aspect of learning that I enjoy (and miss) so very much. I love that we have a facilitator who genuinely wants to help us be successful in our writing. I have picked up some great tips for approaching this literature review. I already feel more comfortable and familiar with the content of my research. I still really struggle to articulate how I believe my innovation plans are innovative and are the first of many steps toward a better experience for students and advisors.

Last week, Dr. Meeuwse shared a tip on her research approach during her doctoral experience.

She gave a beautiful nugget of knowledge when she suggested we approach paraphrasing by making bullet points of no more than two words (citing the source as we go) while reviewing relevant literature.

Tonight she gave additional details.

Read the article through, read it aloud, making bullet points with in-text citations, then put it away (the source material). Go and write sentences from memory (trying not to return to the source material so you aren’t tempted to reuse the authors’ words or meanings instead of expressing your learning).

This program’s craftsmanship never ceases to amaze me. I have a very specific visual image in my head of Dr. Harapnuik telling us how sneakily he manipulates us into learning.

Embarking on this course, I really had to give myself a pep talk. I dreaded whichever class had another one of those dang lit reviews. I forced myself to reflect as those old patterns of panic tried to creep in. Almost immediately, I recognized that I had to own whether or not I had embraced and accepted a learner’s mindset. Would I let research and academic writing scare me away from the authentic work I have been doing throughout this program to bring flipped advising to life?

Looking at the work I have completed up to this point in the program made me recognize that I am very familiar with my innovation plan. I am approaching my research efforts with much more specificity than my first attempt at a literature review. I definitely have a better understanding of the point of the darn thing. I am still struggling to explain what I hope to do with flipped advising and how students accurately identifying coursework for registration is the first significant step forward for our advisors and students.

Nonetheless, by standing on multiple means of support found in the literature, I will have a clearer picture of exactly how action research will guide the process toward revolutionizing advising.

Action Research, ADL Program, Advising, Evolution, Goals, Growth, Growth Mindset, Humor, Learner's Mindset, Learning, Personal, Reflecting, Research

Am I a researcher?

The Advisor That Cares
Image of authors workspace. A pair of reading glasses is resting on a spiral notebook with a background of a full box of pens, a highlighter, John Dewey's book, and a cup of cream topped coffee sits on a coffee warmer.

The strangest thing is beginning to happen. As I read literature, I recognize authors I have previously read, cited, and studied. This recognition of source material is a very entertaining phenomenon as I am reviewing and searching for new resources and information on my innovation topic.

Action Research, ADL Program, Advising, Evolution, Goals, Growth, Growth Mindset, Learning, Personal, Professional, Reflecting

Research Rabbit Hole

The Advisor That Cares

I am embarking on my second literature review ever in my forty-six years of life, and I am actually excited about it. We have been challenged and encouraged throughout the ADL Program to make our projects authentic. There is just something amazing that happens when your passion and your practice align.

(I reserve the right to panic and freak out at any moment)

The most significant benefit of making this learning journey authentic is the genuine excitement to learn more about what we are passionate about in life. I am incredibly passionate about empowering college students to take the wheel of their academic journey. I want them to ask informed questions and know where to verify information accuracy. Humans are flawed and inevitably make errors and assumptions or give inaccurate information. My passion is showing people the path and letting them set the pace.

My action research proposal is a big step away from this passion project in many ways. Instead of understanding the heart of students or advisors, I am focusing on how a flipped advising approach could create space in advising interactions for the truly impactful conversations that keep students engaged in the learning opportunities and face any challenges life throws at them through that process.

Deep conversations about life changes, evolving interests, overcoming mindsets, and setting goals for the future are life-affirming for advisors and students. The only way to get to this deeper level of conversation is to move the time-consuming registration conversations to a blended learning environment. If students can research their degree audits and know how to sequence their coursework to meet prerequisite requirements, advising appointments become spaces for forming trusted relationships.

Deeper and deeper down the research rabbit hole, I am thankful that I get to research two topics near and dear to my heart: advisors and students.

Action Research, ADL Program, Collective, Contributions, Evolution, Growth, Learner's Mindset, Learning, Personal

Plan-Do-Study-Act–ion Research?

The Advisor That Cares

I sincerely cannot accurately outline my learning process. Still, I could post a screenshot of the number of tabs I currently have open with articles, search terms, and related content as I wrap my head around the process of Action Research. I would like to share some interesting findings about one of these search trails in hopes of returning to it or having it be helpful to another.

I found this webinar and related resources in my search for literature on “student agency,” may it be useful to you.

Maximizing Student Agency
Implementing and Measuring
Student-Centered Learning Practices

https://www.air.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/Maximizing-Student-Agency-NICs-Report-Oct-2018.pdf: Plan-Do-Study-Act–ion Research?

As you will see, the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles outlined in this framework, sound just like the phases of action research we are currently working through in the ADL program.

Maximizing Student Agency
Implementing and Measuring
Student-Centered Learning Practices
TECHNICAL APPENDIX

https://www.air.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/Maximizing-Student-Agency-NICs-Technical-Appendix-Oct-2018.pdf: Plan-Do-Study-Act–ion Research?

Beginning on page 35, there is an example student survey, and on page 42 an example teacher survey.

ADL Program, Advising, Evolution, Goals, Growth, Growth Mindset, Influencer, Leadership, Learner's Mindset, Learning, Learning Community, Personal, Professional, Professional Learning, Reflecting

Change hurts

The Advisor That Cares

My department is going through so many simultaneous changes right now. It is difficult for many to adapt and adjust. Still, I am doing what I can to share my heart, highlight the opportunities, and allow everyone to propose solutions.

I have witnessed firsthand the panic caused by sit-and-get training. Over the last several weeks, individual teams have come together to receive an overview of each other’s degree plans and departments and to build a collaborative network of support by grouping majors into career clusters and communities of interest, also known as meta-majors. This change poses a complete shift in everything our advising unit has ever done. It requires that advisors expand beyond specializing in one to a few majors to an entire catalog of majors based on four broad categories (arts, communication, and education; business and industry; public service; or science, technology, engineering, and math).

Add to this challenge that our office desperately needs more staffing due to several departmental challenges, including a complete restructuring and new leadership.

Change heals

The restructuring has provided leadership opportunities at every level. Some have arisen to the challenge, and I can hear hopefulness in their voices again. Some are still overwhelmed and doing their best to hold on for the learning ahead of us. Our advising unit has a long history of high turnover. Party because only a few people understand what goes into academic advising and the high demands of the profession. Others are looking to begin a career at an institution of higher learning, and advising is a common entry point for those with a degree. Many in our advising unit are working outside of their degree areas. Several advisors are either working toward, hold a graduate degree, or have multiple degrees because they understand the value of an education. They flourish as the leaders and teams embrace the opportunity to build solutions to advising challenges.

As I watch the team members working together, I see healing happening. I see a positive workplace culture forming. I see such great brainstorming and communication happening all across the advising unit. I see individuals that no longer feel like separate islands doing their own thing. Instead, I see warriors dressing for battle, determined to make it through the challenges and frustrations that change brings to make things even better than they were before.

Change

As advisors find hope in a supportive environment, I see a team that will embrace change in the future as an opportunity.

“There is nothing permanent except change”

— Heraclitus
ADL Program, Advising, ePortfolios, Evolution, Goals, Growth, Innovation Plan, Leadership, Learner's Mindset, Learning, Learning Community, Personal, Professional, Professional Learning, Reflecting, Tips

What Is vs. What Could Be

The Advisor That Cares

As a student, it can be very overwhelming to begin a new chapter of life. You are an adult, which you have been looking forward to for as long as you can remember. But you are also stepping outside of your comfort zone. Really finding yourself. Discovering who you want to be without the primary inputs that previously surrounded you.

As advisors, we are honored to help guide students as they begin University life. My research has shown that the advising relationship is significant to students’ perseverance through what can be a challenging adjustment. Nevertheless, how many times has this significance escaped you? How often have you felt like a broken record? How exhausting can it be for you and the student as you frantically attempt to cover so many things? Just a few examples come to mind like the university’s policies and procedures; system access and onboarding; information about the program, department, and academic college; outlining course options, prerequisite sequences, and electives selections; confirming career goals for major alignment, not to mention informing students of the multiple support resources and offices across campus. How often do we find ourselves desperately trying to get to know our students on the walk to our office or in the brief moments before or after the information download I just described? When are we supposed to find that moment to connect with them so that we can help them make meaning of their learning, struggles, and opportunities to grow.

Through an Innovation to Advising, we can provide relationships that provide reassurance and guidance throughout each student’s academic journey.

Join me, and together we can make a difference.

A New Culture of Learning, ADL Program, Evolution, Goals, Growth, Innovation Plan, Leadership, Learner's Mindset, Learning, Personal, Professional, Professional Learning, Reflecting, Why

Find Yours

The Advisor That Cares

The most wonderful aspect of the ADL program is constant reflection. As I sit here trying to identify a professional learning opportunity, what aspect of my innovation ideas to begin with, how to introduce my ideas to my audience, and so much more, I have once again challenged myself to re-identify my audience and re-examine my why.

Living the learner’s mindset means that even though it would be easy to tell myself I have already done the work on both topics, this is an ever-evolving process of “higher-order thinking” and “meaning-making.” Precisely the objectives of this program, the objectives of learning, and the objectives when teaching.

The theme that always resonates throughout this process for me is authenticity. I am attempting to share my heart with the world. I strive to find, refine, and articulate my passion for helping others. As I check my notes on the research I’ve recently reviewed regarding professional development and the 5 Principles of Professional Learning (Guluamhussein, 2013), it is the ACT/ACTION part of the learning process that particularly resonates with me.

You see, learning wasn’t easy for me. Wait, let me rephrase that. Education wasn’t easy for me. I was lost and behind most of the time. I received low grades and had very low self-esteem due to tying my personal worth to other people’s approval. I spent my early adulthood being taken advantage of due to an overwhelming need to people-please. At one point, I had three adult friends living in a three-bedroom apartment with me while I was the only one working, paying bills, buying groceries, and cleaning.

If these same principles had been applied in my learning journey, I would have had more prolonged exposure to new concepts. Instead of exponentially falling behind, I would be bolstered by significant assistance. I was constantly missing the aspects of understanding needed to transfer the information from the lessons into learning. As a result, almost everything seemed irrelevant and out of reach.

Here is a fun example of exactly what I mean about active, ongoing, thought-provoking learning. See if you can make it all the way to the reflective/active learning part.

History & Context for Active Learning

Now as a catalyst for change, I want to do better for others. I want to make learning meaningful and relevant to them. As a leader, I want to support my team through changes. I want to model the ways that I hope they will, in turn, support their teammates and students.

Reference

Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the Teachers: Effective Professional Development in the Era of High Stakes Accountability. National School Board Association, Center for Public Education.