Category: Tips

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.

ADL Program, Advising, Collective, Goals, Influencer, Innovation Plan, Learning, Personal, Professional, Reflecting, Tips

Desired Results, Measures, and Members

The Advisor That Cares

What are the results you want to achieve?

  • For Advisors:
    • Transform transactional advising general information and onboarding orientation to systems, procedures, degree plan, resources to video, audio, and text resources in personally curated web resources by the Fall 2025 intake cycle for individualized flipped advisor guidance.
  • Advising Team:
    • Like-minded solution-oriented workgroups collaborate and cross collaborate to identify and implement solutions for orientation, enrollment and support for current and prospective students by Fall 2025 while reevaluating “standardized” touch points and robotic interaction limiting scalability.


What are the measures you’ll use to track your progress?

  • Assess Learners:
    • Measurement efforts can utilize typical question/quiz formats for transactional pieces of advising to clear various holds and satisfy specific enrollment requirements When students illustrate or articulate successful behaviors they are able to by pass standardized interaction currently required for registration.
    • Likert survey assessments to gauge students understanding of resources, services, access, links to advising campaigns and support service referrals throughout assessment utilizing advising system.
    • Likert surveys to obtain valuable and informative data metrics at targeted assessment points (two-three times during each semester).
      • An example is an informational Tik-Tok campaign about the impact of dropping and currently available (live) resources/support services around significant drop deadlines. 
      • Followed by a “did this information help you” survey to assess growth mindset messaging‘s and support service referrals’ impact on retention/student success.
  • Team Assessments:
    • Advising teams share focused 3-minute check-ins daily to share weekly goals and intentions. These can be scheduled meetings, video messages, or emails.
      • Meetings are scheduled for longer communications or clarifications as needed/requested to honor and respect each individuals day utilizing advisors preferred communication (video chat, text chat, in-person meeting, team discussion).
    • Weekly team-wise meetings (30 minutes or less) to review what’s working and what could be better as ensure all individuals are progressing in their advising resource and to provide opportunities collaboration planning.
    • Collaborative peer-groupings twice a month to evaluate effectiveness, to provide feed-forward, to reflect on what is working and what could be better in individual and group collaborations at all levels within the advising unit.
    • Workshops (quarterly) to gauge and assess progress to goals and celebrate successes.
  • Department/Unit Assessments:
    • Weekly think-tank sessions with solutions-collective, inviting stakeholders as needed and coordinated to solve various needs that arise throughout the different academic cycles
    • Monthly department meetings to solution-storm (brainstorm) problems held separately (sacredly) from any staff meetings, professional developments, or presentations to re-engage with our individual why and collective why
    • At minimum quarterly collaborations with departmental and support service stakeholders across campus to ensure messaging and initiatives align with available offerings
    • Anonymous satisfaction surveys for advisors to describe bottlenecks and pinch-points as expressed by students following signification deadlines in academic cycles to evaluate improvement opportunities to policies and procedures
    • Monthly departmental updates, requests, and feed-forward to and from academic departments to improve communication and accuracy for learners
    • Ongoing collaboration groups with university coalition collective to scale procedures, evaluate and update policy, and improve training resources for all

Who is involved in your efforts?

  • Advisors will be one of the most significant cultural influences in this change strategy because they have the front-line perspective of students’ frustrations and confusion. This innovation will empower advisors to help improve the student experience while reducing the repetitive and transactional calls, emails, and appointments that prevent them from more meaningful interactions with students
  • Collective of solution-oriented collaborative stakeholders will be another source of significant cultural influence in the transformation of advising as it encompasses and overarches all offices and services of the university structure (such as the admissions; records; scholarship, financial aid, and veterans affairs; system administrators; technology support; service desk; instructional designers; administrative support; and support services to provide improvement ideas as front-line interaction experts.
ADL Program, Learning, Learning Community, Tips

Searching

The Advisor That Cares
Image of a magnifying glass within a circle illustration

There’s a little trick/tip I picked up somewhere for how you can search for just about anything. I’ll use an example from our class call last night.

The program map came up in conversation when someone asked about examples for the Organizational Change course. I quickly opened a browser window and typed “Harapnuik.org: Program map,” which immediately led me to the ADL Program Map.

Do you know of a website where you once saw something type that site into your search bar, then type a colon followed by a term for what you want to search for on that site? Give it a try! This little trick has served me so well that I wanted to share it with all of you.

Screenshot of google search bar searching for "harapnuik.org: EDLD 5304 examples"
Screenshot of google search results showing EDLD 5304 Assignment Examples and ADL/EDLD 5304 Tips & Perspectives both from It's About Learning at www.harapnuik.org
ADL Program, Evolution, Growth, Learner's Mindset, Learning, Personal, Professional, Reflecting, Tips

Authority vs Influence

The Advisor That Cares

When I begin a new course, I almost always go looking for “Learners Mindset Discussions” on the topic. Here is a lovely nugget related to the Organizational Change course beginning this week.

CSLE2COVA. (2019, August 17). LMD EP27 Authority vs Influence. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZOslhVzujs

References

CSLE2COVA. (2019, August 17). LMD EP27 Authority vs Influence. YouTube. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZOslhVzujs

ADL Program, Collective, Contributions, Evolution, Growth, Growth Mindset, Humor, Learner's Mindset, Learning, Learning Community, Personal, Reflecting, Tips

UbD Collaboration

The Advisor That Cares

In one of our final course meetings, a classmate expressed some serious reservations about their final major assignment. Another fantastic community member messaged me, heartbroken about how we could help a classmate through their struggle. I created a zoom call and rallied the troops so that we could be supportive sounding boards to provide as much feed-forward as possible. This meeting took place after an hour-long class call and lasted another 40-45 minutes. I believe we all left the session with a better understanding of the assignment.

I wanted to share our discussion because I think it illuminates the purpose of our learning community component. As we discuss our ideas with others, we obtain clarity on our plans. As we support others in finding clarity for their ideas, we fortify our own.

Course Info

  • Course Number: EDLD 5313
  • Course Title: Creating Significant Learning Environments
  • Instructor: Dr. Kelly Grogan
  • LU’s Applied Digital Learning Program
  • Fall 2022, first eight-week session
  • UbD Template – Assignment

Collaborator Info

ADL Program, Evolution, Innovation Plan, Learner's Mindset, Learning, Reflecting, Tips

Ub… kidding me?

The Advisor That Cares

I want to inspire my students to seek digital learning opportunities by modeling that behavior and showing the value of seeking multiple sources and applications of different aspects of learning. I know I better understand content and material when I can view it through different lenses and processes until it makes sense.

For example, here is my process for beginning the UbD Assignment. I first go to YouTube and search for each individual author and UbD. Then I search on the associated channels for the ADL program discussions. Here are some of the sources that I first used to frame the project.

After taking pages and pages of notes, I think reviewed the assigned chapters (Intro, 1 and 3) but I did not stop there. As I began trying to work my way through the assignment, I quickly found myself reading and taking notes on almost the entire book. This thirst to understand and to try to do right by my learners pushes me to consider more from the innovation to innovate advising.

I want to inspire the learners I have influence over to become digital learners too. Through combined formalized education and informal learning opportunities, I believe our learners have a more significant chance for understanding and skill transfer. As our learners experience authentic learning and connect informal learning, they will be more likely to carry those skills to the next challenge or task to be addressed. By giving our learners real-world learning opportunities, they will become the “self-evolving learners” that Grant Lichtman identifies (TEDx Talks, 2013). I am striving to increase curiosity and questioning by using questions. I hope that by prompting learners with questions instead of just providing information, they will begin to tap into their inquisitive mindsets and seek additional information and ask more questions. Through reigniting that curious mindset, I hope learners will be inspired to think outside the box and actively seek further information, verification, and clarification sources. 

References

TEDx Talks. (2013, March 21). What 60 Schools Can Tell Us About Teaching 21st Century Skills: Grant Lichtman at TEDxDenverTeachers. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZEZTyxSl3g&t=2s

Advising, Collective, Evolution, Learner's Mindset, Learning, Learning Community, Personal, Professional, Reflecting, Tips

Cultivating Dreams

The Advisor That Cares

This afternoon I had the pleasure of attending the following Coffee Chat with my professional organization. I found the resources shared so valuable and timely that I wanted to post some of the links and ideas to reflect upon as I address learning outcomes in my upcoming assignment.

Excellent small group discussions with advising colleagues and brainstorming session on dream inducing questions like:

  • What did you always want to do/be when you grew up? And why?
  • What does good academic standing look like to you this semester, and how does that bring you one step closer to your dream/ideal profession?
  • What inspired you to come to this institution, and how does that “why” drive you closer to your dream?
  • What are things that you loved to do when you were young?
  • What do you do when you lose track of time? (accessing flow)
  • Where do you find yourself most creative? 
  • What brings you joy? 
  • What courses have you enjoyed the most and what did you enjoy about them?
  • If money was not an issue, what would your ideal job be?
  • Does anybody out there already have your dream job and what do they do?
  • What do you love to do?
  • Who is a role model in your field of interest that you want to emulate, and how can you “walk in their footsteps” this semester?
  • What do all the things you are interested in have in common?
ADL Program, Evolution, Goals, Growth, Learner's Mindset, Learning, Personal, Tips

Anno-what?

The Advisor That Cares

So for the next assignment we will be identifying our learning philosophy and including an annotated bibliography. While I did create a simplified version for the innovation course, I feel like there is much more I can learn about it.

Annotate = to take notes

Therefore, I’m once again, turning to my favorite writing resource: Smart Student

Additionally, it is long past time for me to review and brush up on my paraphrasing skills! Lord knows my last paper was a quote-fest with weak attempts at paraphrasing. I feel like it may have been a much strong assignment if I could clearly articulate my research into my own words.

ADL Program, Growth, Growth Mindset, Growth Mindset Plan, Innovation Plan, Reflecting, Tips

Growing my Mindset

The Advisor That Cares

In the ADL Program, we have been asked to create our own growth mindset plans. As a follow up to my last post Growing your Mindset, I am going to attempt to answer the questions posed as openly and honestly as possible.

Reflections

Reflecting on the statements proposed by Dr. Carol Dweck’s (2016) book Mindset, I must admit growing up I completely believed “you can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are” (p. 12). As I shared in my Getting Personal post, I did not have the best childhood experience in relation to school. I truly believed back then that “your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much” (Dweck, 2016, p. 12). Thankfully, I had a much better college experience (studying psychology) and realized that my ideas of being “stupid” must be mistaken because as my coursework advanced my grades got higher. In chapter 3 of the Mindset book, when Dr. Dweck (2016) talks about the student who said “you mean I don’t have to be dumb?” my heart dropped because I felt exactly like that student in my grade school years (p. 55). I worked very hard to hide how truly stupid I believed I was as a result of learning disabled labels that were applied to me at a very young age. I definitely never volunteered to go to the board, those were mortifying reinforcements of everything I believed about myself. I was extremely shy. I believed that teachers didn’t like me.

Fortunately I survived elementary school, squeaking by in junior high and high school. I became involved in things like drill team and FFA which gave me outlets that boosted my confidence in other areas. As I learn about mixed mindsets, it is very interesting to reflect on my ability to try a dance routine over and over, making mistakes until perfected, performing for large groups of people but doing the same for academics was never on my radar.

I started to believe in myself and my ability to learn in college but reflecting now I can honestly say that I think I was just waiting for the truth to be exposed. I think I believed that through some strange fluke I was learning and doing well, but I completely felt like a fraud. Reflecting now, I have a feeling that this is why transpersonal psychology appealed to me so much. We started every class with a meditative session. We learned about accepting ourselves just as we are in each moment. I found peace and freedom in learning how to just be.

Questions and Answers

Q: Why is the growth mindset so important?

A: I am living proof that the growth mindset is very important because students can get stuck living a fixed mindset life, believing that there is no means to improve and better themselves. Assisting students in their academic pursuits requires that students learn that intelligence is something that can be improved over time with effort. College and life inevitably come with hardships and challenges. Students with a fixed mindset may never bounce back from those experiences. I have a whole section on my portfolio called When Life Happens to guide and assist students with their options along their academic journey. I hope to add growth mindset language throughout my portfolio and in my correspondence with students to fortify their growth mindset and to help develop it for those who do not currently have one. As cited by Scott Jeffrey (2020), “Dweck has found that just learning about the growth mindset can cause major shifts in how people view themselves and their lives.”

Scott Jeffrey’s guide How to Establish a Growth Mindset proposes this four step process to changing a fixed mindset to a growth mindset:

  • Step 1: Learn to hear your fixed mindset “voice.”
  • Step 2: Recognize that you have a choice.
  • Step 3: Talk back to it with a growth mindset voice.
  • Step 4: Take the growth mindset action.

Q: How will you incorporate the four steps?

A: I will admit that I still have to really pay attention to my inner dialog and recognize that fixed mindset voice identified the first of these four steps, because old habits are hard to break. If I still struggle with hearing my fixed mindset voice and recognizing I have a choice, then I can safely assume my students do too. Some students may have survived their whole primary, secondary, and post-secondary education without ever knowing about the growth mindset. I want to incorporate a mini course or some means of exposing students to the growth mindset concepts to help them begin to respond to their educational journey and challenges with a growth mindset voice.

Q: How will you communicate the message of “yet” to others?

A: By utilizing Dr. Dweck’s TedTalk The power of believing that you can improve in welcome emails at start of online graduate programs. By utilizing encouragement throughout program completion that focuses on progress. I will communicate the message of yet to my students, by acknowledging their challenges as opportunities. I will direct student to course correction strategies and remind them failure is a normal part of progress toward difficult long-term goals.

Q: What resources (content, video, media, etc.) will you use to promote the growth mindset?

A:

Q: When and how often will you promote the growth mindset?

A: I feel that the growth mindset should be introduced to all students upon admission but should be further reinforced when students reach out about dropping, withdrawing, or when students face academic standing issues. I will strive to include “growth mindset message[s that include] phrases about the universality of challenges (this is incorporated with the phrase, ‘‘all students struggle’’), and nods to the importance of effort (e.g. “help your hard work pay off’’), strategies (‘‘learning strategies,’’ ‘‘I’m happy to strategize with you’’), and help-seeking (“I’m glad you reached out’’) for success” (Kyte et al., 2020).

Q: How will the growth mindset influence or impact the way you approach your work in this course and the program? 

A: I must approach new content with a mindset that holds excitement for what new knowledge I will learn that can later be implemented into my Advisor’s Tips Page. I must continue to recognize the fixed mindset behaviors and thoughts from the past. I can only continue gains toward the learner’s mindset by replacing those old habits with new growth mindset thoughts and actions. I must acknowledge I have a choice about how I approach new challenging content. When I struggle and fail, I must regroup and search for the lessons learned through the attempt. I must seek feed forward from trusted relationships as encouraged by the COVA model either from my classmates/learning when course related and from my team when professional. As I recognize my fixed mindset voice and choose to replace it with a growth mindset one, while implementing growth mindset actions it is important that I continue to find ways to share the mindset message with my advisees continually improving my portfolio.

References

Dweck, C. S. (2016). The Mindsets. In Mindset (Updated Edition). Ballantine Books.

Jeffrey, S. (2020, June 23). Change your fixed mindset into a growth mindset [complete guide]. Scott Jeffrey. Retrieved June 14, 2022, from https://scottjeffrey.com/change-your-fixed-mindset/

Kyte, S. B., Collins, E., & Deil-Amen, R. (2020). Mindset messaging: Fostering student support and confidence through micro-messaging in advisor communication. NACADA Journal, 40(1), 36–48. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.12930/NACADA-19-08

TED. (2014, December 17). The power of believing that you can improve | Carol Dweck [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X0mgOOSpLU