Tag: supports

Targeted Orientation Supports Transfer Student Transition

Transfer students often face challenges integrating into their new college or university. Despite having previous experience in higher education, transfer students—particularly those from nontraditional backgrounds—can find it difficult to navigate student supports, build community and get engaged. These challenges can result in lower rates of completion among upward transfers.

A fall 2020 survey by Inside Higher Ed and Hanover Research found that fewer than 20 percent of four-year institutions reported providing sufficient social integration services for transfer students. About half indicated they supply enough academic support to transfer students who enroll.

Last fall, Indiana University Indianapolis launched an orientation program exclusively for incoming transfer and adult learners, designed to help familiarize them with the institution, build connections to peers and boost their confidence in attending the university.

What’s the need: About 30 percent of undergraduates at IU Indianapolis are transfer students, said Janice Bankert-Countryman, assistant director of student services at the Center for Transfer and Adult Students. A significant number of transfers come in as juniors, having already obtained an associate degree.

First-Year Bridge, IU Indianapolis’s orientation for new students, has historically supported all incoming students in the fall term. Staff created Bridge to Your Future: Transfer Bridge exclusively to serve the diverse needs of undergraduate transfer students, including military-affiliated students, working students and parenting students.

“The core of Transfer Bridge is creating and maintaining relationships,” Bankert-Countryman said. “We all need relationships to survive as humans, and we certainly need relationships to thrive as students. So how do we connect students to the right people at the right time to receive the right resources that will empower them to thrive at our campuses?”

How it works: Transfer Bridge is a coordinated effort among the Center for Transfer Students, First-Year Programs, Orientation Services, Student Transitions and Mentor Initiatives, Housing and Residence Life, and the Division of Enrollment Management.

First-Year Bridge is required of all first-year students, but transfers can opt in to Transfer Bridge. Students learn about the opportunity through emails and meetings with their admissions counselors and academic advisers, as well as through other orientation presentations, Bankert-Countryman said.

The pilot took place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. over three days during orientation week—designed to accommodate the needs of working and caregiving students, Bankert-Countryman said.

First-year orientation is a full five days, and transfer students participate in some of the larger programming, like workshops on how to join student organizations, engage in career development or understand finances. Many also join the field trip to the Indianapolis Zoo.

In addition to receiving support from Bankert-Countryman and other staff members, transfer students engage with two peer mentors, who provide insight and advice as students navigate their transition into the university.

Beyond orientation week, transfer students receive support through regular peer mentoring sessions, transfer student events and a Transfer Bridge fall celebration. Bankert-Countryman and the peer mentors use Canvas, email and social messaging to keep in touch with students, she said.

The impact: Of the 25 transfer and adult students who attended the inaugural orientation, 10 were 23 years old or older, two were military-connected and 12 had transferred from the local community college, Ivy Tech.

Sixty percent of the students who participated in Transfer Bridge have a 3.0 or higher, and many have joined student organizations or hold on-campus jobs.

Feedback from 14 participants showed that they found the program useful as they integrated into campus, saying it helped them to feel at home.

“This was a worth-it experience especially as someone who tends to get anxiety to new environments and overwhelmed easily,” one participant wrote in a postorientation survey. “In a nutshell, this was a good slow introduction before the first day of school.”

What’s next: This fall, staff will scale the program to offer three sections. The university will pay for three instructors and three peer mentors to lead the additional sections.

One section will be offered to students in the pre–Health and Life Sciences program to highlight academic planning and career development. Another section, Cyber Sandbox, will focus on tech tools on campus, introducing learners to available systems and technologies from 3-D printing to virtual reality and artificial intelligence. The third section, Connections, will center on a book, The Crossroads of Should and Must by Elle Luna, to help students connect their current learning to future goals.

We bet your colleague would like this article, too. Send them this link to subscribe to our newsletter on Student Success.

Source link

May 6, 2025
USF Reimagines Academic Supports for Student Success

Colleges and universities are home to an array of resources to help students thrive and succeed, but many students don’t know about them. Just over half (56 percent) of college students say they’re aware of tutoring and academic supports on campus, compared to 94 percent of college employees who say their campus offers the resources.

At the University of South Florida, the Academic Success Center is a central office in the library that houses tutoring, the writing lab, peer mentoring and supplemental instruction, among other academic support offerings for undergraduates.

Zoraya Betancourt became director of the center in 2020 during a challenging time, she said—in part because the center had to reintroduce itself to incoming students who had never been on campus and those who had their college experience disrupted by COVID-19.

National data shows that students at large public institutions are spending less time studying outside of class now compared to during the 2018–19 academic year, and they are less likely to participate in a study group with their peers.

“For me, it was like, OK, we are going to have to be very different. We can’t go back to who we were,” Betancourt said.

Spurred by student data and feedback, Betancourt and her team led a remodel of the center to be more responsive to student needs and meet them where they are.

Data-based decisions: To start, Betancourt partnered with Steve Johnson, a data scientist on the university’s Predictive Analytics Research for Student Success team, to build a dashboard of student data.

“For many years the only data we had was how many students come and use the services how many times,” as well as some student identification data, Betancourt said. “I always thought we need more than that—we need to know more than that.”

Now, Betancourt has access to student majors, colleges and the types of services they utilize to identify high-demand subjects and create responsive learning support schedules. The dashboard also connects the way services are tied to student retention and outcome goals.

In addition to automating some work, the dashboard allows staff to engage students more directly. Each week, the system generates a report of new visitors to the center, which staff use to reach out and personally welcome students to the center and its services.

A care-centered model: One trend that became clear in student interactions was the prevalence of stress in the student experience, Betancourt said. “Our tutors are coming to us and saying, ‘I have a student … and I don’t know how to help them.’”

In response, the office adopted a care model for referrals that quickly connects support staff with other departments, reducing opportunities for students to fall through the cracks.

“Within this referral system, we can go in and see if a student who is using our services says, ‘I really need to change my major and I don’t know what to do, I’m really stressing out over it,’” Betancourt said. “We’re able to go into the system and refer them directly to an adviser.”

Larry Billue Jr. serves as the Academic Success Center point person for care management, guiding students to counseling support, financial aid, basic needs support and academic advisers or just sitting with the student to discuss how they’re feeling.

Increased peer engagement: Another new feature of the ACS was supplemental instruction. While the academic intervention has been around for decades, it was new to the university and created opportunities for increased collaboration between staff and faculty to promote academic success, as well as create jobs for student employees.

“That became more evident because we were hearing from students, ‘I need more than just tutoring. I like working with my peers,’” Betancourt said.

At USF, supplemental instruction is called PASS, short for peer-assisted study sessions. The ACS is tracking student participation in PASS to gauge use.

Students can also sign up to receive remote tutoring in select courses through the PORTAL (peer online resources for tutoring and learning), to supplement in-person opportunities when the office may be closed.

The impact: Over the past year, the center has seen a 75 percent year-over-year increase in student use.

Having a care team member on board has also been successful; Billue Jr. can physically walk a student across campus to the relevant office and make introductions as needed.

“It’s been well received by students; they take him up on the offer and they’ll walk with him,” Betancourt said.

The center has also expanded training for academic peer mentors to address not only study strategies and effective learning practices, but also how to make referrals to other offices.

The biggest lesson Betancourt has learned: There are a range of opportunities to engage students and connect with them, understanding those opportunities just requires a deeper look at what students need.

“We serve to engage students on campus, to engage students with each other, to engage students with faculty and with staff, and it’s looking at that a little bit closer to improve our services and how we can build on that,” Betancourt said.

Do you have an academic intervention that might help others improve student success? Tell us about it.

Source link

April 21, 2025
How CTE supports college and career readiness

This post on CTE and career readiness originally appeared on iCEV’s blog, and is republished here with permission.

For students to be truly prepared for their futures, they need academic knowledge, technical expertise, and workforce skills that translate directly into the workplace. As a career and technical education (CTE) instructor, I see firsthand how career-focused education provides students with the tools to transition smoothly from high school to college and careers.

More News from eSchool News

Many math tasks involve reading, writing, speaking, and listening. These language demands can be particularly challenging for students whose primary language is not English.

In recent years, the rise of AI technologies and the increasing pressures placed on students have made academic dishonesty a growing concern. Students, especially in the middle and high school years, have more opportunities than ever to cheat using AI tools.

As technology trainers, we support teachers’ and administrators’ technology platform needs, training, and support in our district. We do in-class demos and share as much as we can with them, and we also send out a weekly newsletter.

Math is a fundamental part of K-12 education, but students often face significant challenges in mastering increasingly challenging math concepts.

Throughout my education, I have always been frustrated by busy work–the kind of homework that felt like an obligatory exercise rather than a meaningful learning experience.

During the pandemic, thousands of school systems used emergency relief aid to buy laptops, Chromebooks, and other digital devices for students to use in remote learning.

Education today looks dramatically different from classrooms of just a decade ago. Interactive technologies and multimedia tools now replace traditional textbooks and lectures, creating more dynamic and engaging learning environments.

There is significant evidence of the connection between physical movement and learning. Some colleges and universities encourage using standing or treadmill desks while studying, as well as taking breaks to exercise.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters. In recent weeks, we’ve seen federal and state governments issue stop-work orders, withdraw contracts, and terminate…

English/language arts and science teachers were almost twice as likely to say they use AI tools compared to math teachers or elementary teachers of all subjects, according to a February 2025 survey from the RAND Corporation.

Tags career, career and technical education, career readiness, college, college and career, college and career readiness, cte, Education, high school, need

Want to share a great resource? Let us know at submissions@eschoolmedia.com.

Source link

April 4, 2025
Talent pipeline for local businesses supports college students

About four in 10 college students believe developing specific skills needed for their career is among the most important outcomes to them in their academic experience, according to a winter 2023 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse. However, 22 percent of all respondents indicated they had never participated in experiential learning or an internship.

Champlain College in Vermont partnered with a local coworking campus and business incubator, Hula, in 2023 to build a talent pipeline for local businesses and expose students to new and maybe unfamiliar career opportunities.

Over the past two years, the partnership has resulted in real-life case studies and client-facing work for students and faculty, as well as greater engagement with young talent for employers.

What’s the need: “One thing that’s very apparent in Vermont is we need young talent,” says Angelika Koukoulas, Champlain’s Innovation Hub Project Manager, who oversees the Hula-Champlain partnership.

Vermont experiences the worst brain drain in the country, losing 57.5 percent of its college graduates, many of whom move to Massachusetts or New York, according to 2022 data analysis.

Koukoulas’s role is to help students identify work experiences in Vermont and build relationships with employers to fill holes in their workforces.

“They need more hands, they need big ideas, they need students who are excited about their work and are willing to put in effort to learn,” Koukoulas says.

There’s also a national shortage of internship opportunities, one that is tied to a mismatch in employer needs and student interests. The partnership addresses both comprehensively by weighing all stakeholders’ interests.

How it works: Hula is about a mile away from Champlain College and just down the road from the college’s Miller Center campus.

The coworking space supports 60 member businesses and up to 600 coworking individuals. The businesses belong to a variety of industries, including green technology and marketing, as well as traditional business or finance roles.

A majority of the collaborations fall into two camps: companies providing projects for capstone-like courses for experiential learning or companies creating internships for students.

Inquiries can come directly from faculty members looking to revamp curriculum or offer real-world scenarios for students to engage their skills or from employers who have a specific need and want young talent to assist them. Often, start-ups are looking for student support for social media or blog-writing campaigns, but there’s also a need for general business admin or accounting support, Koukoulas says.

For internships, Koukoulas will serve as a recruiter of sorts for the company partner, assisting them in creating the job description and posting it on Handshake and also encouraging students she believes would be a good fit to apply and increasing the number of applicants for the business partner.

“It widens their candidate pool and hopefully gets more students opportunities that they wouldn’t have even thought of otherwise,” Koukoulas says.

All projects have been pro-bono, so the company invests zero dollars to enlist a class for work, but almost all internships have been paid roles.

What’s different: Hula serves both as a business partner, hiring interns and supporting class projects, but also as an incubator for small businesses in Vermont.

The people who work on Hula’s campus rotate, meaning there’s continual variety of the types of industries or groups students could partner with. The climate of the office building also means businesses are innovation and creatively minded, making partnership more natural.

Koukoulas has an office at Hula, meaning she can directly engage in communal spaces or in building channels to solicit employer partnerships.

Vermont also has a very relational culture, something Koukoulas has had to navigate as a more recent resident to the Green Mountain State, whether the relationships are with faculty—who have taught a course for a long time and may be hesitant to make changes—or with businesses leaders, who consider their start-up to be their baby and may be uncomfortable letting a student participate in their work.

There’s an educational piece to the puzzle, both helping faculty identify their ask for project and employers create meaningful internships for learners. Koukoulas hosted an Internship 101 workshop for Hula businesses to set expectations for internships and provide guidance on best practices, such as providing students a mentor. She also hosts regular lunch for interns who work within the Hula offices to check in and provide support as needed.

The impact: Since the partnership launched in summer 2023, 90 students have engaged in a Hula-based project within a course, and 18 students have participated in an internship.

The partnership is in its early stages, so Champlain doesn’t have data on how students have translated their work with the start-ups into longer-term career development, but exposure to new careers and experiential learning are two benefits Koukoulas is eager to see manifest.

“I can’t wait to see if it works; I can’t wait to see the fruit of that labor in the next couple of years,” Koukoulas says.

If your student success program has a unique feature or twist, we’d like to know about it. Click here to submit.

Source link

March 7, 2025
HEI Supports Upcoming Boycotts and Strikes

The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is in solidarity with nonviolent protests against the Trump administration. Two upcoming events include a 24-hour boycott of Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy (February 28th) and a 10-day General Strike. We hope enough people join these and other nonviolent protests to make our messages heard loudly enough. To our readers, if you know of any public protests and other nonviolent acts of civil disobedience that we can highlight, please contact us.

Related links:

Protests Under Trump 207-2021 (Pressman, et al, 2022)

Timeline of protests against Donald Trump (Wikipedia)

List of incidents of civil unrest in the United States (Wikipedia)

Methods of Student Nonviolent Resistance (2024)

Democratic Protests on Campus: Modeling the Better World We Seek (Annelise Orleck)

Elite Universities on Lockdown. Protestors Regroup. (2024)

Source link

February 23, 2025
Education nominee McMahon says she supports calls to dismantle the agency but that funding wouldn’t be affected

Linda McMahon said she stands firmly behind President Donald Trump’s calls to gut the U.S. Department of Education at her confirmation hearing to lead the department.

But she promised to work with Congress to do so — acknowledging some limits on the president’s authority as Trump seeks to remake the government through executive orders. And she tried to reassure teachers and parents that any changes would not jeopardize billions in federal funding that flows to high-poverty schools, special education services, and low-income college students.

“We’d like to do this right,” McMahon said. “It is not the president’s goal to defund the programs, it is only to have it operate more efficiently.”

Trump has called the Education Department a “con job” and said that McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive and billionaire Republican donor, should work to put herself out of a job. McMahon called this rhetoric “fervor” for change.

The Trump administration’s chaotic approach to spending cuts so far raise questions about whether McMahon’s statements — an effort to neutralize the most significant criticism of plans to get rid of the Education Department — will prove true over time.

Thursday’s hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, punctuated by occasional protests, served as a referendum of sorts on the value of the Education Department. Republicans said it had saddled schools with red tape without improving student outcomes. Democrats said the department protects students’ civil rights and funds essential services.

Democrats also pressed McMahon on Trump’s threats to withhold federal funding from schools that violate his executive orders and on the details of a potential reorganization — questions that McMahon largely deflected as ones she could better answer after she takes office.

“It’s almost like we’re being subjected to a very elegant gaslighting here,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire.

Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.

Even as Trump has called for the Education Department to be eliminated and schooling to be “returned to the states,” he’s also sought to expand its mission with executive orders threatening the funding of schools that employ diversity, equity, and inclusion practices or teach that racism and discrimination were part of America’s founding. The federal government is barred by law from setting local curriculum, as Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska pointed out during the hearing.

In a tense exchange, Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut who’s championed school desegregation and diversity efforts in education, asked McMahon how schools would know if they were running a program that violates Trump’s executive order seeking to root out “radical indoctrination” in K-12 schools. Many schools have no idea what’s allowed, Murphy said, because the order doesn’t clearly define what’s prohibited.

McMahon said in her view, celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Black History Month should be permitted, after Murphy noted that U.S. Department of Defense schools would no longer celebrate Black History Month in response to Trump’s order.

But McMahon would not say that running affinity groups for students from certain racial or ethnic backgrounds, such as a Black engineers club or an after-school club for Vietnamese American students, was permitted. She also would not say whether schools might put their federal funding at risk by teaching an African American history class or other ethnic studies program.

“That’s pretty chilling,” Murphy said. “You’re going to have a lot of educators and a lot of principals and administrators scrambling right now.”

Later in the confirmation hearing, McMahon agreed schools should teach “the good, the bad, and the ugly” parts of U.S. history, and that it’s up to states, not the Department of Education, to establish curriculum.

McMahon’s record on DEI has sometimes been at odds with the Trump administration. She backed diversity issues when she served on the Connecticut State Board of Education, the Washington Post reported.

During her hearing, McMahon said DEI programs are “tough,” because while they’re put in place to promote diversity and inclusion, they can have the opposite effect. She pointed to examples of Black and Hispanic students attending separate graduation ceremonies — though those are typically held to celebrate the achievements of students of color, not to isolate them.

Related: What might happen if the Education Department were closed?

McMahon told the committee that many Americans are experiencing an educational system in decline — she pointed to sobering national test scores, crime on college campuses, and high youth suicide rates — and said it was time for a renewed focus on teaching reading, math, and “true history.”

“In many cases, our wounds are caused by the excessive consolidation of power in our federal education establishment,” she said. “So what’s the remedy? Fund education freedom, not government-run systems. Listen to parents, not politicians. Build up careers, not college debt. Empower states, not special interests. Invest in teachers, not Washington bureaucrats.”

Republican Senators reiterated these themes, arguing that bureaucrats in Washington had had their chance and that it was time for a new approach.

They asked McMahon about Trump administration priorities such as expanding school choice, including private school vouchers, and interpreting Title IX to bar transgender students from restrooms and sports teams aligned with their gender identities.

McMahon said she was “happy” to see the Biden administration’s rules on Title IX vacated, and she supported withholding federal funds from colleges that did not comply with the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law.

Related: Trump wants to shake up education. What that could mean for a charter school started by a GOP senator’s wife

Teachers unions and other critics of McMahon have said she lacks the proper experience to lead the Education Department, though McMahon and others have pointed to her time serving on the Connecticut State Board of Education, as a trustee of Sacred Heart University, and her role as chair of the America First Policy Institute, where she advocated for private school choice, apprenticeships, and career education.

McMahon also ran the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first administration. Her understanding of the federal bureaucracy is an asset, supporters say.

Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, said McMahon’s background made her uniquely suited to tackle the pressing challenges facing the American education system today.

Related: What education could look like under Trump and Vance

McMahon said multiple times that parents of children with disabilities should not worry about federal funding being cut for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, though she said it was possible that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services would administer the money instead of the Education Department.

But it appeared that McMahon had limited knowledge of the rights outlined in IDEA, the landmark civil rights law that protects students with disabilities. And she said it was possible that civil rights enforcement — a large portion of which is related to complaints about children with disabilities not getting the services to which they’re entitled — would move to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Dismantling the education department by moving key functions to other departments is a tenet of Project 2025, the playbook the conservative Heritage Foundation developed for a second Trump administration. Most of these functions are mandated in federal law, and moving them would require congressional approval.

McMahon struggled to articulate the goals of IDEA beyond saying students would be taken care of and get the assistance and technology they need.

“There is a reason that the Department of Education and IDEA exist, and it is because educating kids with disabilities can be really hard and it takes the national commitment to get it done,” Hassan, the New Hampshire senator, said. “That’s why so many people are so concerned about this proposal to eliminate the department. Because they think kids will once again be shoved aside, and especially kids with disabilities.”

McMahon also could not name any requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal law that replaced No Child Left Behind. ESSA requires states to identify low-performing schools and intervene to improve student learning, but it gives states more flexibility in how they do so than the previous law.

McMahon seemed open to reversing some of the cuts enacted by the U.S. DOGE Service, the cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk.

She said, if confirmed, she would look into whether staff who’d been placed on administrative leave — including some who investigate civil rights complaints — should return. She also said she’d assess the programs that were cut when DOGE terminated 89 contracts at the Institute of Education Sciences and 29 training grants.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, said her office had heard from a former teacher who developed an intensive tutoring strategy that was used in a dozen schools in the state. The teacher had a pending grant application to evaluate the program and its effect on student outcomes, and the teacher worried it would be in jeopardy. Collins asked if the department should keep collecting that kind of data so it could help states determine what’s working for kids.

“I’m not sure yet what the impact of all of those programs are,” McMahon said. “There are many worthwhile programs that we should keep, but I’m not yet apprised of them.”

The Senate education committee is scheduled to vote on McMahon’s confirmation on Feb. 20.

This story was produced by Chalkbeat and reprinted with permission.

The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

Join us today.

Source link

February 13, 2025
The Student Assistant Supports Learning and Teaching
Reading Time: 3 minutes

AI is becoming a bigger part of our daily lives, and students are already using it to support their learning. In fact, from our studies, 90% of faculty feel GenAI is going to play an increasingly important role in higher ed.

Embracing AI responsibly, with thoughtful innovation, can help students take charge of their educational journey. So, we turn to the insights and expertise of you and your students — to develop AI tools that support and empower learners, while maintaining ethical practices, accuracy and a focus on the human side of education.

Training the Student Assistant together

Since we introduced the Student Assistant in August 2024, we continue to ensure that faculty, alongside students, play a central role in helping to train it.

Students work directly with the tool, having conversations. Instructors review these exchanges to ensure the Student Assistant is guiding students through a collaborative, critical thinking process —helping them find answers on their own, rather than directly providing them.

“I was extremely impressed with the training and evaluation process. The onboarding process was great, and the efforts taken by Cengage to ensure parity in the evaluation process was a good-faith sign of the quality and accuracy of the Student Assistant.” — Dr. Loretta S. Smith, Professor of Management, Arkansas Tech University

Supporting students through our trusted sources

The Student Assistant uses only Cengage-authored course materials — it does not search the web.

By leveraging content aligned directly with instructor’s chosen textbook , the Student Assistant provides reliable, real-time guidance that helps students bridge knowledge gaps — without ever relying on external sources that may lack credibility.

Unlike tools that rely on potentially unreliable web sources, the Student Assistant ensures that every piece of guidance aligns with course objectives and instructor expectations.

Here’s how:
- It uses assigned Cengage textbooks, eBooks and resources, ensuring accuracy and relevance for every interaction
- The Student Assistant avoids pulling content from the web, eliminating the risks of misinformation or content misalignment
- It does not store or share student responses, keeping information private and secure
By staying within our ecosystem, the Student Assistant fosters academic integrity and ensures students are empowered to learn with autonomy and confidence.

“The Student Assistant is user friendly and adaptive. The bot responded appropriately and in ways that prompt students to deepen their understanding without giving away the answer.” – Lois Mcwhorter, Department Chair for the Hutton School of Business at the University of Cumberlands

Personalizing the learning journey

56% of faculty cited personalization as a top use case for GenAI to help enhance the learning experience.

The Student Assistant enhances student outcomes by offering a personalized educational experience. It provides students with tailored resources that meet their unique learning needs right when they need them. With personalized, encouraging feedback and opportunities to connect with key concepts in new ways, students gain a deeper understanding of their coursework. This helps them close learning gaps independently and find the answers on their own, empowering them to take ownership of their education.

“What surprised me most about using the Student Assistant was how quickly it adapted and adjusted to feedback. While the Student Assistant helped support students with their specific questions or tasks, it did so in a way that allowed for a connection. It was not simply a bot that pointed you to the correct answer in the textbook; it assisted students similar to how a professor or instructor would help a student.” — Dr. Stephanie Thacker, Associate Professor of Business for the Hutton School of Business at the University of the Cumberlands

Helping students work through the challenges

The Student Assistant is available 24/7 to help students practice concepts without the need to wait for feedback, enabling independent learning before seeking instructor support.

With just-in-time feedback, students can receive guidance tailored to their course, helping them work through challenges on their own schedule. By guiding students to discover answers on their own, rather than providing them outright, the Student Assistant encourages critical thinking and deeper engagement.

“Often students will come to me because they are confused, but they don’t necessarily know what they are confused about. I have been incredibly impressed with the Student Assistants’ ability to help guide students to better understand where they are struggling. This will not only benefit the student but has the potential to help me be a better teacher, enable more critical thinking and foster more engaging classroom discussion.” — Professor Noreen Templin, Department Chair and Professor of Economics at Butler Community College

Want to start using the Student Assistant for your courses?

The Student Assistant, embedded in MindTap, is available in beta with select titles , such as “Management,” “Human Psychology” and “Principles of Economics” — with even more coming this fall. Find the full list of titles that currently feature the Student Assistant, plus learn more about the tool and AI at Cengage right here.
Source link
February 10, 2025
Unifying supports for first-generation students on campus

First-generation students make up around 20 percent of the University of South Carolina student population.

University of South Carolina

While first-generation students are a growing population in higher education, they remain less likely to retain or complete a credential, compared to their continuing-generation peers.

A new initiative at the University of South Carolina unifies assistance for students who are the first in their families to attend college to guide them through the university and provide a sense of belonging. The First-Generation Student Center is connected to a first-generation living-learning community and offers embedded academic and socioemotional support, which reduces the need for students to seek support independently.

What’s the need: USC serves a large number of first-generation learners—one in five undergraduate students or around 6,000 individuals.

“We know from our campus data on students in our long-standing TRIO program that they do not have the gaps in retention and graduation that our other first-generation students have,” says Shelley Dempsey, assistant provost for graduation and retention. “However, the program is at max capacity.  It was time for our university to provide additional options to serve students in a similar demographic who are not able to be a part of the TRIO program.”

The center was designed to provide increased and more specialized services for learners in a physical space that promotes students’ feelings of belonging.

Dempsey sees particular benefits with first-generation student support, including social capital growth and impacting future generations of their families. But Dempsey also notes improving processes and the student experience for first-generation degree attainment is a benefit for the institution as a whole.

How it works: The First-Generation Center (FGC), which opened in fall 2024 within Maxcy College residence hall on campus, includes a variety of support services and resources.

A dedicated director and assistant director support the center, as does a faculty director, who oversees the living and learning community for 151 first-generation students.

Within the center, students can engage with an embedded mental health counselor for one-on-one in-person or virtual sessions, as well as group sessions on common themes like homesickness and exam anxiety. The Student Success Center has embedded staff presence for drop-in hours, and the FGC hosts other partners across campus, including financial aid, the career center and the meal card office, to provide insights into navigating higher ed.

“The idea is that if we can have all of these offices have a presence in the FGC as a safe space, then we build comfort and confidence with the first-generation students to utilize them in their locations outside the FGC as well,” Dempsey says.

This fall, the center hosted a series called First-Gen Connections that provided relevant information related to campus experiences and deadlines. Athletics staff led a discussion on how students can earn ticket priority for sporting events and offered students a behind-the-scenes tour of the football stadium, for example.

How it’s going: Since launching the center, USC leaders have seen an increase in first-generation student involvement. The center was advertised through meetings, events and campus media including newsletters, but word of mouth has been the most effective marketing campaign.

Several sections of University 101, USC’s first-year seminar program, also meet in the center, which helps raise awareness of the support offerings.

This fall, efforts to include first-generation students were noticeable in mini-grant applications for research and creative projects alongside a mentor, with 55 percent of applicants being first-gen learners.

“We want our first-generation students to know that they are just as capable, and sometimes that takes bringing the info to them in a designated space so that they don’t have to navigate the large university and unfamiliar lingo or jargon for themselves,” Dempsey says.

What’s next: The current target is incoming and first-year students, with the hopes of continuing to involve them as they progress through the institution, but administrators hope to reach graduate students, as well.

“We are in the process of conducting a needs assessment to know how to increase our supports going forward,” Dempsey says.

The university will also track other student metrics including involvement in high-impact practices, GPA, DFW rates, campus involvement and leadership opportunities. Additionally, leaders will compare utilization of support services among first-gen students who engage with the center compared to their peers who are also first-gen but not associated with the center.

If your student success program has a unique feature or twist, we’d like to know about it. Click here to submit.

Source link

February 3, 2025
What supports the geometry of space-time?

Please follow and like us:

Einstein’s Explanation of the Unexplainable

When Einstein defined the equivalence between mass and energy, he also defined what “support the geometry of space…

In his General Theory of Relativity, he defined the force of gravity in terms of the energy density of space. This implies the mass and energy associated with it supports the geometric structure space because the equation E=mc^2 tell us when energy is concentrated in the form of mass it causes the geometry of space to contract creating the curvature he associated with gravity.

Additionally, the Big Bang’s assumption the universe expansion is the result of the energy associated with its origin can only be explained by assuming it is pushing on its boundaries.

Additionally, we have observed that the CBM (cosmic background radiation) imparts the energy associated with its 2.725 Kelvin temperature to even perfectly “empty” space devoid of all gas, dust, and particular matter.

The fact that concentrating energy in the form of mass results in space contacting while increasing it by releasing the energy contained in mass cause it to expand support the assumption space that does not contain any particular mass is not empty but contains energy.

Therefore because, Einstein’s equation E=mc^2 tells us space without any particular matter is not empty but contains the mass equivalent of the CBM defined by that equation.

The mechanism responsible would be analogous to how the volume of a balloon is supported by the air inside of it.

For example, if the air pressure increases its volume will expand while if it decreases it will contract.

Yet it also tells us how one can explain the quantum properties of energy and mass in terms of it being an emergent property of space if it contains a continuous field of energy.

For example, by using the science of wave mechanics and the fact that Relativity tells us energy would move through space on a continuous field of energy such as the one provided by the cosmic background radiation unless it is prevented from doing so by someone or something interacting with it. This would result in it being confined to three-dimensional space. The science of wave mechanics also tells us the three-dimensional “walls” of this confinement will result in its energy being reflected back on itself thereby creating a resonant or standing wave in three-dimensional space. This would cause the energy of an energy wave to be concentrated at the point in space were a quantized particle would be found.

Additionally, wave mechanics also tells us the energy of a resonant system such as a standing wave can only take on the discrete or quantized values associated with its fundamental or a harmonic of its fundamental frequency.

This explanation of why mass and energy are quantized is consistent with the observations of the environment defined by quantum mechanics in that the mathematical properties associated with the wave function will continue to evolve as a wave moving through space and only reduces of “collapses” to a quantized packed of energy when it is observed or encounters an object.

This defines how Einstein could have explain what an “empty” volume of space contains AND the observations associated with its quantization in terms of it being an emergent property of the continuous energy field or space as defined by him.

This also answers the question of how an electromagnetic wave can propagate though seeming “empty space because as was shown above what appears to be empty space is not empty but contains continuous field of energy which, it can propagate similar to how wave propagates on water

Please follow and like us:

Source link

February 9, 2023