In the third part of our Back on Track series, BOT Program instructor Ruth Silverman, Learning Services Coordinator at the Student Learning Commons, suggests five strategies SFU instructors can employ to ease students’ transition from high school to SFU.

This voice, from a Back on Track Program student, is probably familiar to seasoned instructors. You might even recognize a younger version of yourself in these comments. First year students typically struggle with similar, interrelated issues including:

• Class attendance in an environment of newfound personal freedom;
• A lack of a personal relationships with instructors and classmates in large classes;
• The need to be self-motivated and self-directed in one’s work habits;
• The need to develop study strategies for managing a larger amount of content, delivered at a faster pace than in high school; and
• Misunderstandings related to academic culture and jargon, including the nature and purpose of tutorials.

With so much to learn even before engaging with course content, is it any wonder that many first year students find themselves on academic probation (OAP) after their first term and Required to Withdraw (RTW) after their second?

Not surprisingly, summer term is always the biggest intake term for BOT, accounting for 44% of intakes in 2010, 50% of which were students who had entered SFU from high school the previous September.  With the advent of Back on Track, students are no longer forced out of SFU just because they need more than 8 months to make the transition.

Although some instructors would note that it is not their responsibility to “fix” these problems for students, there are a few relatively simple things that you can do to ease students’ transition to SFU:

• Clearly communicate your expectations. Don’t leave anything to guesswork.  Some examples of clear articulation of expectations are found on the Student Learning Commons’ “New to SFU?” webpage.
  
• Avoid making assumptions about students’ prior knowledge (e.g. that the abstract is not the entire journal article, that students will know that class attendance is important even though slides are readily available online, or using jargon (GPA, TA, MLA, APA, SLC).  When in doubt, spell it out.
• Foster a sense of community in your classroom. Students want a sense of connection with each other and to their instructors but are often intimidated to seek that out.  Regularly encourage students to come and see you, even if it is just to introduce themselves.  One SFU instructor made a practice of this and had 390 students out of a class of 450 visit him by the end of the term.  Create opportunities for students to connect with each other, such as frequent “pair and share” discussions in large lectures. Encourage them to exchange contact information and form study groups.
• Provide reality checks about upcoming deadlines. Even a reminder as simple as “Your papers are due in 2 weeks.  If you haven’t started yours yet, you are now at the last minute” can make a difference.
• Help students familiarize themselves with SFU resources.  For example, add links for the Student Learning Commons, Health and Counselling Services, the Centre for Students with Disabilities, Academic Advising, and other services to your class’ WebCT page.  Show your students the SLC’s “New to SFU?” web page or ask for copies of the SLC handout, “Moving from High School to University – a road map” to distribute to your class.

These simple suggestions could make a significant improvement to our students’ learning experience. Imagine the difference we could make to our students if each member of the SFU community did his or her part in easing the transition from high school.

If the transition is tough for most students, imagine how difficult it must be for international students coping with the transition in an unfamiliar language, from a high school system that bears even less resemblance to SFU than the BC secondary system.  Stay tuned to Teaching and Learning News for an upcoming feature of our BOT series that considers the problems facing international students new to SFU.

For more information about the Back on Track program, please contact Annette Santos at avsantos@sfu.ca.

Have you had experience with the Back on Track program?  Give us your feedback in the comments below.

In the second part of our Back on Track series, David Lindskoog, a Career Advisor at Career Services, let’s us in on some of his ideas about students’ academic success and the career connection.

I can picture the scenario vividly: there I am, in my small, dimly lit office at SFU Career Services, listening carefully to a student vocalizing his or her anxieties about career direction and the paralysis of indecision, lost in an endless sea of invisible options.  The conversation is going something like this:

Student – “I don’t know what my options are.  I don’t even know what to study.

Me – It sounds like you’re feeling pretty lost.  Let me ask you something: When you first decided to come to university, where were you hoping that would take you?

Student – Well, to be honest I didn’t know.  I thought going to school would help me get a decent job, so I chose my degree based on what I thought would get me there. It turns out I didn’t do so well in my first year.”

I’ve heard this kind of story more times than I care to count.

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Are you curious about which teaching strategies or instructional practices resonate with SFU students? Would you like to know students’ views on a particular teaching or instructional challenge that you or your colleagues are facing? The Teaching and Learning Centre anticipates that many instructors will answer “yes” to these questions, so, in partnership with the Student Learning Commons and Student Services, we are launching Student Voices. In this column, we will pose your questions related to teaching and learning to SFU students and print selected responses.

For the first column, we asked four upper division students who volunteer at the Student Learning Commons about what professors can do to make exams or final assignments a positive and manageable experience for students:

QUESTION: What stories can you share about effective ways that instructors prepare students for exams and final assignments?

ANSWERS:

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By Barry Shell

Project leaders Donna McGee-Thompson and Diana Cukierman are proud of what they have achieved with the AEP

One summer day in 2006, Computing Science academic advisor Margo Leight decided to call the Student Learning Commons (SLC) in the SFU Library. She was concerned that some of her students seemed overwhelmed, lost, and desperate about their coursework. They were not managing their time well and they were approaching the end of the semester with problems that should have been addressed much earlier. She wanted to do something proactive. “Instead of waiting until the students failed, the idea was to do something earlier to help them,” says Diana Cukierman, senior lecturer in Computing Science. Some optional out-of-class orientation sessions were offered, but attendance was poor and the students who needed to be there did not come. So Cukierman teamed up with Donna McGee Thompson, Learning Services Coordinator in the SLC. “We concluded it had to be a course requirement, and we’d need faculty on board,” says McGee Thompson.

After a successful pilot stage in 2006-07, Cukierman and McGee Thompson’s Academic Enhancement Program (AEP) was made a required part of the Computing Science curriculum. Instructors in participating courses were asked to allot one two-hour lab slot per course to AEP, where students participated in a workshop or an assignment aimed at improving their studying and learning skills. To date, AEP has helped more than 3,200 students in 38 different courses. “The program became a required part of Computing Science because the department saw the value of the program for supporting student performance,” says Cukierman. Advisors also reported that AEP students were bringing more in-depth questions to appointments.

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