UNews - Cliff Lobe

RRP finds success points

trevor.kenney — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 16:05:22 +0000

It’s been nearly three years since the Recruitment and Retention Project team was established, and over that time a number of student-focused initiatives have been put in motion. To date, there have been 13 projects delivered or in the process of being delivered.

Responding to the needs recommended by student associations, units on campus, as well as many learner focus groups, this collaborative team has provided a rich environment of ideas to be acted upon in the pursuit of serving learners, helping create a real sense of community and support on campus that aligns with President Dr. Mike Mahon’s vision of a destination university.

“The RRP team’s energy, dedication and commitment in guiding and delivering these innovative projects focused on the recruitment and retention of our students is outstanding,” says ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Provost and Vice President (Academic), Dr. Andrew Hakin.

Student success is at the heart of the RRP team's mission.

As the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ opens the Fall 2013 Semester, four more projects are moving forward, all examples of the co-operative effort that has been a hallmark of the RRP mission:

• The introduction of an online graduate application process under the leadership of Alice Miller (Admissions) has put to rest a timely, labour-intensive paper application system and help streamline the manner in which students apply for graduate school.

• Predictive Modeling, under the leadership of Mandy Moser (Institutional Analysis) for early intervention with an applicant to enrolment model, as well as a student retention model to aid Faculties and campus services to direct their future actions with greater efficiency and effectiveness, thereby increasing the likelihood of student success.

• The business case and analysis for new housing led to the opening of Mt. Blakiston House this fall, the newest campus residence building, directly targeted at retaining learners into their second year and beyond, all the while freeing up additional rooms for first-year learners.

• With the guidance of James Graham (New Media), the innovative online virtual campus environment created by the RAVE project will be introduced this fall, allowing users to virtually visit campus in a 3D environment. It allows peopl to get a look at all of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ’s facilities and services, granting users a sense of the campus community available to them.

“The entire Recruitment and Retention project has been very collaborative from the beginning,” says Heather Mirau, director Integrated Planning. “The RRP team and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ community have all been fantastic, and the spirit I’ve encountered while working on these projects has been fabulous. It’s the students who benefit from this work, and that has been the goal of this project from day one.”

Mirau credits the success of the Recruitment and Retention Project due to the strong support from students, faculty and staff, and senior leaders. Much change has taken place in just a few years with nine initiatives piloted (four more are in the process of being delivered), which is testament to the broad support the project has received.

“I look at the Game Day Shirt project under the leadership of Trevor Flexhaug that grew out of work from the Enhancing Community & School Spirit subject matter team,” says Mirau. “The project team thought a great way to enhance Pronghorn pride on campus would be to encourage faculty, staff and students to wear Game Day Shirts on the day of Pronghorn Athletics games. It started small and now we have a number of campus units requesting shirts so that they too can take part.”

While some of the projects are focused on pride building, others are academically focused, such as the introduction of the Liberal Education 2850 course. Described as “Mapping Self, Career, Campus, Community”, the course was introduced as a pilot for the Spring 2013 semester and went over extremely well with students. Designed to help students with the transition to university life, it provides an active learning component focussing on the U of L’s student resources, including those that are imperative in supporting student success from their first semester through to graduation.

“It was very encouraging to see the positive comments students had for the LBED 2850 class,” says project team leader, Dan Kazakoff (Management). “It was evident that many students appreciated the exposure to the value of our liberal education foundation and the many support services that are at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge to help them reach their goals. The key in the future will be to learn from the pilot class and expand the number of first-year students exposed to such an endeavour. A big thank you to Dr. Jan Newberry who taught the pilot class.”

The reworking of the Writing Centre within the Academic Writing Program provides students with a wider base of support within a multi-disciplinary approach.

“The greater level of support and expertise now enables writing skills and methods to be targeted to the various disciplines and needs of students,” says Dr. Cliff Lobe, coordinator of the Academic Writing Program.

The academic support project led by Dr. Heidi MacDonald (History) provided further emphasis on tutoring and learning strategists. This project resulted in several professors piloting the very successful visit from campus service professionals to their classes and the establishment of the 24-hour Collaborative Learning Centre (W650).

Other initiatives established through the Recruitment and Retention Project include the Learning Circles pilot project under the leadership of Dr. Craig Milner, the introduction of a Campus Information Services outlet, a campus service web page design, a services for students web page providing one online location for student support connections, and a Fun With Math program created through the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science with leadership from Dr. Hadi Kharaghani. Other project proposals have received approval for delivery over the next year.

“There’s been a real emphasis on talking to our learners and finding out what supports they need to be successful,” says Mirau. “We are trying to give them every opportunity to find that success. It starts with getting them engaged with our community the day they walk through the front door and then reinforcing those supports as they work their way through to graduation.”

For a look at the RRP team and for more on the project, visit www.uleth.ca/recruitment-retention.

Student success at the heart of RRIP project

trevor.kenney — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 21:35:00 +0000

By HEIDI MACDONALD

Providing students with the tools and resources for success is at the heart of the Student Success Subject Matter Team (SMT), which was formed as part of the Recruitment Retention Integrated Planning (RRIP) project.

Focus groups with students, faculty and student service resource departments identified a wide variety of needs and created a number of recommendations for increasing academic support for students.

Tutoring was the most common recommendation, and not just within a discipline but also for developing students' academic skills, including effective studying, note taking and time management. The team recommended three related items: a pilot tutoring program, expanded learning strategist services and a revitalized writing centre.

Increasing academic support with pilot tutoring projects has proven to be very successful with helping students achieve their goals.

The Academic Writing Program and the Department of Biological Sciences participated in the spring 2012 pilot tutoring project and designed programs they felt would best serve their students. About 240 students from WRIT 1000 were offered weekly, apprentice-style workshops that encouraged student initiative, while the Department of Biological Sciences offered the 200 students enrolled in BIOL 1010 a combination of study skills and review sessions. In both instances, students whom instructors considered at risk of failing or withdrawing were offered one-on-one sessions with peer tutors.

Once completed, students were asked to evaluate the two pilot tutoring programs. Eighty percent of biology students who participated found the sessions useful, and data showed that these students also achieved higher mid-term grades than those who did not attend. As well, a higher percentage of students successfully completed BIOL 1010 in the spring semester compared to the previous spring when no formal review sessions were offered.

The study skills sessions were also well received by BIOL 1010 students. Attendance at these sessions was 85 per cent of the class enrollment, with 98 per cent of those rating the sessions as useful.

Feedback from academic writing students was also overwhelmingly positive.

"Students seemed to enjoy the opportunity to meet informally, outside of the classroom, to discuss concepts from Writing 1000 with instructors, tutors, and their peers and to put their rhetorical skills into practice in a workshop format," says Dr. Cliff Lobe, co-ordinator of the Academic Writing Program. "The workshops gave students another forum in which to develop as academic readers, writers and thinkers."

Based on such positive student feedback, the tutoring programs will return for the fall 2012 semester.

"It's important that we connect with our students early in the term and make them aware of these sessions before anyone becomes discouraged or disengaged," says Dr. Roy Golsteyn, associate professor of biological sciences. "Most students will benefit from review sessions, because they offer a new way of hearing lecture material and an engaging environment in which to ask questions."

The pilot tutoring program will be expanded in the fall with the addition of courses from management, health sciences and possibly fine arts. It should be noted that some departments, including mathematics and computer science have been running effective tutoring programs for several years, and much can also be learned from their success.

In addition to the need for discipline specific tutoring, the Student Success team identified a need for supporting students to become more effective learners. As a result, a full-time learning strategist, Jennifer McArthur, was hired to assist students in both individual and group settings to learn skills such as time management, reading a textbook effectively and preparing for exams.

The third prong of the SMT recommendations was to revitalize the writing centre. A full-time writing centre director, aligned with the Academic Writing Program, will be hired over the summer to address this need.

Heidi MacDonald is the Leader of the Student Success SMT

This story first appeared in the June 2012 issue of the Legend. For a look at the entire issue in flipbook format, follow this link.

Library debuts series of online tools

trevor.kenney — Tue, 03 May 2011 15:41:10 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Library continues to seek ways by which it can further serve its students. The latest example of this is the development of a number of online modules designed to help students become more familiar with the research process and Library resources.

In January, the library strengthened its existing partnership with Academic Writing by launching a series of online learning modules for students enrolled in Writing 1000 (Introduction to Academic Writing). The modules include videos, worksheets, and quizzes, with content that covers topics such as narrowing down a research question, using library databases, evaluating information sources and formatting citations.

"Good academic writing goes hand in hand with good research, with information literacy," says Academic Writing Program co-ordinator Cliff Lobe. "We've been pleased to work with the library to help students develop both skills simultaneously."

Information literacy, the ability to recognize when information is needed and be able to locate, evaluate, and make effective use of information, is becoming increasingly recognized as an essential skill.

Over the last few years, it has become common practice for a librarian to visit each section of the Writing 1000 class at least once per semester to introduce students to finding and evaluating key library resources to support the successful completion of the course's major research paper. While the partnership has been a positive one, both the writing instructors and librarians felt that students were not getting all they needed to become proficient researchers. There was simply too much material to cover over the time presented by a three-credit course.

The library had discussed putting more instruction resources online, and with the advantage of having a full-time intern with a background in education on staff this past term, the project took shape. Intern Librarian Heather Nicholson, with support from librarian Rumi Graham, has largely been responsible for developing the online modules.

The added advantage of the online component is that students can work through the material at their own pace and return to topics later on for review. These tools also provide additional library support to the growing number of U of L students enrolled in courses in Calgary and Edmonton. Looking ahead, the plan is to work over the summer to modify the modules based on student feedback and work to make them available on Moodle and through the Library's website for the fall semester.

Librarians are always eager to have the opportunity to work with faculty to provide information literacy instruction to students. This latest initiative is in addition to the two credit courses taught in library science each term and the many library instruction sessions taught in faculties across campus.

Instructors are encouraged to contact their subject liaison librarians to arrange instruction sessions for their individual classes.

This story first appeared in the Legend. For a look at the Legend in a flipbook format, follow this link.

Library debuts series of online tools

trevor.kenney — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 21:15:17 +0000

Instructors are encouraged to contact their subject liaison librarians to arrange instruction sessions for their individual classes.

For a look at the Legend in a flipbook format, follow this link.

UNews - Cliff Lobe

RRP finds success points

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