Dec 3-7

This week, I received feedback on the blog post I wrote last week. I spent time making edits to my post. I also shadowed another advisor in her advising appointments. I wanted to shadow at this time of the year because I guessed that some of the questions students are asking are a little different than what they were asking during express advising. I thought they might be asking about summer classes, current classes, and very random questions rather than asking to course plan for next semester. One of the students that the advisor met with was one of my students for express advising so I was happy that he made a follow-up appointment for an important decision he was making. Another student was on probation and so the advisor and I did some debriefing after the appointment so that I could see how the advisor filled out the form. From that appointment, I realized how important it would be for any probation student to meet with their advisor more than any other advisor because that advisor knows best what the student is going through and what the issues are. Some of those issues can be personal or embarrassing so the student may not want to tell multiple advisors. I also looked over two petitions and made my decisions about those. Finally, I went to the staff meeting on Friday.

I read "Assessing the Effectiveness of a College Freshman Seminar Using Propensity Score Adjustments" by Clark and Cundiff (2011). This article affirmed my questions about freshman seminars. I have never been convinced that they are useful. From personal experience, I don't even remember what material was covered in my freshman seminar. I have a very small recollection about anything in that class. However, I taught GS 101 to large lectures and all DGS students must take it once. As I was putting together my presentation on registration, I kept thinking that the students will not retain any of this information but they also won't ask any questions about it either. I questioned the purpose of GS 101. This article studied the effects of a freshman seminar class on GPA and retention rates. They found that the students who took the freshman seminar and those that didn't were not different a year later on GPA or retention rates. This is a concerning finding considering that freshman seminars take up resources and students have to pay tuition towards the credit. While the freshman seminar sounds like a good idea in theory, this study seriously questions the seminar's importance. Being that University of Illinois is a research institution, I would hope that it took the time to research the effectiveness and importance (or lack thereof) of freshman seminar classes before implementing them.
I also read "The Development, Implementation, and Assessment of a Systematic Academic Advising Program for Exploratory First-Year Students". I liked this article because it gave an overview of the effectiveness of the undeclared program at Penn State. The students who completed certain guides to help them discover a major were more prepared in their advising appointment to register for classes and think about a major choice compared to students who simply read the guides but did not complete them. The goal of these guides was to increase the amount that the student contributed to their own educational path. Thus, they found the guides to be helpful, if the student did them, because the student was active in the exploration process. I really enjoyed learning about the program at Penn State and it was exciting to see that it has been successful. I think a program like this could be helpful for DGS because throughout my internship, I would read petitions where they would be accepted and sometimes part of the reason was because they were freshmen so they just didn't know the information. In my opinion, this is a poor excuse in most cases and it seems like the program at Penn State could help eliminate the lack of information students know.

I spent about 3.5 hours shadowing and debriefing about appointments, 45 minutes reviewing petitions, 1.5 hours editing my blog post and reading past DGS posts, and 45 minutes in the staff meeting. I also met with the Director and spoke with her about my career and being a reference for me as I start to apply to jobs. I had another advisor review my resume and give me feedback. I spent about 45 minutes working on these career plans. I also read materials for 30 minutes on autism that the advisors received when they had a guest speaker come in on a day that I am not at DGS. I blogged and read for about 2 hours.

Clark, M. H. & Cundiff, N. L. (2011). Assessing the effectiveness of a college freshman seminar using propensity score adjustments. Research in Higher Education, 52, 616-639. doi: 10.1007/s11162-010-9208-x

Sams, W. P., Brown, L. S., Hussey, R. B., Leonard, M. J. (2003). The development, implementation, and assessment of a systematic academic advising program for exploratory first-year students. NACADA Journal, 23(1&2), 75-84.