Helping students reflect on the end of the year

At our institution, there is a twice monthly digest of sorts that goes out to the students.  We each take a turn writing the introduction to the digest.  I wrote on reflecting on the end of the year.  The short text that for the digest is below, but it led me to thinking about how to bookend the first year. A tremendous amount of energy goes into the transition, but what about the closing.  We all know that the first year at a college or university is a special time.  I will be spending some time reflecting on how to incorporate a tradition into the end of the year at my institution.  Please comment on what you do at your institution.

Digest text:

In April, it can seem like the chaos of the year will never end.  There are finals, projects, labs, and papers to be done.  Sports, clubs and other groups are all organizing end of the year activities.  The weather is warmer and signs of spring are everywhere.  Opening Day at Fenway Park is just around the corner.  The end of the year is a good time to reflect on your experience so far at Wentworth. Take some time to relax and find a quiet space somewhere on campus.  Reflecting includes the good and the bad.  Was this a good year for you?  What kind of person did you become this year?  Are you the person that you want to be?

The end of the year is also a great time to review old expectations and think about new hopes.  At the beginning of this year, what did you hope to achieve?  Don’t be too hard on yourself, yet be honest with yourself.  Time management is often difficult for students to master.  Was this an issue for you? Did you get better at it over the course of the year? Were there other things that threw you off track?  When you are reflecting on the year, don’t forget to celebrate achievements and the fun things in life. Focus on how you were successful and think about how to build on those strengths.  Don’t wait until next year. Think about the person you want to become in all areas of your life and start being that person now.

 

LMS, FYS, going green and other fun things

Almost two weeks ago I presented at the NASPA conference on Infusing Technology into Student Affairs.  While the presentation focused on developing strategic partnerships to utilize your Learning Management System (LMS), we also discussed tapping into free technology solutions such as big huge labs, creating word art, and googledocs to create learner centered classrooms.   I love big huge labs in particular as they allow you to make successories style posters, among other cool things.  It is a great tool to engage your students around copyright, creative commons and other ethical/legal issues.

In any case, I was reading Wesley Fryer’s Speed of Creativity blog the other day and he featured edmodo.com, a social network for the classroom.  You can check out his great instructive blog post here: http://tinyurl.com/ykfbr4f

This fit in well with what we discussed during the NASPA presentation. Edmodo.com can make your First Year Seminar class paperless and develop some online community, almost like a cross between Ning.com and a Learning Management System.   Because I use Blackboard, my institution’s Learning Management System, I haven’t tried out Edmodo.com yet, but I am intrigued by the possibility and may be using it for some upcoming Orientation staff training.

At my institution, we decided to move the First Year Seminar to our Learning Management System for a variety of reasons.   The largest reason was philosophical.  Many of our major classes use Blackboard in the first semester to post lecture notes, syllabi and tests or quizzes.  Therefore, it made sense that the First Year Seminar acclimate students to using our LMS.  We built one of the first seminars around accessing and gaining familiarity with the most commonly used tools Blackboard.  The rest of the seminar then used Blackboard as a supplement to the face to face classes, allowing students to gain a tremendous comfort level with the platform before they took their first test or quiz.

The other main benefit is that the LMS, like edmodo.com, is web-based.   This allows both instructors and students to access the course from anywhere.  For students, we posted a helpful resources folder that contained a guide to Boston as well as links to time management tools and other helpful items.  Students could access this folder from anywhere they had an internet connection.  Instructors could prep their classes at home without lugging binders around.  Using an LMS facilitated an easier connection to the course as well as allowed us to go “paperless” and live up to the commitment to be more environmentally responsible.

The best part about moving to an LMS was that it was free.  We ended up with a more environmentally friendly class that gave students the opportunity to practice a vital skill needed for success at our institution.  To boot, we ended up with easier facilitation of the class for instructors and a more mobile version for the students.  It was a win-win for us.

Chances are very good that you already have an LMS on your campus.  Find the instructional designers or academic technology people in the phone directory and call them up (or email them).  Find out what they have and whether or not you can tap into it.  Start collaborating across the digital divide.  If you run into roadblocks, trying checking out edmodo.com as an option.

 

Those bumps in the road

Today, we were scheduled to begin training our student leaders.  Yes, spring training, although we do not get to join the Red Sox in sunny Ft. Myers.   Our focus for this weekend of training is team building, professionalism and campus resources.  Ironically, upon arrival today, we as professionals experienced a slight bump in the road.

Our network was down.  A phone message let us know that it might be early afternoon when we could access our email, shared drives, printers and faxes.  Needless to say, this challenged us.  All of our presentations and schedules live on our common/shared drives, which we could not access.  All of the work that we had done to prepare for our three day training, including an overnight retreat, was inaccessible.  No power points, no hand outs, no lists.

My colleagues amazed me.  This is how I know how versatile student affairs professionals can be.  We did presentations from memory.  We incorporated the network outage into lessons about professionalism.  We talked about how when you take responsibility for doing something, you do it to the best of your ability.  We discussed that it was unacceptable for us to throw up our hands and say, “oh well, no training for you.” We talked about how life will unexpectedly toss you curveball and the mark of a true student leader is how you respond.  Are you an amateur who just gives up or a professional that makes things happen?  We got down into the nitty-gritty with our students and turned it into a teachable moment.  We hand wrote a check-in sheet so we can make sure that everyone gets on the bus this afternoon.  We laughed publically and made jokes.  We made sure we didn’t convey stress.  It turned out to be a good training morning. 

I wonder how much more effective this training on professionalism will be compared the past trainings where we stood in front of the class, prepared with our Power Points and handouts.  How often do we get to role model working through a challenging situation?  We work with students as they grapple with these types of situations, but how often do they get to see a team of SA professional join together to overcome a bump in the road? What intangible things did our students learn from us today about what true value of professionalism is?

 

conferencing…

I am here at the NASPA2010 annual conference in the great city of Chicago. While the weather has left something to be desired, the conference so far has been great.  I spent some time exploring Universal Design principles, thought critically about how my institution engages commuter and adult students and listened to a fantastic group of educators explain how they expanded their common reading program into a full fledged experience.  The most thought provoking part of my day was the keynote speech with Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State under George W. Bush.   I confess I arrived at the session ambivalent and not really sure what to expect.  To my surprise, she was funny, relevant and engaging.  Dr. Rice shared personal stories about higher education based on her experiences as a student, professor and provost.   She told poignant stories about a crisis of confidence that caused her to change her major, the value of education in her family and her father’s legacy as a student affairs professional.

As intellectually stimulating as this day was, my key take away from the day had nothing to do with the sessions I attended.  For some reason, as I was making my way to the 8:30 AM session with Dr. Rice, I found the conference venue incredibly difficult to navigate. I felt like I was surrounded by people I did not know, who all seemed to know each other.   I felt stressed that if I didn’t arrive on time, I would be embarrassed to walk in late to the session.  I got annoyed that there weren’t very good signs pointing the way.  I almost gave up trying to find the session.

As I was on the verge of retreating back to my hotel room, I realized this was the first time in years I had been immersed in something completely foreign and new.  If you were at the conference you might have seen the light bulb go on over my head as I stood there with a dumbfounded look on my face.  That was me blocking the escalator (sorry!). I was viscerally  experiencing some of the feelings that my first year students experience on their first days on campus.  Don’t get me wrong, I try new things, especially technological things, in my job all the time.  I try new food, new restaurants, new work outs and new routes to work.  However, all of those things have an element of familiarity to them.  This was different as I was completely encompassed, completely in this new, foreign experience.   I may start a new project at work, but I am comfortable in my job.  I may try a new restaurant, but with old friends.  Very rarely am I in a new environment surrounded by unfamiliar faces trying to find my way.

As I literally struggled to find my way  through the conference, I pledged to remember this feeling as I work through the craziness that is August in Student Affairs.  I also decided to make sure I get completely immersed in something new and foreign every once in awhile.  It is a powerful reminder of the experience of our new students