Get Your Students Hired
This is a general discussion forum for the following learning topic:
Students as Customers --> Advising Students
Post what you've learned about this topic and how you intend to apply it. Feel free to post questions and comments too.
Adult learners bring their own experience and expectations to the university experience. By being open minded, willing to guide but also to change my approach, I can better meet their needs. Developmental advising is about learning for both sides.
Understand that most of our Adult students have busy lives with work, family, and important life commitments. Make plans with them so they have a clear guide to follow and try to be flexible where available. Advise them on where their strengths and weaknesses are and what can be done to improve.
Help students identify resources such as financial aid programs or scholarships during advisements. Financial issues can hinder a student's ability to learn because of added stress.
Developmental advising focuses on the student as a whole. For adult students to be successful in their educational growth they should have the opportunity to sit with a knowledgeable person and develop obtainable goals such as class schedules and costs to work around their current responsibilities and make a manageable plan for achieving their goals.
Be a bit more flexible. Set short and long term goals for the studnets achievement.
Comment on Scott Rogers's post: I agree, it is important to understand the student goals and to be supportive of the students.
Students will come to instructors for advise and value their input. As advisors, we must consider different perspectives before giving recommendations. A good approach to this would be exploring life goals, career goals, and then looking into educational choices such as what program/course to join.
When advising please make sure you understand their degree paths and what's needed for them to be successful. I hear it all the time that student advisors were unsure of some things related to their students they are advising.
Prescriptive advising is factual answers, concrete answers. Developmental advising is different than prescriptive advising because it involves a more theoretical stance following cognitive development theory, psychosocial theory, and person-environmental interaction theory. Both the student and the advisor take responsibility for the advising but allows the student to take responsibility for his or her decision. Advising steps may include exploration of life goals, and vocational goals, program choice, course choice and scheduling classes. I will focus my attention on the student showing a caring attitude, be an open listener, and advise the student as necessary.
Am currently not assigned advisees since they enroll in a designated career path; hence, am not involved with recommending sequence of scheduling courses since curriculum plan is already determined. Also, institution has limited other career tracks for a student to pursue if the program they are pursuing does not mesh for them personally.
Holistic approach to advising is well taken by the students. They always have many things going on in their lives and the advising session is a great place to unload stressors.
When implementing developmental academic advising as an Instructor you must have an understanding of your students.
I was challenged in my role for successful student advising. As per Crockston, the result will vary in degrees of learning by both the student and advisor however the student will need to take responsibility for his or her actions and decisions.
We need to be able to listen to our students. If they are asking a question, that we feel needs more attention; then we have a responsiablilty to get the anwers for the students. If it is a personal question then find them the rescources that they need to help them. Nothing is ever black and white, their always some gray area.
There are different approaches to student advising. It is important to go beyond what the student needs at that particular instant and provide guidance for personal, academic, and professional development.