Strategies for bringing more “career” into Academic Advising practice

Background

• Academic Advising is about student learning

• The world changed

• Student expectations changed

I want to take a course!

CONTEXT

START AT THE END AND WORK BACKWARDS

CONTEXT

CONTEXTthe situation within which something exists or happens

CONTEXT

START AT THE END AND WORK BACKWARDS• This process provides the structure for students to make

sense of how post secondary works

• Invite a student to “play” with this process – it helps with the “anxiety” behind the dream

• Imagine the “furthest” future possibility to establish the most accurate context

• The process provides the structure to support info about how post secondary works

START AT THE END AND WORK BACKWARDS• Rapport building

• Listen to their story

• Find out what they know

• Invite them to “play around” with this idea

• What vision got them to into your institution

Questions and comments?

Lynda WarrenCoordinator Academic AdvisingCamosun Collegewarrenl@camosun.bc.ca250 370-3578

Strategies for bringing more “career” into Academic Advising practice

Slide 1

Hope - to have you go away with a new/repurposed strategy and most importantly to have some fun and laughs

WHERE PEOPLE ARE FROM – COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY?

- Administrators? Academic Advisors? - How long have you been Advising?

Interesting to see if experience is the same or different depending on institution

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Slide 2

Background

How did this work/strategy/process come about?

Questioned - How can we be educators and yet our students do not understand how post-secondary works.

Students see the “stuff of post-secondary” as confusing random info, strange words (like course, program, admission, enrollment, and registration) and baffling processes without a clear understanding of the “big picture view”.

Internet, social media has changed the expectations about the post- secondary system.

World was simpler – things were things – want to be a Nurse look for a Nursing program, want to be a Teacher look for the Teacher Education program.

- Only a few things were a little less obvious as to the path to take such as Medicine, or Dentistry.

The post-secondary system has exploded: thousands of programs, designation change of institutions, BCTransfer system changes, student mobility patterns and along with it the expections.

Most things aren’t things any longer – Notary, Land surveyor, Grant Writer – take a look at job postings

Over the last few years, I have worked with new to PS students….who “wanted to upgrade”

Who are the students? – shiny new and babes in the flowers when it comes to PSec.

Slide 3

Slide 4

What did I learn about students and myself when these upgrading students sat down and said, “I want to take a course”.

What did they mean? “I want to take a course”… that’s like walking into a hardware store and saying, “I want to buy something”.

How can you begin to answer that question without a lot more info…(what are your interests, part time, full time, educational/career goal,

ASK AUDIENCE FOR EXAMPLES

(what are your interests, part time, full time, educational/career goal, student loan, self-funded, transfer)

Then I realized the truth behind my angst…

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Slide 5

Hopes, dreams, wishes, fears, doubt, self-perception, history, beliefs, myths etc framed that question – and they are hoping for or expecting the magic answer

How do you go from asking a million clarifying questions as we just demonstrated to hopes and dreams?

Two simple concepts…

Slide 6

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Slide 7

Context – SAY WHAT?

Definition and double entendre

Context is one of the most important concepts for the practice of Academic Advising

And one of the most important concepts for students to understand before they learn how the post-secondary system works

Change one thing and everything changes

ASK – what kinds of courses/options might you suggest if a student said they wanted to take English 12?

Change the context (what if they want to take English 12 to finish their Alberta High School grad) – now how does this change your answer

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Slide 8

START AT THE END AND WORK BACKWARDS– it helps with the “anxiety” behind the dream

Slide 9

This is where the fun begins

Move to an example

Audience – real example – UVic told her to go to Camosun and take UT courses

I looked at her transcript and could see why

Let’s open the present and see where we when

Art therapist – not specific job but did know something about it

BC Association of Art Therapists

Adler University, Concordia…

BFA – Psyc minor

Camosun – UT or Visual Arts

How differently this could have gone if we just explored 8 UT courses with no context?