In catching up on a backlog of reading, I have become aware of a controversy regarding the nature of learning. One writer, Downes, an advocate of connectivism as an approach to learning, has taken some criticism from Wiley for unnecessarily complicating the issues of learning. Downes seems to have problems with notions of learning that are characterised as transfer, transmission, or replication. Much of what I have to say regarding their argument probably has more to do with my background in linguistics and philosophy, rather than a genuine deep reading of Downes and Wiley, but still, it may contribute something of worth to the discussion.
Michael Reddy has articulted some of the difficulties inhent in characterising communication as a transfer of information. The chief objection is due primarily to the grounding of understnding in experience and the essential non-linear nature of experience. While a view of learning as the accumulation of information and skill at handling it may provide us a simple metaphor to characterise our relationships in learning communities, it represents an oversimplification. Eistein has encouraged us all that our theories should be as simple as possible, but he goes on to warn us that they should be 'no simpler'. It is necessary for us to have a deeper insight into learning than would be satisfied with a definition of it as transfer or transmission of information. Part of the problem with this is a faulty segregation of the experience into a content stream and a form (medium) stream.
A superficial study of the field of education as it exists in the world today may lead people to conclude that democracy is inherent in the education process, that education breaks down the divisions of society and allows educated people to better themselves. However, the traditional forms of education tend to perpetuate distinctionand division in the world between authority and citizen, master and disciple, degree-holder and degree-seeker. This current system in education is petuating elitism, rather than democracy.
All this is not to say that the education system has been harmful overall. There was a time when information was scarce in the world and when people needed considerable time to learn how to find reliable data. In such a restricted world, it was easy to conceive of the classroom as the proper construct of a learning environment. However, today's world of social media has changed the imperative of the classroom from 'inform' to 'connect'. This, I believe is where Downes' approach would take us.
At the same time, Wiley's call not to entirely scrap a working system has value for us in the sense that many currently successful scholars will not willingly shift from the old paradigm to a new one, when the old one seems to be working for them. For example, when the Duke Univ. School of Nursing set up its online school virtual learning environment (see DUSON in Second life) and could have chosen from a wide range of interactive frameworks, they chose the metaphor of a classroom. We have a need for familiar contexts, even when new frameworks would better serve us.
Showing posts with label university. Show all posts
Showing posts with label university. Show all posts
02 July 2011
19 January 2011
Starting a New Year
This semester, I am teaching three courses (with two sections of the science writing course), so I have been quite busy setting courses up and introducing students to the Moodle course pages and the social media tools I use in education. Although I have a small business in educational support (mentioned in other posts), I am employed by Thompson Rivers University to teach these particular courses this semester. It is important for me to state clearly that the opinions and claims made in this blog are my own and should not be taken to reflect TRU policies at any organizational level.
In the courses I am teaching, I have assigned each student to establish and contribute to a blog.Students in the science writing course have been encouraged to create a blog on some aspect of science they are interested in. Students in the professional and business writing courses have been encouraged to create the sort of blog that could support some serious academic, professional, or business endeavor. Some of the students are quite eager to begin blogging, while others are unsure of a topic to settle on. Once every student is on board with this project, I should have about 150 new blogs to add to my reading list. I hope I can keep up with them!
Along with writing in their own blogs, I am encouraging students to read each other's blogs. I intend to use this format as a forum where students can practice the skills of dialogue (reading, commenting, quoting, linking, and so forth) in the blogosphere. Although it is not a requirement for the courses, I hope that my students will get readers from the 'outside'. Even a few scholars or professionals who would interact with the students would significantly raise the self-image of these new writers. Future entries on this blog will likely link to many of these new student blogs.
In the courses I am teaching, I have assigned each student to establish and contribute to a blog.Students in the science writing course have been encouraged to create a blog on some aspect of science they are interested in. Students in the professional and business writing courses have been encouraged to create the sort of blog that could support some serious academic, professional, or business endeavor. Some of the students are quite eager to begin blogging, while others are unsure of a topic to settle on. Once every student is on board with this project, I should have about 150 new blogs to add to my reading list. I hope I can keep up with them!
Along with writing in their own blogs, I am encouraging students to read each other's blogs. I intend to use this format as a forum where students can practice the skills of dialogue (reading, commenting, quoting, linking, and so forth) in the blogosphere. Although it is not a requirement for the courses, I hope that my students will get readers from the 'outside'. Even a few scholars or professionals who would interact with the students would significantly raise the self-image of these new writers. Future entries on this blog will likely link to many of these new student blogs.
21 July 2009
On the Aims of Consultation
Introduction
Students in the 21st Century have a considerable range of choices available to them in regard to completing formal education programs. University campuses are opening in more and more remote communities, and advances in technology have made distance education much more attractive than it was formerly. It is now quite possible and affordable for students to complete many programs entirely by distance education, and many residents of communities too small for a university program have chosen this route to acquire the academic degrees they desire. Not only are undergraduate university programs being offered, there are also increasing graduate programs that are available for students to complete while they stay in remote locations close to their families, their employment, and their social networks. The rise in quality and availability of distance education is very good news for those who want to pursue university education without relocating to university towns or who want to complete a university program on a personal schedule that does not allow for attendance at classes on a typical university's schedule.
An important aspect of education that may be lost in this sort of academic program done at a distance is that of individual consultation. This is the focus of this present essay. The claim to be discussed herein is that there are four aspects of individual consultation that must not be overlooked, if students are to take proper responsibility and have true ownership of their education. These involve the provision for planning of an education, adequate security for learners, some contexts that are non-competitive, and the exploration of and reflection upon one's individual learning experience.
Planning
We will look first at the planning aspect of consultation.
Education in the past and in the classroom is a series of events that is planned by an educational institution. The benefit of this planning is that it is (often) based upon well-researched, well-thought-out approaches to adult learning at an individual level. Also often (not always), the conversion of education from the classroom to online media involves the mere placing of materials (not always, but often text) on web pages where registered students can access them. Assignments are aimed at a clear objective: Students demonstrate competence in understanding, performing tasks, or expressing attitudes that are sought in the course taken. Students are only involved in the planning of education insofar as they pick from (an often very small roster of) electives in their programs. At times, courses may involve students' choosing from among various ways to demonstrate their competence at demonstrating knowledge, skills or attitudes, but such courses are still in the minority of university course offerings.
The paradox of online education from the perspective of students today is that they must somehow personalize what is provided as a "one size fits all" approach to learning. They must find how they will benefit individually from taking a particular course and completing a particular program of instruction. Thus, in an environment where students are controlled, they must find ways to take charge of their own education.
The most convenient way for students to individualize their education is with the help of a consultant, who will probe the individual's educational history, interests, and aptitudes and monitor her or his experience in courses s/he takes. This sort of consultation is often seen to be the province of university academic advisors, but these are often classroom instructors with full academic loads who have little time for personal consultation with more than a handful of students assigned as their 'advisees'. Generally, advising schedules allow only about 15 minutes of personal attention to anywhere from a dozen to a hundred potential students, depending upon the university and program. These interactions are generally held twice yearly during the fall and spring advising periods (about two weeks prior to the pre-enrolment for the following semester.
It is the claim of this present essay, that such advising falls well short of the personal attention students need from consultants to help assure them of proper individualization and ownership of their educational program. Rather, students would be better served by the availability of a consultant throughout their learning experience and by sessions of about an hour each month during their formal program to monitor their experience and to cultivate a relationship that will put students at ease at a very difficult phase of their lives.
While it is good to provide opportunity for students to be more proactive in setting their own academic course and monitoring their own progress, it is also true that proper consultation provides added security to students in their academic careers.
Security
In the classroom, security is found by attending to the materials produced by the course instructor and careful practising of activities assigned in the course. In an online setting, security is easy to lose and hard to maintain, since feedback tends to be limited to obvious lack of comprehension or flaws in performance of assigned tasks. Students find that the need to pursue good grades struggles against the obvious benefits of transparency in this regard: if they are finding the material and assignments difficult to understand and perform, the very questions they ask for clarification may cause their own marks to take a tumble. Thus, they tend to use a "hide and hope for the best" strategy in completing the course. This very strategy tends to isolate learners from each other and from instructional staff.
Regular appointments for individualized consulting allow students to voice concerns about their educational experience in a context removed from people whose task it is to provide evaluation and ultimate grades for courses taken. Such a context does not pit interaction against potential penalty as the students struggle to understand the course curriculum. Rather, it opens the way for students to articulate their own experience and to better understand themselves and the courses they are taking.
It should be obvious as we discuss the planning and security aspects of individualized consultation that such sessions also provide a non-competitive (by which we also mean a non-comparative) context for students to articulate their experiences.
Comparison
The context of classroom instruction encourages teachers and students to compare individual students' knowledge, skills, and attitudes with each other. Classrooms are not inevitably, but often competitive environments, rather than collaborative ones. This is especially true when grading comes into focus and performances are being evaluated. Little attention is paid to the unique personal history of individuals in the class, and each individual is measured according to an "objective" standard of performance. Thus, students who are showing a great deal of improvement over past attempts may be seen to be woefully lacking in comparison to others who (for whatever reason) are building upon a much superior personal history and whose present performance may even be lacklustre, compared to past performances.
Often, the very context in which there is supposed to be encouragement and companionship provides an intimidation that stifles creativity and expression that would lead to greater learning.
In individual consultation with students, an academic coach can take the attention off how the individual is performing among peers and can remind students how they are doing compared to their earlier performances. Such coaches can also remind students how their present efforts fit into their total educational plan, instead of focusing exclusively upon the objectives of a single course.
If the planning, security, and non-competitive context of consultation is evident from the discussion above, it should also be evident that such consultation is also focused upon the individual in a very encouraging and supportive way.
Personal Attention
The classroom provides an opportunity for students to have regular contact with instructors as they are exposed to the course curriculum and perform the course assignments. In an online setting, such contact is supposed to be addressed using mediated tools, such as chats, forums, email, phone, and so forth. One of the biggest differences in the sort of contact provided in classrooms as opposed to online instruction is the regularity of the contact in non-problem-oriented contexts. In the classroom, instructors meet with students without regard to problems students may be facing with the curriculum. In addition, when students express difficulties with the curriculum in the class, other students can indicate relative support for the student who comments, giving the instructors valuable feedback concerning generalized problems that the class may be facing in the course. In an online course, there is often little contact between instructors and students (tutors may provide help at student-initiated contact) and such contact is often oriented to particular problems students are having with the material. Often the student has no idea whether problems being faced are solely his/her concern or a concern to many in the class.
The paradox of online education in this regard is that while the flexibility of online course delivery makes it attractive to students who have scheduling issues that require such flexibility, the very individualized environment created by their unique schedules focuses the individual attention they have access to on their problems; they have no one to share their successes with.
The individual consulting that is done by an academic coach focuses attention back on students learning experience overall and does not exclusively attend to problems faced as the occasion for meeting. Rather than scheduling sessions when students are challenged by problems or in need of help, the sessions are regular and frequent enough to provide as much opportunity for celebration of success and achievement as it provides to address shortcomings and obstacles.
Conclusion
Clearly online education offers many students who cannot attend universities valuable learning opportunities. However, these opportunities may be largely unexplored and unrealized in the event that adequate support structures outside the actual online course are in place. Other essays in this blog have discussed aspects of these necessary support structures, in particular, those of academic coaching and collaborative learning. It has been the task of this present essay to discuss the need for individual consultation in academic programs and some crucial aspects of such consultation.
Students in the 21st Century have a considerable range of choices available to them in regard to completing formal education programs. University campuses are opening in more and more remote communities, and advances in technology have made distance education much more attractive than it was formerly. It is now quite possible and affordable for students to complete many programs entirely by distance education, and many residents of communities too small for a university program have chosen this route to acquire the academic degrees they desire. Not only are undergraduate university programs being offered, there are also increasing graduate programs that are available for students to complete while they stay in remote locations close to their families, their employment, and their social networks. The rise in quality and availability of distance education is very good news for those who want to pursue university education without relocating to university towns or who want to complete a university program on a personal schedule that does not allow for attendance at classes on a typical university's schedule.
An important aspect of education that may be lost in this sort of academic program done at a distance is that of individual consultation. This is the focus of this present essay. The claim to be discussed herein is that there are four aspects of individual consultation that must not be overlooked, if students are to take proper responsibility and have true ownership of their education. These involve the provision for planning of an education, adequate security for learners, some contexts that are non-competitive, and the exploration of and reflection upon one's individual learning experience.
Planning
We will look first at the planning aspect of consultation.
Education in the past and in the classroom is a series of events that is planned by an educational institution. The benefit of this planning is that it is (often) based upon well-researched, well-thought-out approaches to adult learning at an individual level. Also often (not always), the conversion of education from the classroom to online media involves the mere placing of materials (not always, but often text) on web pages where registered students can access them. Assignments are aimed at a clear objective: Students demonstrate competence in understanding, performing tasks, or expressing attitudes that are sought in the course taken. Students are only involved in the planning of education insofar as they pick from (an often very small roster of) electives in their programs. At times, courses may involve students' choosing from among various ways to demonstrate their competence at demonstrating knowledge, skills or attitudes, but such courses are still in the minority of university course offerings.
The paradox of online education from the perspective of students today is that they must somehow personalize what is provided as a "one size fits all" approach to learning. They must find how they will benefit individually from taking a particular course and completing a particular program of instruction. Thus, in an environment where students are controlled, they must find ways to take charge of their own education.
The most convenient way for students to individualize their education is with the help of a consultant, who will probe the individual's educational history, interests, and aptitudes and monitor her or his experience in courses s/he takes. This sort of consultation is often seen to be the province of university academic advisors, but these are often classroom instructors with full academic loads who have little time for personal consultation with more than a handful of students assigned as their 'advisees'. Generally, advising schedules allow only about 15 minutes of personal attention to anywhere from a dozen to a hundred potential students, depending upon the university and program. These interactions are generally held twice yearly during the fall and spring advising periods (about two weeks prior to the pre-enrolment for the following semester.
It is the claim of this present essay, that such advising falls well short of the personal attention students need from consultants to help assure them of proper individualization and ownership of their educational program. Rather, students would be better served by the availability of a consultant throughout their learning experience and by sessions of about an hour each month during their formal program to monitor their experience and to cultivate a relationship that will put students at ease at a very difficult phase of their lives.
While it is good to provide opportunity for students to be more proactive in setting their own academic course and monitoring their own progress, it is also true that proper consultation provides added security to students in their academic careers.
Security
In the classroom, security is found by attending to the materials produced by the course instructor and careful practising of activities assigned in the course. In an online setting, security is easy to lose and hard to maintain, since feedback tends to be limited to obvious lack of comprehension or flaws in performance of assigned tasks. Students find that the need to pursue good grades struggles against the obvious benefits of transparency in this regard: if they are finding the material and assignments difficult to understand and perform, the very questions they ask for clarification may cause their own marks to take a tumble. Thus, they tend to use a "hide and hope for the best" strategy in completing the course. This very strategy tends to isolate learners from each other and from instructional staff.
Regular appointments for individualized consulting allow students to voice concerns about their educational experience in a context removed from people whose task it is to provide evaluation and ultimate grades for courses taken. Such a context does not pit interaction against potential penalty as the students struggle to understand the course curriculum. Rather, it opens the way for students to articulate their own experience and to better understand themselves and the courses they are taking.
It should be obvious as we discuss the planning and security aspects of individualized consultation that such sessions also provide a non-competitive (by which we also mean a non-comparative) context for students to articulate their experiences.
Comparison
The context of classroom instruction encourages teachers and students to compare individual students' knowledge, skills, and attitudes with each other. Classrooms are not inevitably, but often competitive environments, rather than collaborative ones. This is especially true when grading comes into focus and performances are being evaluated. Little attention is paid to the unique personal history of individuals in the class, and each individual is measured according to an "objective" standard of performance. Thus, students who are showing a great deal of improvement over past attempts may be seen to be woefully lacking in comparison to others who (for whatever reason) are building upon a much superior personal history and whose present performance may even be lacklustre, compared to past performances.
Often, the very context in which there is supposed to be encouragement and companionship provides an intimidation that stifles creativity and expression that would lead to greater learning.
In individual consultation with students, an academic coach can take the attention off how the individual is performing among peers and can remind students how they are doing compared to their earlier performances. Such coaches can also remind students how their present efforts fit into their total educational plan, instead of focusing exclusively upon the objectives of a single course.
If the planning, security, and non-competitive context of consultation is evident from the discussion above, it should also be evident that such consultation is also focused upon the individual in a very encouraging and supportive way.
Personal Attention
The classroom provides an opportunity for students to have regular contact with instructors as they are exposed to the course curriculum and perform the course assignments. In an online setting, such contact is supposed to be addressed using mediated tools, such as chats, forums, email, phone, and so forth. One of the biggest differences in the sort of contact provided in classrooms as opposed to online instruction is the regularity of the contact in non-problem-oriented contexts. In the classroom, instructors meet with students without regard to problems students may be facing with the curriculum. In addition, when students express difficulties with the curriculum in the class, other students can indicate relative support for the student who comments, giving the instructors valuable feedback concerning generalized problems that the class may be facing in the course. In an online course, there is often little contact between instructors and students (tutors may provide help at student-initiated contact) and such contact is often oriented to particular problems students are having with the material. Often the student has no idea whether problems being faced are solely his/her concern or a concern to many in the class.
The paradox of online education in this regard is that while the flexibility of online course delivery makes it attractive to students who have scheduling issues that require such flexibility, the very individualized environment created by their unique schedules focuses the individual attention they have access to on their problems; they have no one to share their successes with.
The individual consulting that is done by an academic coach focuses attention back on students learning experience overall and does not exclusively attend to problems faced as the occasion for meeting. Rather than scheduling sessions when students are challenged by problems or in need of help, the sessions are regular and frequent enough to provide as much opportunity for celebration of success and achievement as it provides to address shortcomings and obstacles.
Conclusion
Clearly online education offers many students who cannot attend universities valuable learning opportunities. However, these opportunities may be largely unexplored and unrealized in the event that adequate support structures outside the actual online course are in place. Other essays in this blog have discussed aspects of these necessary support structures, in particular, those of academic coaching and collaborative learning. It has been the task of this present essay to discuss the need for individual consultation in academic programs and some crucial aspects of such consultation.
08 July 2009
Challenges for Online Education
Yesterday I was reading about a new initiative in the U.S. to fund open learning university programs online. A comment written in response to the article caught my attention:
I don't want to be too quick to jettison the notion of a real and vibrant online learning community experience, and I remain open to that as a possibility, but I am also aware that the sort of face-to-face experience Paradox offers students may continue to be a significant need for students who want to get an education in Williams Lake and whose schedules require them to take courses online to do so. So, while I continue to learn online tools for creating and sustaining learning communities, I also anticipate that students will require real-time gathering places in the Williams Lake area. Both aspects of learning communities will continue to be developed at Paradox.
I find my IN classroom experiences are always better. Personal interaction and engaging the energy of the instructor is irreplaceable still for me. (comment #1)Paradox exists to provide students in the Williams Lake area who are taking online courses with essential features of classroom instruction mentioned here, namely personal interaction and instructional energy. This same respondent goes on to mention:
As a student, when I cannot reach an instructor in a virtual environment when I do not understand a concept, I get 'trapped' in my own frustrations of wrapping my head around something I do not understand and bear the learning curve until I get an email response (comment #3)Note that frustration is a big element in the experience of some online learners, especially when it is identified as frustration that would not be experience in a classroom setting. This student concludes by proposing hybrid course delivery:
I personally find it best to have a blended teaching environment so when I am studying on my own I can reach my instructor for that critical teachable moment. (comment #3)Now it is quite true classrooms bring students into real-time contact with instructors, particularly in courses with relatively low student-per-class ratios. Nevertheless, such contact does not necessarily promise immediate accessibility of instructors when students are studying on their own. Clearly, though there is a real experience component of classroom education that at least some students find essential to the formation of their own education. Thus, it may not be possible for such students to experience an online learning community in the full way they expect their classroom learning communities to function.
I don't want to be too quick to jettison the notion of a real and vibrant online learning community experience, and I remain open to that as a possibility, but I am also aware that the sort of face-to-face experience Paradox offers students may continue to be a significant need for students who want to get an education in Williams Lake and whose schedules require them to take courses online to do so. So, while I continue to learn online tools for creating and sustaining learning communities, I also anticipate that students will require real-time gathering places in the Williams Lake area. Both aspects of learning communities will continue to be developed at Paradox.
23 June 2009
A Tentative Introduction to Academic Coaching
The following represents a draft of an essay I am developing on the concept of academic coaching. Comments would be appreciated.
Academic Coaching
Introduction:
The task of this essay is to distinguish academic coaching from current conceptions of both teaching and tutoring in North America. This is neither to say that coaching is a necessary distinction from these two, nor that teachers and tutors must not engage in coaching activities or possess coaching traits. It merely acknowledges that teaching and tutoring have often come to be limited either by practical necessity or as a convenient option and to exclude the positive benefits that coaching affords.
Concerns of the Academic Coach
Teachers in North America are constrained by schedules, classes, and curricular requirements to focus their activities upon the content of the course being taught. While teachers of course are concerned with the needs of students in their classes, such needs cannot be allowed to hijack the activities of the class in ways that impede covering the required course material. When individual students are struggling with the curriculum or are falling behind the pace of the class at large, it is appropriate for students to seek tutorial help. It is the task of tutors in North America to spend extra time with individual students to overcome the difficulties they are experiencing in class or to help them increase the pace at which they are able to process the course curriculum. When the student has overcome the difficulty and is able to proceed at the pace of the class, there is no further need for the tutor.
By contrast, the academic coach focuses upon the performance of students being coached. Because the teacher is concerned with the required content of the course, the coach is able to focus upon how students are performing in the learning process. In distinction from a tutor, the coach is not engaged in the class primarily to help with “problem” cases or individual needs, although a part of the concern coaches have is with individual performance. Rather, the coach focuses upon increasing the quality of the learning experience by helping students in both their individual and in their collaborative efforts in the course. While teachers and tutors focus upon the content of the course, the coach focuses upon the lived experience of learning in the course as an individual, as well as a community, effort. It is this aspect of academic coaching that has not been addressed in the literature available on coaching. Most of the literature reviewed later in this essay focuses upon coaches working with individual students. In this essay, the view is taken that coaches create good individual students, but also that they create learning communities, or teams, that explore collaborative learning.
Activities of the Academic Coach
Academic coaches must engage students in four main activities in order to enhance the quality of the learning experience in courses. Coaches must develop strategy, communication, motivation, and feedback in the groups of students they coach. Each of these will be discussed more fully below.
First, coaches must develop strategy as they coach students. They must find out what strengths, weaknesses, ambitions, and interests each of their students has. Some of this will involve meeting with students individually to discuss these areas, but it should also be confirmed by direct observation as students function in the larger group. Also, the focus of the coaching should not be to “define” the individual, as if to place the student into a box or category. Rather, the activity should be seen as a emergent picture of the individual’s growth process.
While strategy involves communication, there is also an aspect of communication that goes far beyond what one coach does with each individual student in a group. Communication as an activity needs to be seen in terms of the overall learning process. The learning process itself is the communication activity overseen by the coach in a group. Coaches develop groups of students into learning communities as the communication of the group is enhanced.
Thirdly, coaches engage in motivation activities. These are often celebratory in nature, acknowledging the progress in learning that individuals have contributed to the learning community. Such celebration is a vital part of increasing the quality of the learning experience as students come to see not only their progress, but the value that the community places upon the progress of its members.
Finally, coaches provide feedback for students. Students need positive reinforcement that is not connected with results of their work in courses. Obviously, getting good grades is feedback, but students often need more than an overall grade and a few comments to improve their work. In addition, the feedback they need is concerned as much with process as it is with product. Also, the feedback system needs to be multi-directional; students must engage in providing, and not just receiving, feedback on both the process and products of learning activities. Coaches provide a less threatening non-peer person to engage in communication than teachers and tutors offer.
Characteristics of the Academic Coach
Academic coaches exhibit six major characteristics in their activities.
First, coaches are dedicated to the learning process. While teachers often enjoy the discipline they teach (or the particular curriculum) more than their students, the central enjoyment of the coach is a wide range of learning and, especially, helping others learn. Coaches are happiest when their students are performing at their greatest level, both as individuals and as a team together with others.
Because learning is more important than the subject learned, coaches are able to resist the temptation to show or tell students how to do things or the specific information required in the course. The have learned to avoid the role of “sage on the stage” with students, preferring to come alongside and celebrate the students’ own achievements in learning. This resolve on the part of coaches to resist demonstrating their own intellectual abilities, leads to a revised understanding of the learning process as active (information gathering), rather than passive (information reception).
Thirdly, coaches enjoy collaboration. Though they are supportive and encouraging with students who individually seek out information, they are even more satisfied when the learning community has teamed up to find out information or acquire a skill.Reliable information is not seen as flowing from the coach to students. Rather, it is the task of the whole group to increase the understanding of reliable information as common property.
Because the curriculum content has taken second place in the coaches’ focus behind the quality of the learning experience, and because the coaches’ own performance has little to do with the specific content of the course, coaches have patience to allow students to learn and are not often tempted to rush the learning process.
When a learning community is engaged in high-quality function, it often finds that it needs new sorts of learning activities in order to engage all its members in learning. Coaches need to be able to create new learning activities, so that everyone in the community experiences fulfilment in the group’s activities.
From time to time, members in a community will have different opinions regarding activities they are engaged in. What may be enjoyable to some of the community, may be stressful (or boring) to others. Not all people have the same activities they enjoy, but it is also true that not all people have an equal amount of tolerance for the differences of preference, ability, and taste found in community members. As a result, coaches must learn to mediate conflict well in the learning community.
Conclusion
Teachers and tutors can learn many helpful techniques from academic coaches to improve the performance and satisfaction of their students, but neither of these two roles substantially decreases the ongoing need for academic coaching in education. Teachers will continue to be required to cover planned curricula on schedule, and this requirement will tend to push critical needs of the learning community aside from time to time. Tutors will continue (at least in North America) to be seen as corrective measures, to be brought in only for special situations or when problems are encountered. Most telling in this regard is that tutors will continue to operate to provide one-on-one help.
Academic coaches come alongside teachers to ensure that students' needs are met within the overall pressures of curriculum plans and class schedules. Academic coaches work in a preventative way to avoid problem performance by individual studentsin classes. When coaches recognize an individual student's need for tutorial help that is beyond the capability of the coaches to provide, they are able to partner with tutors to make sure students are adequately served in a one-on-one setting. However, academic coaches are uniquely placed in the educational setting to provide what teachers, with their curricular concerns, and tutors, with their focus on individualized help, cannot; coaches collaborate with students to create learning communities. The learning cooperative becomes the venue for the education process to be owned by the students who stand most to benefit from the products they provide each other.
References
At present, I have consulted the following sources (linked) and gleaned the information below each link from the website the link points to. Quotes are designated by open-bullet (and sometimes square-bullet) paragraphs, and comments I have attached to the quotes are in square-bulleted paragraphs that end with the words "- post by learningcoach"
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- This online training program is designed to prepare college students and other paraprofessionals for working with academic coaching and tutorial groups. Each of the four modules focuses on a different aspect of the role an academic coach plays in helping students achieve success in their courses.
- It is not known whether this program is available to those outside the immediate school district where it is being developed. - post by learningcoach
- Contact: Vicki Helms, vhelms@sdcoe.net
- The contact information for Vicki Helms may prove valuable in getting access to the academic coach training program. - post by learningcoach
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- An academic coach, like an athletic coach, observes your strategies and techniques, makes observations and suggests changes to your approach, and provides encouragement as you implement new ways of learning. One-on-one sessions are a great opportunity to learn how to fine-tune your unique ways of learning.
- From the discussion, it would appear that an academic coach is a very short-term role for a student (i.e. make "an" appointment with a coach). It would seem to be better to have students coached throughout at least a course by the same coach, rather than merely "making an appointment" as needed. - post by learningcoach
- This is a positive picture of the academic coach. - post by learningcoach
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Academic Coaching | North Central University
- Academic Coaching is a unique, specialized service, geared towards helping individuals reach their education potential. This service proves helpful as it enhances structure and accountability while providing new study strategies, better organization and time management skills, and general moral support.
- This service is not generally for help in specific subject content
- I think that coaching is possible without regard to a specific discipline when it is done in an individual setting. However, I believe that the full potential of academic coaching may be seen in group, as well as individual sessions. In this vein, it would seem best to organize coaching connected to specific courses. - post by learningcoach
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Academic Coaching vs. tutoring StudySpot Educational Services in Toronto, Leaside - Annotated
- Academic Coaching vs. Tutoring
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- - Student is underachieving
- - Student is struggling across subject areas
- - Student is dependent on their natural abilities to suceed
- - Declining results are effecting the student's confidence and effort
Academic Coaching is most appropriate when:
- This is a relatively negatively focused view of what academic coaching is. Imagine how different sports would be if the only athletes being coached were "underachievers," "struggling," "dependent," and "declining!" In my view, coaching is a positive and supportive role aimed at maximizing a person's performance over the long haul. It does not have the correction of a problem in view, and it is not limited in its scope to a particular obstacle or hindrance (in fact, not even to the completion of a particular course, though for practical reasons a coach may be engaged in connection with a particular course). - post by learningcoach
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- individualized process
- Although coaching involves individualized elements (consultation, critique), it is best not to limit it in such a way. Just as sports coaches often work with teams of athletes, so academic coaches can work with learning communities dedicated to the exploration of a given subject (course). - post by learningcoach
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Make at least five (5) monthly visits
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Set up your loved ones’ “dream” resume with events, activities, and awards that will match with their hobbies and personalities
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Give you constant feedback of progress with monthly progress reports
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Meet with your loved ones Monday-Sunday, flexible hours
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Meet with your loved ones at the locations convenient for you
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Become your loved ones’ Mentor, or Advisor, available personally or via telephone, email, instant messaging, or text messaging.
Your Academic Coach will:
- Though the meta-message of this quote involves an appeal to parents regarding the education of their children (or dependents), it reveals some of the features necessary to academic coaching: regularity of contact, learner-centred activities, promise of critique, flexibility of time and location for meetings, and a long-term relationship. - post by learningcoach
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- At Taproot we recognize that each person is unique in the way that they learn best. Therefore, we match skill strategies to the individual learning needs of each client, which allows for the greatest possible transformation and growth.
- Clearly, the situation envisioned is one academic coach and one client meeting together. While coaching should be personal and individualized at times, it should not be narrowed in such a way as to exclude group coaching and collaborative learning communities. - post by learningcoach
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Trent University :: Learning Innovations
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Key Coaching Competencies
In a typical coaching meeting, coaches follow the eleven core competencies as set out by the International Coach Federation to identify the issue, garner the client's commitment, and support the client in developing a plan of action. Here is one of those competencies.
Creating Awareness
The coach invokes inquiry for greater understanding, awareness and clarity, identifies client's strengths, and helps client find new possibilities for action.
- This is clearly a document being developed. Hopefully, future editions will specify more of the core competencies promised at the outset. - post by learningcoach
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Trent University :: Learning Innovations
This page lists several helpful features of the academic coach.
- Coaches are trained to listen, to observe and to customize their approach to individual client needs.
- A coach relates to the client as a partner.
- Coaching concentrates primarily on the present and future.
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Coaching can be used concurrently with psychotherapeutic work.
- Academic Coaching is not academic tutoring, counselling donning, advising, or academic accommodations but can be a useful support along with these services.
- Coaching is not consulting or facilitating.
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International Coach Federation
- We are a nonprofit organization formed by individual members-professionals who practice coaching, including Executive Coaches, Leadership Coaches, Life Coaches and many more, from around the world.
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International Coach Federation
There is considerable ongoing research into the concept of coaching as it is used in academic and other professional settings.
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International Coach Federation
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- The ICF membership is on an annual billing schedule; all memberships expire on March 31 of the following year.
- Membership fees for new ICF memberships will be prorated based on the month you join the ICF.
- Membership fees for January, February and March include the prorated amount for the current membership year plus next year's membership fee. Membership would then expire March 31, 2010. Please see below.
Annual Membership: $195 (USD)* (This equals only $16.25 per month!)
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Leap | Peer Academic Coaching Program
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- Study habits
- Study techniques
- Study resources
- Student norms
- Academic tutoring
- Academic advice
Peer Academic Coaching connects experienced student coaches with a student peer to examine personal strengths and challenges in his or her academic career. Students in the program are paired with a Peer Academic Coach who will mentor the student in their academic life at UBC. Participants will also have the opportunity to attend faculty specific workshops on learning skills and resources and meet regularly with their coaches throughout the term to discuss learning tools, study tips and academic issues such as those highlighted below:
- Academic coaching can be extended to peer-mentoring relationships, but it would seem that the prototypical concept would be oriented toward more of a professional-client (i.e. less peer-oriented) relationship. It would seem that true security on the part of the education-seeking client would be more easily achieved in a relationship where the educational knowledge and experience are deeper than would be possible among a student's peer group. - post by learningcoach
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Tutor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Academic coaching is an evolution of mentoring applied to academics. Mentoring implies the student is an empty vessel into which knowledge is poured. Coaching involves a more collaborative approach, assuming the student is already in the "game" of learning. Coaches help students learn how they best learn and how to operate in an academic environment. Coaches help students learn the material in individual courses while coaches help students learn how to be successful in school. In college, that includes such topics as: study skills, time management, stress management, effective reading, note-taking, test-taking, and understanding how to use a syllabus. Academic coaches meet with the student regularly throughout the semester, usually once a week. Coaches work with students in all kinds of situations, not just those who are struggling academically. Some highly motivated, high-achieving students will have a coach to improve their learning efficiency. Academic coaching also occurs to help students prepare for entrance exams to gain entry to schools or universities. Academic coaching is a huge industry in Asia. For example, in India, a majority of students be it of any class or stream, visit a coaching centre or a 'study circle'.
- Perhaps there will soon be a separate article in Wikipedia on academic coaching. For now, it is discussed within the concept of tutoring. - post by learningcoach
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Google Search - Academic Coaching
This link is to a Google search for documents on academic coaching in a post-secondary setting. I have not investigated a majority of the items listed.
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It Takes a Virtual Community: Promoting Collaboration Through Student Activities
academic
- academic coaching and courses for at-risk students
- It is important to ask why coaching is only needed in "at-risk" situations. It would seem to be better to implement coaching as a preventative, more than a corrective, measure. - post by learningcoach
- The goals of academic coaching is to provide intensive coaching and mentoring in a student’s first two terms at Kaplan, with an effort to prepare students to be increasingly academically and personally self-sufficient, more adept at solving and preventing barriers to education, and to be better positioned for greater and consistent academic success as they move through the first two terms and into the remainder of the degree program. The ultimate measure of success will be demonstration of a higher retention rate of students into their third term than is presently the case.
- This could be better-written, but the essentials are there. Again, one wonders why this program is only for "at-risk" students. - post by learningcoach
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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
02 June 2009
Setup and Licences
I have now prepared a business plan, proposed it to the local agency supporting business ventures (Community Futures), and had it approved. It is time to move ahead with the registry of Paradox Educational Services in the province of British Columbia and the town of Williams Lake.
While the focus of operations will be upon new university students taking online courses, I have observed considerable interest on the part of other students.
In order to increase immediate subscriptions to the services I offer, I have begun researching how I can serve these people mentioned above. Of the five groups of people mentioned, #1 and #5 offer the greatest possibilities for immediate response. The most likely scenario for meeting the other needs listed is that such courses would begin in the fall semester of 2009.
It is likely that at least one ESL course will meet weekly beginning in June. I am also going to try to recruit a class of people who want to explore computer skills and literacy.
While the focus of operations will be upon new university students taking online courses, I have observed considerable interest on the part of other students.
- Several people in the local area need an ESL class.
- Several students who have completed as much university locally as they can are interested in continuing their education without leaving the area.
- Several people with B.A. degrees are interested in pursuing graduate education.
- Professional organizations whose members are required to demonstrate ongoing professional development desire not to have to travel to attend such courses.
- Several local people lack the necessary computer skills to feel comfortable taking online courses.
- Local reserve communities have asked me to offer courses in language and culture study, documentation, and revitalization.
In order to increase immediate subscriptions to the services I offer, I have begun researching how I can serve these people mentioned above. Of the five groups of people mentioned, #1 and #5 offer the greatest possibilities for immediate response. The most likely scenario for meeting the other needs listed is that such courses would begin in the fall semester of 2009.
It is likely that at least one ESL course will meet weekly beginning in June. I am also going to try to recruit a class of people who want to explore computer skills and literacy.
05 May 2009
Getting Started
I am about to begin a new service for educational support of online students in the Williams Lake area in British Columbia, Canada. There are several situations that I hope to address in providing this service.
First, there are few of the local graduates from Grade 12 who continue formal education. Many cannot afford the expense of moving to a larger university city in terms of their finances, their families, and their social networks.
Secondly, online education is intimidating for many people. I think of it like trying to get at a very thick milkshake through a very thin straw: a lot of work for very little result/feedback :). Completion rates for online courses are generally quite low (I guess about 30-35%, but many educators have told me they think I am a bit optimistic!).
My idea is to provide face-to-face learning situations for students who have enrolled in online courses. At present, the plan would be for students to enrol in the same online course, say in English or Math, and to engage me (Paradox Educational Services) to act as a learning coach. The analog for this would be where people serious about fitness or a particular sport would engage a personal trainer, in order to make their training programs as efficient and successful as possible.
I would like to know what others think about this idea.
First, there are few of the local graduates from Grade 12 who continue formal education. Many cannot afford the expense of moving to a larger university city in terms of their finances, their families, and their social networks.
Secondly, online education is intimidating for many people. I think of it like trying to get at a very thick milkshake through a very thin straw: a lot of work for very little result/feedback :). Completion rates for online courses are generally quite low (I guess about 30-35%, but many educators have told me they think I am a bit optimistic!).
My idea is to provide face-to-face learning situations for students who have enrolled in online courses. At present, the plan would be for students to enrol in the same online course, say in English or Math, and to engage me (Paradox Educational Services) to act as a learning coach. The analog for this would be where people serious about fitness or a particular sport would engage a personal trainer, in order to make their training programs as efficient and successful as possible.
I would like to know what others think about this idea.
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