assigning students
How do you assign students, and who contacts them? Do you do it by major, category of study, etc? Or do you let the student come to you...
Is there a copy of the advisement form that goes into a master student file or do you and the student have the only copies? Is there a way to let your colleagues know about the issue and its resolution? This might be helpful to others who interact with the student.
We also have a structured advising system in place. I like the fact that I can fill out a form for my students and have them look at it and sign it. It makes it more "official" it is a record of the advise and finally a tangible reminder to the student for future.
By traditional sector standards, 6 weeks is a short period of time between visits, but I'm not sure it works in our sector. How often do you think advisers should connect with students?
As an instructor that is an advisor it is part of what we do daily in class. We do have a “structured” advising program at my campus. We are arbitrarily assigned students when they start and we have a responsibility to meet/touch base with each of our advisees every 6 weeks. While this is great in theory there are some kinks/challenges that we are working out along the way. Some students that really do need a little nudge or positivity do not respond to the assigned advisor and we are in the process of coming up with other ideas to engage all of the students so they ultimately feel a sense of “community” and have someone to talk to.
Honestly, instructors are advisors in some way. If the instructor is remotely interested in the success of the student, he/she is going to act as advisor in some way. That includes making sure they are comfortable and can complete the work in a satisfactory manner. The set-up at our school requires us to advise the students in that particular class on their academics & attendance. I feel like that's the minimal responsibility of any instructor.
Some instructors will argue that it's a lot more work. How would you respond to them?
I kind of think that is a good idea. It's a little more work on the instructors, but it shows the student that their instructor actually cares about their success.
I don't think there is a 'correct or not' answer. Each institution makes basic decisions about how they want to relate to students. Faculty advisors are well suited to handle many of the academic and career questions that students may have. It's also important to have support available for issues that may exceed the instructor's comfort zone.
In our school we do not have so many advisers to be assigned to each student. Actally the instructor is the professional faculty adviser. It is that correct or not?
Why? What does the advisor do? How is the advisor's performance measured and monitored?
We assign each student a faculty adviser by their Major.
What is the role of the career counselors? How much contact do they have with each student? Are they the ones held accountable for retention? What is the role re: retention of the instructor?
The process that we are currently trying to put in place is splitting up our courses among our career counselors and checking with students based on the course that they are enrolled in. We are attempting to establish a syllabus for each course to have an estimated time-frame when they should be at a certain part of their course. As she had stated earlier we are an institution with self-paced courses which are paid for in advance yet we still have a very low retention rate.
Each school will answer your questions in a way that aligns with their policies, procedures and culture. How are you doing this now?
