Attending to the needs of (first-year) students

This morning I discovered the work of Sheila MacNeill through the Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast and her blog, HOWSHEILASEESIT. 

Many issues were raised in the podcast entitled Time, Space, and Place and in the blog post entitled “The upside down and in-between: the uncertainity of where I am right now”. 

One of the topics that the two pieces share is the concern for all higher education students, and new students, first-year students in particular. 

In the podcast, Sheila explained: 

I think this whole notion of being a student and being a lecturer, actually just being at university or college just now, it’s changing… this goes back to time, I think we’re going to have to take a bit more time to do things, particularly those kinds of socialization things and allow our students a bit more time to get comfortable with this new way of being a student. Particularly for new students, for first years, it’s going to be their first time that they’ve been at universities…

I think we just need to take a bit more time, step back maybe a bit from maybe slight obsession with curriculum and discipline and actually take a more holistic view of community and how we interact and how we can be together and how we can be apart because obviously, you need that space apart as well… We have to find out what works for our students and why. 

(From the podcast transcript)

On her blog, Sheila wrote: 

I put forward the notion of rethinking the first year experience to allow students and staff to adapt to our new context. To have a focus on well being, developing digital research skills and capabilities and adjusting and sharing how we can adapt and “be” at university in our new context, the ever-changing “new normal”.  

The experience of university for staff and students is different now. We need to recognise and develop ways to understand and support a whole new set of seemingly smaller (or micro) transitions we are all making now. For example, the transition from your laptop/phone/tablet on the kitchen table when you are “at uni”, followed the transition from your laptop to your laptop/phone/tablet for catching up with friends and family. Same space and device, completely different context.

I will be teaching first-year students in my Rhetoric course in semester one. As I plan my units, I am exploring my assumptions about the students I haven’t yet met, their backgrounds, where they will be sitting as they complete the asynchronous units or attending the synchronous sessions. I am paying attention to which digital tools I am choosing to maintain communication with the students. Which platforms should I adopt for sharing materials, tasks and assessments in the course? I am documenting what technical knowledge and skills the students will need to feel they belong in the learning community and can succeed in their studies. 

At the Oranim College of Education, we use Moodle as our LMS. Navigating the Moodle has always been challenging for some of our students, but today I am wondering, where, when and who introduces the students to the system. Who points them in the direction of the tutorial videos? Are the materials even written or recorded in the preferred languages of the students? When is it explained what the Moodle is, what its functions are? I am starting to understand that I have to assume that nobody else is attending to these issues and that I should make time for them. 

This week I saw a booklet from Sage: “Top 10 Tips for Learning Online” written by Janet Salmons. https://group.sagepub.com/top-10-tips-for-learning-online.

 I immediately connected to the content as I realised that these are the basics for new students. Although the tips look obvious and simple at first glance, they are not. Explaining to students that they should identify what they don’t understand and formulate questions is essential; telling a student that he or she shouldn’t wait until the last minute before asking those questions can be a game-changer. I suggest introducing this booklet, or one like it, to all students. The benefit of those explanations may be particularly crucial for students whose high-school experience was more top-down, authoritarian or spoon-fed. Asking questions may be more challenging for shy students, those with weaker language skills, or students belonging to minority groups. 

I am attempting to make my course accessible and supportive of all students. That means as Sheila MacNeill contends, devoting (precious) time to imagining what it means to be a college student in 2021, and how learning in a digital environment can be simplified.