Starting Out Strong – Motivating First-Year Students for Success
May 8, 2009
Saint Mary’s College
Moraga, CA
For more information and to register, see the 2009 Flyer.
This year’s workshop will focus on the following theme:
Our speakers will focus on how librarians can take advantage of the burgeoning research on motivating first-year students and how we can impact student success. Librarians from CSU East Bay will share their experience in re-thinking their Freshman Seminar program while converting to an online environment; Dr. Rhonda Rios Kravitz will offer her insight into retention of minority students and faculty; and Dr. Joseph Cuseo will discuss how to best apply principles of learning theory to teaching students during the first year experience and discuss collaboration of librarians with faculty.
CSU East Bay – Threshold Concepts: High-Impact IL Instruction
For many students the move to college is also an intellectually transitional time. Accordingly, first year curricula often pinpoint the development of critical reading and thinking skills that may not have been acquired in high school. Including information literacy in the FYE curriculum reinforces the overall purpose of FYE programs and contributes to academic acclimation. This presentation will focus on using threshold concepts as a high-impact way to teach key IL lessons to first year students. It will also address how the threshold concept framework positioned us to redesign course content for online delivery.
Threshold concepts, as described by Jan Meyer and Ray Land, transform and integrate the learner’s view of content. They are the parts of the curriculum that may be the most troublesome yet bring the most insight into a discipline. For example, students often have trouble distinguishing authoritative sources from unsourced web content. Our information literacy course encourages first-years to approach a learning threshold by teaching that authority is constructed and contextual. This is a challenging idea, but once it is grasped, it serves as a platform for understanding academically relevant practices such as peer-review, scholarly publishing, and credentialing. Crossing this threshold gives students a deeper understanding from which to evaluate the different kinds of information sources they encounter in their research — a crucial critical thinking skill.
Attendees will learn what threshold concepts are, and how they can be used to teach IL content. We will also review technologies we used to build digital learning objects based on the threshold concepts we articulated. We hope to start a dialogue with other disciplinary faculty on how this approach might be used to link content across first year programs.
Presentation handout.
CSU East Bay Group:
Korey Brunetti is in his third year as a Reference and Instruction Librarian at Cal State East Bay, Hayward, CA USA. He is currently the Collections Coordinator and focuses mainly on digital collections. Korey is especially interested the ways that technology reshapes the teaching of information literacy concepts.
Amy R. Hofer is Research Instruction Librarian at Golden Gate University in San Francisco, CA. Prior to this position she was a Reference and Instruction Librarian at Cal State East Bay, where she worked closely with Lori and Korey on creating digital learning objects for first-year information literacy instruction. By night she plays old-time fiddle and calls square dances.
Lori Townsend is a Reference and Instruction Librarian at Cal State East Bay in Hayward, CA. She also serves as the Electronic Collections Librarian and is particularly interested in online teaching and learning.
Rhonda Rios Kravitz – Library Instruction Plus: Developing a sense of belonging for students of color during the first-year experience.
Students of color have made great strides in terms of gaining access to colleges and universities. However, degree attainment remains low. It is not uncommon to hear first-generation students of color report feeling marginalized, alienated, isolated, and unsupported. They find few faculty role models and do not see themselves reflected in the curriculum. Librarians have an important role to play in impacting the sense of belonging for students of color. This presentation will examine strategies and social support systems that enhance retention and persistence by:
- affirming students’ voices
- faculty initiated academic assistance
- validating student experiences
- affirming the culture(s) of student
- building social support
Dr. Rhonda Rios Kravitz was appointed the Dean of the Learning Resources Center at Sacramento City College in July 2007. From 1990 to 2007 she served as the Head of Access Services at the Sacramento State University Library.
Joe Cuseo – Promoting Student Learning & Success during the First-Year of College: Foundational, Research-Based Principles
A new learning paradigm has emerged in higher education that suggests a different starting point for improving undergraduate education, which begins with a focus on the learner and the process of learning, rather than focusing on what the instructor is doing (and covering). This presentation will focus on the instructional implications of a learning- and learner-centered paradigm for library science professionals, particularly with respect to seven key learning principles that are well supported by higher education scholarship, research and theory, namely:
(1) personal validation
(2) self-efficacy
(3) personal meaning
(4) active involvement
(5) social integration
(6) reflective thinking
(7) self-awareness.
Joe Cuseo holds a doctoral degree in Educational Psychology and Assessment from the University of Iowa. Currently, he is a Professor of Psychology at Marymount College (California) where for 25 years he has directed the first-year seminar, a course required of all new students. He is a columnist for a bimonthly newsletter published by the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition, and has received the Resource Center’s “outstanding first-year advocate award.” He is also a 13-time recipient of the “faculty member of the year award” on his home campus, a student-driven award based on effective teaching and academic advising. He has authored numerous articles and chapters on faculty development, student retention, and the first-year experience, the most recent of which is a textbook for first-year seminars or student success courses, titled: Thriving in College and Beyond: Research-Based Strategies for Academic Success & Personal Development, and a textbook on diversity, titled: Diversity & the College Experience: Research-Based Strategies for Appreciating Human Differences.
He is currently working on two writing projects that will be published in 2009:
– The First-Year Seminar: Research-Based Guidelines for Course Design, Delivery, & Assessment (monograph)
– The Liberal Arts & Diversity: The Foundation of a College Education (summer reading)