Self-Understanding and the First Year Experience

1. Self-Understanding and the First Year Experience Phyllis Curtis-Tweed, Ph.D. Assistant Provost for Student Success, Assessment, and Research, Medgar Evers College/CUNY Spring 2006 Thomson/Wadsworth e-Seminar

2. What is Self-Understanding? • Who am I? • My skills, talents, capabilities, interests, goals • Understanding the world in which I live • Community • Family • opportunities

3. Developing Self- Understanding • Understand context for growth and development • Family • School • Community • Work • Other influences

4. Supporting Growth • Understanding of personal potential • Talents/Strengths • Career interests/choices • Perception of options • Should I go to graduate school? • How high should I aim? • Sense of agency

5. What is Agency? • An awareness of one’s ability to autonomously structure and process experience (Damon and Hart) • Includes responsibility, evaluation, and prioritization (Charles Taylor) • Affected by transactions between the self, contexts for life experience, perceptions of contexts and resultant behaviors (Curtis-Tweed)

6. Agency Development CONTEXT FOR EXPERIENCE SELF PERCEPTION SELF/CONTEXT BEHAVIOR

7. Agency as Content and Process • Behavior • Perception • Mediating influences • Impact of personal traits- e.g. temperament and intelligence • Contextual influences– e.g. family, community, culture, school

8. Mediating Influences and College Life • Academic • Level of preparation • Contextual • Financial Independence • Dependents

9. Benefits of an Enhanced Self-Understanding • Empowers with a sense of strengths and talents • Choice of careers • Understanding of context • Options for behavior • Expectations in college for performance and behaviors • Maximizes personal agency • Ability to plan, set realistic goals, achieving goals

10. Characteristics of the College Student • Traditional/non-traditional • Full-Time/Part-Time • First-time/Returning Transfer • Residential/Commuter

11. Changing Times

12. The Non-traditional mix • A new Generation Gap • Technological gaps • Differing goals • Level of maturity • Classroom effects • Pedagogical • Classroom Management

13. The Challenge • Your mission should you decide to accept it: • is to facilitate the development of self-understanding • in order to promote the successful transition into college life • with a varied population

14. Strategies for Facilitating the Transition into College Life

15. Areas of Responsibility • Institutional • Understand who students are to provide services and programming to support student success • Instructional • Provide experiences that promote self-discovery, goal-setting/planning and life long learning as well as academic excellence • The Student • Commitment, follow-through, work

16. The First Year Experience • Develop a first year experience program that is intentional. • Challenging and Supporting the First Year Student (Upcraft, Gardner, Barefoot, et al., 2005) • Foundations of Excellence Project (www.fyfoundations.org)

17. An Aspirational Model • PHILOSOPHY • ORGANIZATION • LEARNING • CAMPUS CULTURE (2 year institutions only) • FACULTY (4 year institutions only) • TRANSITIONS • ALL STUDENTS • DIVERSITY • ROLES AND PURPOSES • IMPROVEMENT Foundations of Excellence Project, 2005-6

18. Campus-wide Involvement • Administration • Faculty • Student Life • Peers • Assessment/Evaluation

19. Identify and Address Constraints • Faculty buy-in • Campus-wide communication regarding first year programming • Provide support services that are reflective of students needs • Develop assessment and evaluation plans • Modify programs as needed

20. Promoting Self-Understanding at the Instructional Level • Freshman students often need College 101 • Study skills • Social Interaction skills • Develop basic skills • Time Management • Freshman Seminar Options • A separate course • Learning Communities • Embed in ‘Content’ courses

21. Activities to Promote Self-Understanding • Strengths Assessments • Readings to stimulate thought and growth • Discussion, small group work (with directions) • Reflective Writing • Pre/post reflective assignments to examine change • Chat assignments (with caveats) • E.g. Blackboard

22. Assessment Instructional • Formative • Are students are getting it? • Summative • How well did students grasp the overall goals of the course? • What is your criteria for success?

23. More Assessment Questions • How effective is the course? • Does the course align with program and college goals? • Does it contribute to retention? Tools Qualitative • e.g. focus groups, surveys Quantitative- locally-developed or external- • e.g. EBI FYI evaluation

24. Recommended Assessment Tools • College Students Experiences Questionnaire research Program. (CSXQ- College Students Expectations Questionnaire) http://www.indiana.edu/~cseq/csxq_generalinfo.htm • Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP). http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/freshman.html • FYI (First Year Initiatives survey) Educational Benchmarking Inc. (EBI) website. www.webebi.com

25. More Recommended Assessment Tools • Kolb Learning Styles Inventory. Hay Resources website: http://www.hayresourcesdirect.haygroup.com/Learning_Self-evelopment/Assessments_surveys/Learning_Style_Inventory/Overview.asp • NSSE National Survey of Student Engagement. NSSE institute website: http://nsse.iub.edu/institute/index.cfm? • Your First College Year (YFCY). Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) website: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/yfcy/

26. Conclusion • Self –understanding involves developing information about self and context and using that information to plan, and achieve goals for college success and beyond • Colleges can promote self-understanding by developing an environment that supports student differences/ needs and provides instruction and services that promote personal growth.

27. Questions and Answers