What skills did you possess as an undergraduate that made you successful? Who taught you about the methods you used to navigate college? Were you lucky enough to have a mentor? A recent discussion about our undergraduate experience made me take a new look at the current research about student mentoring. As expected, having a mentor increases a students chance to persist and graduate under the right circumstances. In Buffy Smith's Mentoring At-risk Students through the Hidden Curriculum of Higher Education, she notes three actions that mentors should do in order to help students including: (1) telling students what they should do (advising), (2) advocacy, defined as motivating and connecting students with individuals on campus, and (3) showing and empowering students how to acquire the highest degree of capital from the mentoring relationship (academic apprenticeship). Many institutions include mentoring as part of their first-generation programs. Joya Misra and Jennifer Lundquist provide a really nice overview of mentoring in their article for Inside Higher Ed. The article focuses on what faculty can do in the form of mentoring to help students succeed. One of the points they make is about the relationship itself as they note, "Individual faculty mentors also should recognize the backgrounds, resources and needs of their students, rather than assuming that students are all the same and have all of the resources they need. Students benefit from faculty mentors who see them as whole people. By recognizing who a student is beyond their role as a student, faculty members can develop trusting relationships with them."

ASKED AND ANSWERED
Elizabeth Barkley's book Student Engagement Techniques: A handbook for college faculty, is quickly becoming a classic in the student engagement arena. Noticing that a gap existed in the BRCC Library's collection, the T+LC asked that this book be purchased. We are excited to tell you that it is now available for circulation (LB 2342.92 B34). Special thanks to Associate Dean Jacqueline Jones who facilitated the purchase. Barkley's book is full of terrific ideas that you can implement in your course immediately. It should quickly join Ken Bain's book, which is frequently referenced on this blog, as one of the most circulated resources from the faculty development section.

EMBRACE THE RUBRIC MATRIX
A rubric is a scoring tool that explicitly represents the instructor's performance expectations for an assignment or a piece of work. A rubric divides the assigned work into component parts and provides clear descriptions of different levels of quality associated with each component. Rubrics can be used for a wide array of assignments: papers, projects, oral presentations, artistic performances, group projects, and so on. Rubrics can be used as scoring or grading guides, and to provide formative feedback to support and guide ongoing learning efforts. Using a rubric provides several advantages to both instructors and students. Grading according to an explicit and descriptive set of criteria helps to ensure that the instructor's grading standards remain consistent across a given assignment. Rubrics can be constructed by the instructor or even have input from the students. The key for full effectiveness is to distribute the rubric to your students when you make the assignment. There are a number of good websites that can get you started building a strong rubric including one from Blackboard and the University of Colorado-Denver.

COLLEGE 101
While you are visiting the Library, you might want to pick up a copy of Upcraft, Gardner and Barefoot's book Challenging and Supporting the First-Year Student: A handbook for improving the first year of college (LB 2343.3 U63). The chapter entitled Inside the First-Year Classroom offers some sage advice for those looking to improve student learning. "What once appeared as the most effective and efficient way to teach and learn--the research university model of faculty who create knowledge and deliver it to students through lectures--falters under today's learning demands and with today's students. While practically it may be too cost-effective an instructional method to abandon totally, the diversity of students in background and learning style, their developmental position, and what we know about human learning all argue for using classroom strategies that actively involve students." They go on to list a number of active learning methods you can use in place of strictly lecturing to your students.

ADDING RUNGS TO THE LADDER
"The certificate is the odd man out in the debate over college completion. But the rarely discussed and little-understood certificate is the fastest-growing form of college credential, and a key component of work force development and the completion agenda." Paul Fain shared that and other bits of information in a column he wrote earlier this year about a report by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, that found that certificates make up 22 percent of all college awards, up from 6 percent in 1980. Certificates are earned through seat time in a classroom, the study notes, with more than half taking less than a year to complete. Industry-based certifications, which are often confused with certificates, are typically awarded based on tests.