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Annual Conference on The First-Year Experience 2025 Session 2:
Getting Strategic with Student Success Courses
Date: February 18, 2025
Time: 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM, CST, Bolden 3; Level Two
PRESENTERS:​
Ross Markle, Ph.D., Founder, Managing Director,
DIA Higher Education Collaborators
ABSTRACT
Many first-year experience courses, while “student success flavored”, fail to meaningfully impact long-term student success. These courses often feature overcrowded curricula delivered by under trained instructors and course topics chosen with little-to-no insight into students’ needs or which skills relate to success at the institution. In this session, we will explore how FYE courses can be designed to more effectively support student success through the strategic use of institution-specific data on holistic student needs. Additionally, we will share practical tools/strategies for providing targeted, holistic support in the classroom based on work at North Carolina Central University and other institutions.
ABSTRACT
To enhance student success and retention, it is essential to equip faculty with the skills and strategies necessary to create a holistically supportive learning environment. This session outlines a comprehensive training program aimed at helping faculty develop pedagogical approaches that improve key student factors such as sense of belonging, growth mindset, engagement, and self-efficacy. Attendees will learn how to distinguish holistic pedagogy from “adding onto the curriculum,” examples of effective classroom strategies, and how to engage faculty in this process.
Annual Conference on The First-Year Experience 2025 Session 1:
Holistic Pedagogy: Bringing Faculty into the Student Success Game
Date: February 17, 2025
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM, CST, STRAND 4
PRESENTERS:​
Ross Markle, Ph.D., Founder, Managing Director,
DIA Higher Education Collaborators
NASPA Conferences on Student Success in Higher Education 2024
Session Title: Moving Beyond Group Differences: Using Data to Truly Understand Subgroups and Traditionally Underserved Populations
Date: June 25, 2024
Time: 10:30 AM - 11:20 AM Pacific Time
PRESENTERS:​
Andrea Pope, Ph.D., Director of Action
DIA Higher Education Collaborators
ABSTRACT
While many seek disaggregated data, few understand how to utilize it effectively. Join us for a session where you'll learn to gather meaningful insights about the needs of different student groups and use those insights to create targeted, effective student success interventions.
Inaugural Continuous Improvement Summit:
Noncognitive Skills and Holistic Student Success
Date: April 4, 2024
DESCRIPTION
Recent research into factors like "grit," "sense of belonging," and "growth mindset" has drawn educators' attention to the potential of noncognitive skills. But how do we integrate these lessons into our work with students? This session will discuss a framework of noncognitive skills devoted specifically to student success, how noncognitive data can be used to guide student success efforts, and - using results from a recent study of aviation technician students - how results can be used to better understand similarities and differences in students.
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PRESENTER:
Ross Markle, Founder, Managing Director, DIA Higher Education Collaborators
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League for Innovation in the Community College Webinar:
We Don't Need Advising: We Need Holistic Student Support
Date: April 4, 2024
Time: 12:00 PM ET
PRESENTERS:
Sandra Lujan, Director, First-Year Experience, El Paso Community College
Ross Markle, Founder, Managing Director, DIA Higher Education Collaborators
Cynthia Wilson, Vice President for Learning and Chief Impact Officer, League for Innovation in the Community College
DESCRIPTION
For most of the 20th century, course placement was designed to be a system to assess student needs and identify the appropriate interventions to support success. Yet research into student success showed that placement wasn't meeting those goals, particularly for students who enrolled in community colleges with the biggest hurdles to overcome. A holistic understanding of student potential – built on powerful research on the role of noncognitive skills such as sense of belonging, goal commitment, and growth mindset – can help colleges better understand student strengths and challenges, identify interventions, and improve success. The challenge arises in building a meaningful mechanism for student support beyond traditional models and mechanisms for advising. This session will discuss the importance of holistic student support. Moreover, two institutional examples – from El Paso Community College and Creighton University – will demonstrate various strengths institutions can leverage and challenges they may face when attempting to implement such approaches.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Participants will:
1. Describe two noncognitive factors that play a key role in community college retention.
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2. Compare and contrast traditional and holistic advising.
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3. Identify two institutional practices and/or policies that facilitate holistic student support.
PRESENTERS:
Ross Markle, Ph.D., Founder, Managing Director
Andrea Pope, Ph.D., Director of Action
DIA Higher Education Collaborators
Innovations Conference 2024
Session 1:
An Evidence-Informed Approach: Building Student Success Interventions That Work
Date: March 17, 2024
Time: 9:15 AM to 10:15 AM PDT
Location: Salon VIII, N. Tower
ABSTRACT
Tired of expending resources on ineffective student success initiatives? In this session, we present an evidence-informed approach to building student success interventions that work. To illustrate this four-step approach, facilitators will walk participants through the development of a module for a hypothetical student success course designed to improve noncognitive skills (e.g., sense of belonging, self-efficacy, organization, persistence). This session is intended for those who develop, implement, and/or assess student success interventions—whether you’re a faculty member teaching an FYE course or a dean planning institution-level interventions, this session will help improve the quality and effectiveness of your student success efforts.
Innovations Conference 2024
Session 2:
Holistic Advising in Action: Incorporating Noncognitive Data Into Advising Conversations
Date: March 19, 2024
Time: 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM PDT
Location: Salon VIII, N. Tower
PRESENTERS:
Andrea Pope, Ph.D., Director of Action
DIA Higher Education Collaborators​
ABSTRACT
A key element of many modern approaches to advising (e.g., holistic advising, strengths-based advising) is the early identification of student strengths and challenges. Armed with this information, advisors can provide students with individualized support at strategic times to increase their likelihood of success. Additionally, holistic advising approaches focus on building relationships rooted in care for students’ overall well-being. In both cases—early identification of student strengths/challenges and the development of close advising relationships—student-level noncognitive skills data are invaluable. The challenge lies in integrating these data into existing advising structures, processes, and responsibilities – particularly in a community college setting where interaction time is limited. Thus, in this session, we will share practical strategies and tips gleaned from a fall 2023 survey of advisors who used data from the ISSAQ noncognitive skills survey to inform their work with students. This session is intended for advisors and senior administrators.
Learn more about ISSAQ
ISSAQ is our platform for working with community colleges to improve student success. ISSAQ focuses on holistic assessment, innovative interventions, and a collaborative approach to working with institutions. To learn more, visit www.ISSAQ.net.