Category Archives: Experts on Campus

Finishing the Semester Strong

Posted on by

As your student heads into the final weeks of classes and prepares for finals, consider these suggestions for supporting them!

Students should lean on their professors.

  • Review sessions and exams may look different for every class depending on the professor. Make sure your student has clarity on what is expected by their professor. If there is any confusion, they should feel free to reach out to their professor and ask for clarification. Students can send emails, visit their “office hours,” or request time to speak on the phone. In whatever format they may use, it is more important than ever for students to reach out to and lean on their professors.

Every student is different.

  • Just like every professor may be different in their teaching style, every student is different in their learning style. How has your student found success in studying previously? Is it possible to recreate that environment and those circumstances at home? With many students being remote, they may need to get creative in their approach to studying. If they usually study in groups, can they set up nightly study sessions on Microsoft Teams with their classmates?

Two is better than one.

  • Encourage your student to study with a partner or group. This serves a two-fold purpose – it helps students learn the material and prepare for finals, and also provides social interaction and a sense of connection during a virtual semester. Going through intense things, like studying for finals, is a common college experience, so support your student in living these college experiences, even if it looks a little bit different now.

Br. Thomas Giumenta, C.S.C., the University’s Counselor for Learning Assistance, also provides some advice for families:

Dosage

  • We all know that when we take medication, it is very important to take the right dose at the correct time. You don’t get better faster by taking all the pills at once. The same can be true in preparing for final exams. It is hard to start to prepare for exams if you think of “taking it all at once.” Exam preparation must start sooner than later and be parceled out well. This is done by putting the “what in the when.” That means that a student, with the help of an advocate, should look at the content that must be learned and the amount of time that remains to learn it. Then a match must be made by scheduling a specific study time with a specific academic task. It’s a little like making an appointment with yourself.

Should I Study for an Open-Book Test?

  • The answer is “yes” – but in a particular way. If a student says to a parent, “There’s no need to study, it’s open book,” that student may not be able to locate the correct answers without familiarizing themselves with the content being tested. Always know where to find all the parts of the correct answer.

“It’s Overwhelming to Study for a Comprehensive Final.”

  • If a student says this, they are feeling some discouragement which needs to be addressed. It’s important to see if the professor has provided a study guide for the final exam. If so, that needs to be the starting place. If not, a student can easily make their own study guide and then send it to the professor for comment. Narrowing down the content of study can provide the necessary encouragement. 

All divisions of the Shepard Academic Resource Center (SARC) are meeting with students and available to help in the following ways:

  • The First-Year Experience team will be sending all first-year students an email inviting them to meet with them and make a study plan for final exams. Please know if your student is having academic difficulties right now, the SARC staff wants to meet with and help them.
  • The Learning Commons is providing online tutoring to students. If your student needs help with a specific class, please remind them that tutoring is available.
  • Br. Thomas Giumenta, the Counselor for Learning Assistance, is also meeting with students. Br. Tom teaches students learning strategies and skills in a one-on-one (virtual) setting.

If your student has academic needs, please encourage them to reach out to the Shepard Academic Resource Center by sending an email to sarc@up.edu, calling 503.943.7895 and leaving a message, or by connecting with any of their staff through Microsoft Teams.

Introduction to the Career Education Center

Posted on by

Greetings from the Career Education Center Team! 

We are Chelsea Chase (she/her) and Max Kalchthaler (he/him) and it’s our job to meet with students and alumni to address career-related questions. Day in and day out, we share methods with clients about how to craft and convey their professional story to engage in an effective job search. After these conversations, our clients feel empowered to start their career search and relieved that they know how to begin. 

Witnessing this journey as a parent can likewise be stressful! The great news is that together, we can partner to assist your student in finding their path. We recently came across this article that outlines several specific ways a parent or support person in a student’s life can be of assistance.  

In addition to that, it’s great to know that the Career Education Center is available to alumni after graduation at no charge! We are open all summer and available to help guide your student to success, even after they make the transition to life as an alum.

Stay well, and go Pilots! 

Chelsea & Max 

New Programs Support Student Learning at UP

Posted on by

The Learning Commons is UP’s hub for peer-assisted learning support. We house the Writing Center, the Math Resource Center, and content-based tutoring programs in the sciences, languages, business and economics, and nursing. We also offer support with presentations and group projects. All writing assistants and tutors participate in hours of training.

In the past year, we’ve been busy developing new programs to support all UP students.

The Study

Often, students need help with how to study and how to organize time for durable learning. While our tutors in the Learning Commons are trained to support students with study strategies, we also recognized the need for peer-assisted learning about how to learn in specific disciplines. Reading and learning in the disciplines varies. For example, learning in science courses is far different than learning in a philosophy course.

Last spring, we piloted The Study, a peer tutoring program which helps students develop and refine discipline-specific study strategies. This fall, we’ve added it to our regular line up of tutoring programs. Currently, we have two tutors staffing The Study, and this number will grow in the spring.

PAL groups

PAL groups are the Learning Commons’ newest addition to our programming. PAL stands for peer-assisted learning. PAL groups support historically difficult classes that tend to have higher rates of D/F grades and withdrawals (DFW). Research shows that peer-facilitated learning groups such as PAL and supplemental instruction (SI) reduce DFW rates significantly. Many refer to PAL and SI as high-impact practices in learning assistance.

Students voluntarily attend PAL group sessions that are organized by a trained peer facilitator who has taken the class in an earlier semester. Collaborative learning is a focus of PAL programs, and facilitators address both what to learn and how to learn it. Our PAL program can support faculty who agree to let the facilitators sit in their classes once or twice per week. The participating faculty also must share student performance data so that we can assess the PAL program.

From an online PAL facilitator training on community building in November.

Prior to offering PAL sessions, facilitators participate in six hours of training covering characteristics of PAL and SI, facilitation techniques, collaborative learning techniques, learning strategies, and session planning. Facilitators also participate in ongoing trainings on topics like active learning and community building. I also meet with each PAL facilitator weekly to discuss recent and upcoming sessions.

This semester’s PAL program is a pilot that will continue into the spring semester. As we progress through the academic year, we will determine whether we want to make PAL a permanent program of the Learning Commons.

Watch an interview that I did with nursing student Maria Lorienes Solis ’21 on her experiences as a peer facilitator in UP’s new online PAL program.

Other initiatives to support students

  • With the shift to remote learning, the Learning Commons has expanded its website to include pages on learning to learn online and how to create online study groups. In the coming months, we will continue to refine these pages so that we can improve our support of all UP students no matter where they are.
  • For more information on the Learning Commons and how it supports UP students, please visit our website.

Jeffrey White is the Learning Commons Administrator with the Shepard Academic Resource Center, as well as an Instructor in International Languages & Cultures at the University of Portland.