Area 3. Advising
The efforts of three separate advising task forces/committees have helped the University address the advising issues identified in the 2012 self study. In 2012-2013, an eight–person task force (comprised of faculty, administrators, and students) explored both pre-major and major advising with the objective of addressing both faculty concerns about inequitable advising loads and student concerns about the quality of pre-major advising. This task force was followed in 2014-2015 by a University-wide Ad-hoc Advising Workgroup (comprised of nine faculty members from all academic divisions, and administrators and staff members from the Office of Student Affairs, Information Technology, and Academic Affairs) that was charged specifically with identifying strategies for improving the quality of pre-major academic advising. Many of the strategies and proposals that arose from the 2012-2013 task force and the 2014-2015 workgroup were implemented in 2015-2016 by a smaller task force of administrators in Academic Affairs and Student Affairs.
The 2012-2013 task force recommended improving the faculty and student advising experience by ensuring that the combined major and pre-major advisee loads were more equitably distributed among faculty, that the clerical tasks required of advisors were simplified, and that faculty and students had quicker and easier access to the relevant advising information. The first aim of more equitable advising loads has been accomplished by the implementation of a new algorithm to determine the appropriate pre-major advising load for an upcoming academic year that takes into account each faculty member’s current major advising load. In the past, every faculty member received six new pre-major advisees each year he or she was on rotation to advise; with the new algorithm, faculty may now be assigned three to nine new pre-major advisees, depending on their current major advising load. With this change, faculty in large departments with heavy major advising loads receive fewer pre-major advisees, and faculty in small departments with low major advising loads receive a larger share of the pre-major advisees, somewhat evening out the advising loads among faculty.
The second aim of decreasing the clerical burden of advising has been accomplished by two technological solutions. One important technological improvement was the development and implementation of a new, simplified pre-registration system. One of the major complaints about advising by both faculty and students had been the complexity of the previous two-column course selection process (said by some to require an understanding of game theory!). The new system allows students to rank their course selections in a way that everyone can understand and thus feel confident that student desires are being appropriately registered. The second technological improvement allows courses that have been pre-approved to count toward a major to appear in the system as approved. In the past, course pre-approvals did not appear in the system, so advisors needed to approve each course a second time–this extra step that required the advisor to approve each course twice has now been automated. The third aim of the 2012-2013 task force to provide faculty and students with quicker and easier access to advising information was taken up for further discussion by the 2014-2015 workgroup.
The 2014-2015 Ad-hoc Advising Workgroup (workgroup) also came to the conclusion that the advising time burden on faculty should be reduced. With this mind, an Advising Dashboard was added to the online Faculty Portfolio so that all advising resources are available in one place. New resources (including: list of general education requirements by department, list of major requirements for every major on one page, list of programs with restrictive or early requirements, etc.) were added to the Dashboard. The result is a reduction in the number of “clicks” advisors must make to find all of the information they need about their advisees (academic history, general education completion status, cumulative GPA, semesters in residence, summary of credits earned toward graduation, major certification form, etc.) and about pre-major advising in general. The Offices of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs also centralized and clarified its advising information — including identifying advising experts by department, providing an advising timeline with templates for advisor communications to students, instructions for setting up Moodle pages for cohorts of advisees, requirements for admission to major fields of study, information on global studies, videos with faculty advisors discussing the selection of courses, and additional links for students. Making information more quickly and reliably available has helped to broaden the faculty and student understanding of Wesleyan’s open curriculum and the requirements of major fields of study. And because less time is spent (before and during advising meetings) just gaining access to data, there is more time for the interactions that enrich the advisor-advisee relationship.
In addition to streamlining the advising resources available to faculty and students, the workgroup recommended implementation of some other changes to improve advising. At the time, students in the incoming class were allowed to enroll in two classes during a summer enrollment period, then they would enroll in two additional courses after coming to campus and meeting with their advisor. Student Affairs presented the workgroup with the results of two pilot projects in which small groups of the two previous incoming classes had the opportunity to enroll in four courses over the summer, then met with their advisor on campus to discuss the course selections and potentially make changes before the term began. Based on their review of student satisfaction in the pilot group compared to student satisfaction in the control group, the workgroup recommended implementation of four-course summer registration for the incoming class. Four-course summer registration was implemented for the entire incoming class in summer of 2015. Ninety-five percent of the Class of 2019 and ninety-nine percent of the Class of 2020 arrived on campus already enrolled in either three or four courses, (still subject to approval of pre-major advisors, of course). This change has been well received by students, with surveys showing that students’ anxiety about course selection has been greatly alleviated. Many faculty say that the new process allows for more substantive discussions about planning a course of study when students first encounter their faculty advisor in person.
The workgroup also recommended a new pilot program to hire students to serve as departmental peer advisors in some of the larger and/or more complicated programs. Academic Affairs and Student Affairs implemented the first departmental peer advising program in 2015-2016. The idea was to allow the department chair to hire a current senior or junior in the major who can help advise prospective majors, particularly during the busy pre-registration periods when many students have questions. Surveys from the 2015-2016 pilot found varying levels of success that seemed to depend upon the department’s level of engagement with the program. Based on this feedback, the peer advisor pilot was updated for 2016-2017 so that it was open to application from any interested department. Three departments (Economics, English, and Psychology) applied, received funding, and hired departmental peer advisors. The feedback so far this year from the three participating departments has been positive. Making advising information more readily available to students in this way will, we expect, lighten the burden on faculty advisors in some of the busier departments.
The third committee, a small task force of administrators in 2015-2016, worked together to finalize the implementation of some of the recommendations from the previous task force and workgroup and also developed some additional resources to improve advising. This task force worked with Communications staff to develop a new handbook, Advising Matters, which compiles all advising materials into a new booklet that was produced in hard copy for all new faculty advisors and is available online for all advisors and advisees. The committee also worked closely with ITS staff to develop a new website (WesVising) modeled on Wesleyan’s in-person Academic Forum. The Academic Forum, which takes place on campus during new student orientation, is an opportunity for students to meet a faculty member from any department and ask questions to learn more about the various majors and requirements at the time when they are finalizing their first semester course selections. This new online advising tool replicates that forum (as best it can) in an online format with videos developed by the faculty in each department. Twenty-two departments participated in the first year, and their videos address the frequently asked questions of students selecting courses for the first time. WesVising was made available in July 2016 and in the first month saw 1,776 page views, 95% of which were from outside of Wesleyan (incoming students were not yet on campus). The average time on the WesVising page was 3:52 minutes, and there were a total of 5,310 “clicks” (meaning a visitor pressed a spot on a page to go to another page).
In addition to the WesVising video tool, Student Affairs worked with the academic peer advisors to develop peer-to-peer videos on topics that are often confusing to new students, such as AP/IB credits, General Education Expectations, and placement tests. These videos, which debuted in summer 2016, were embedded, along with the two faculty videos mentioned above, in an enhanced Advising Guidelines for new students. Available to students during the pre-registration and adjustment periods, the eight peer advisor videos received a total 15,856 views.
Finally, the 2015-2016 task force also held a series of informal lunch discussions with groups of faculty advisors from departments across campus to discuss continued concerns about advising as well as provide practical tips on the advising process. Each faculty member who attended was asked to bring similar conversations about advising back into their department meetings so that the discussion about advising would continue throughout the year.
While we are confident in the efforts we have made to simplify and improve the advising experience for both faculty and students, it is not clear as yet that student satisfaction with academic advising has risen or will rise as a result of these changes. We understand that with our open curriculum and our expectation that students design their own academic itinerary, students may sometimes assume that academic advising means providing answers in a way that does not happen at Wesleyan, on purpose, even though the structure may be challenging for them to navigate. Three years ago we began administering an advising survey each January to sophomores and seniors to monitor our changes and enhancements to advising. This survey allows us to gain an early glimpse into whether our changes are having an effect, eliminating the need to wait for each cohort’s senior exit survey results for feedback.
Although it is still far too early to make any definitive claims, we are hopeful about the increase in satisfaction with pre-major advising seen with the class of ‘17 (see figure below). As sophomores, this class reported satisfaction levels 13 percentage points above those reported by the preceding cohort. A similar patterned emerged from the class of ‘17 as seniors. We are also encouraged by the finding that during the sophomore year, subsequent cohorts have maintained levels of satisfaction similar to the class of ’16. These improvements emerged just as our changes and enhancements to advising began to take hold. We will continue to monitor trends in student satisfaction with advising.
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In addition to the efforts that have been invested in the regular advising program for all students, Wesleyan has also launched two new enhanced advising programs for specific cohorts of students who may need additional resources. In 2016-2017, Wesleyan welcomed its third cohort of Posse Foundation Veteran Scholars. Posse students receive a regular faculty advisor and are also assigned a faculty mentor who meets with the group weekly during their first year at Wesleyan to help ensure that they have the support they need to succeed. The Wesleyan Mathematics and Science Scholars Program (WesMaSS) is a two year program that begins during the summer immediately prior to the student’s first year at Wesleyan. Over the two academic years, scholars participate in a variety of workshops and activities aimed at building sustained relationships with faculty and peers. Through mentoring, skill building, and continued reflection, Scholars develop the intellectual habits of successful science students and scholars. Thus far, one-year retention has been strong for the students in these two new programs. All ten of the Posse students who arrived in fall 2014 returned to Wesleyan for a second and third year, while eight of the ten Posse students who arrived in 2015 returned for a second year. Of the 23 WesMaSS students who arrived in 2014, one was on a leave in fall 2015 and two in 2016; all of the others enrolled at Wesleyan. Similarly, for the 2015 first-year cohort, thirty of the 32 WesMaSS students returned for a second year (one student was on leave and another left the University). In addition to retention, the first-year academic performance (i.e., first-year GPA) of students in each of these two programs did not reliably differ from non-participating peers from the same incoming cohort, which is a positive result since these groups were identified as students who would need additional support to succeed at Wesleyan.