Student success is integral to higher education institutions’ wellbeing, so it is vital that administrators recognize the qualities necessary for making students successful on campus. It’s also crucial that faculty take measures toward inculcating these attributes into their teaching practices and programs.
An accomplished student is one who has learned how to harness their innate thirst for knowledge. They can absorb information from multiple disciplines and see how it all fits together into solutions.
1. Identify Your Learning Style
Knowing your learning style is vital to the success of your studies. Visual learners might prefer charts and pictures while auditory learners benefit from listening to lectures.
Higher education discourse often centers around student performance-oriented outcomes such as grades and GPAs; however, studies have revealed that student interest alignment with their field of study and career path is also a crucial driver for individual student success. Institutions must reinforce nonacademic support structures which recognize alternative definitions of success for maximum student satisfaction.
2. Create a Vision for Your Life
While administrators often focus on graduation and grade point averages as measures of student success, students want their college experience to count for something. Students want a sense of purposeful accomplishment through college that their lives matter in some way and that it was worthwhile.
Students from marginalized communities often feel pressure to excel academically, yet it’s crucial that they don’t lose sight of their personal goals and needs – the best way to ensure this happens is to create an ambitious vision for themselves.
3. Be Self-Aware
Student success can vary widely depending on who’s measuring it; institutions might place emphasis on metrics related to graduation rates while researchers or students might focus on particular aspects of college experience.
To address this problem, educators can endeavor to embrace alternative definitions of student success and incorporate a variety of metrics for measuring it. Doing so will enable advisors, departments and institutions to have a fuller picture of student progress and learning; ultimately ensuring all students can access all necessary resources.
4. Be a Leader
Leaders possess the ability to inspire their teams by taking into account everyone’s skills, experiences, opinions and ideas. Furthermore, they possess an understanding of how best to balance work life with school life.
Current student success hegemonic frames drive significant amounts of support towards academic definitions of success, while nonacademic definitions receive little recognition or honor. Expanding support structures that acknowledge nonacademic success would allow students to feel valued and connected. It’s time for us to reimagine student success; doing so requires leadership/change management expertise, business process optimization skills, continuous improvement lenses and data capabilities.
5. Be Organized
Make the most of your time by setting daily tasks and studying goals, as well as breaking large-scale assignments into more manageable pieces so they won’t seem so daunting.
Studies reveal that students’ interests in their fields of study and future careers strongly predict their college grades, persistence and job performance. Implementing a variety of student choice-related success metrics will give advisors and departments a more holistic view of each student’s development and wellbeing.
It may require leadership, change management and an approach aimed at continuous improvement – but doing so will result in more equitable environments that embrace diverse conceptions of student success.
6. Be Responsible
Students who demonstrate responsibility take care in submitting their work on time, are driven to succeed, and willing to put forth extra effort toward reaching their goals.
In an academic field that often prioritizes academic definitions of success, it’s vitally important to acknowledge other facets of student life. This means recognizing that many students may hold complex and nuanced conceptions of success that need to be acknowledged and respected.
7. Take Advantage of Extra Credit Opportunities
Encourage students to explore their interests outside of class through extra credit opportunities, which will enable them to form a solid vocational identity. Research indicates that those pursuing fields which match up well with their personal traits tend to achieve better grades, persist more easily through school, and experience greater career satisfaction overall.
Colleges should expand their student success programming to recognize nonacademic definitions of success as part of student achievement and consider honoring these definitions and more directly aligning their value within degrees.
8. See Your Instructors
Student success ultimately hinges on providing students with the right combination of support and encouragement they require to complete their degree on schedule. Instructors who take time to develop positive relationships with their students are more likely to assist them with meeting their personal academic goals in ways tailored to each of their needs.
Administrators often define student success through degree completion; however, students usually desire much more from their college experience than just that alone. An examination of theoretical frameworks in biology education literature indicates a need for a broader interpretation.