Session Descriptions    
(Examples from past symposia. Sessions for San Antonio have not yet been finalized.)

PRE-SYMPOSIUM SESSIONS 

GENERAL SESSION (all attendees)

Assessing the First-Year Seminar and First-Year Student Success Programs:
The Big Picture

Presenter: Aaron Thompson

Effective assessment serves two primary objectives: 1) to prove your program’s overall impact or value (summative evaluation), and 2) to improve your program’s quality (formative evaluation). Summative evaluation can establish program credibility and ensure program viability, while formative evaluation can provide frequent assessment needed for ensuring continuous program improvement.

In this workshop, you will learn assessment strategies relating to both summative and formative evaluation. The following issues relating to assessing first-year seminars and first-year programs will be addressed:

• Identifying high-priority student learning outcomes.
• Obtaining frequent feedback to assess whether students are progressing toward achieving the program’s intended learning outcomes.
• “Closing the loop,” i.e., using assessment results to make intentional changes that result in improved student achievement of the program’s intended learning outcomes.

PRE-SYMPOSIUM WORKSHOPS (Choose one)

The How-To's of Program Assessment: A Step-by-Step Approach to Demonstrating Program Effectiveness at 2- & 4-year Institutions

Presenter: Michele Campagna and Julie McLaughlin

A comprehensive and well-organized assessment process is critical to determining the effectiveness of your first-year program, and by extension, to demonstrating how your first-year program contributes to overall institutional effectiveness. Despite their importance, the regular activities associated with program assessment are often saved for "rainy days" or conducted hastily when accountability is expected. This workshop will show you how to operationalize ongoing formative and summative assessment activities to produce a high-impact first-year program at your institution.

In this session you will learn how to:

• Identify key performance indicators for first-year programs.
• Establish baselines for your program’s performance level.
• Use quantitative and qualitative strategies to demonstrate programmatic outcomes and impacts.
• Make meaning of the collected data.
• Reincorporate assessment data into a continuous self-improvement cycle.
• Use your assessment results to promote and advocate your first-year program.

NEW!
Using Technology as a Tool to Improve First-Year Seminar Pedagogy & Assessment

Presenter: Tim Vick

Does the thought of using technology in your classroom make you cringe? Would you like to engage your students “where they are” but don’t know how to successfully use technology in your teaching? This session will provide strategies to help you successfully integrate technology into your seminar classroom. We will examine a wide range of free and easy-to-use productivity tools you can use to engage your students and enhance your teaching and program assessment.

PERSONAL CONSULTATION
(optional to pre-symposium participants. Limited space available)

Individual Consultation Sessions

Consultants: Joe Cuseo, Aaron Thompson, Michele Campagna, Julie McLaughlin
and Tim Vick

You will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with any of the conference speakers in scheduled, one-on-one consulting sessions. This is an opportunity to get advice on particular first-year issues as they relate to the program at your institution. Bring any materials that would be helpful for your meeting with the experts. For speaker Information click here.

SYMPOSIUM DAY 1

OPENING SESSION (all attendees)

A Comprehensive Approach to Student Retention & Achievement: Universal Principles of Student Success in the First year of College & Beyond

Presenter: Joe Cuseo

This workshop is designed to synthesize research on student success and supply a systematic series of principles/practices designed to increase student persistence and academic achievement. Intended outcomes or goals of a student success program will be identified (e.g., student retention, academic achievement, and holistic development), as well as core principles and systemic processes that are most likely to promote the most potent effects of on student outcomes (e.g., self-efficacy, active involvement/engagement, and social integration). Thematic principles of student learning and motivation will be identified and illustrated with high-impact practices for promoting student success in college and beyond, including curricular and co-curricular learning experiences, provision of effective academic and psychosocial support, and assessment practices that promote student learning and program improvement.

LUNCH SESSION

1. Promoting Student Success in the Community College
- Julie McLaughlin & Joe Cuseo

2. Promoting Student Success in 4-Year Colleges and Universities
- Michele Campagna and Paul Carty

3. Promoting Student Success in Predominantly Online Degree Programs
- Aaron Thompson and Tim Vick

WORKSHOP SESSION 1 (Choose one)

NEW!
1. The Power of the First-Year Seminar: Campus Wide Benefits & Systemic Effects

Presenter: Joe Cuseo

The first-year seminar may appear to be nothing more than a single, circumscribed course taken by first-year students during their first term on campus. However, the seminar has the capacity to function as much more than a “band aid;” it can be intentionally designed to have systemic effects on the campus as a whole. This workshop will examine how the first-year seminar has the potential to contribute significantly to some or all of the following outcomes: (1) providing students with a meaningful introduction to the undergraduate curriculum, (2) promoting purposeful student use of campus support services, (3) integrating the curriculum and co-curriculum,(4) expanding faculty use of engaging, student-centered pedagogy, (4) fostering development of professional partnerships between different divisions or units of the college, (5) creating a training ground for peer educators and peer mentors, and (6) supplying a venue for collecting student data at college entry for use in pre/post (value-added) assessment.

2. Facilitating The Transition of First-Generation Students & Students of Color Into and Through Higher Education

Presenters: Aaron Thompson and Michele Campagna

Enrollment rates of first-generation students and students of color have increased the diversity of our campuses. Given this demographic shift, colleges stand much to gain by examining the premises upon which their first-year programs are built and reconsidering the ways in which their services and instruction are delivered. This session will introduce participants to the benefits of such diversity to their campuses. Additionally participants will broaden their understanding of this student population and identify evidence-based strategies to increase their institutional effectiveness.

In this workshop participants will:

• Become familiar with the enrollment trends and outcomes for first-generation students and students of color
• Develop a deeper understanding of the transition experiences of these student populations
• Understand how student learning and success can be enhanced by infusing diversity into the fabric of the institution
• Review an evidence-based plan for their campuses that will increase access and success for all students
  

3. Creation and Administration of the First-Year Experience Course at the
Community College

Presenter: Julie McLaughlin

Community Colleges often struggle with creating and administrating FYE courses for a variety of reasons. Budget restraints, lack of quality instructors, an extremely diverse student population, and little institutional support often play a role in the difficulty of getting the course off the ground. This session will examine how to overcome some of these obstacles in order to build a comprehensive FYE course that works well for both the students and the institution as well as how to gain buy in from both faculty and administrators. Decisions to be considered (such as standardizing the course, course topics, training instructors, evaluation of the course, etc.) will also be discussed.

WORKSHOP SESSION 2 (choose one)

NEW!
1. Gaining & Sustaining Support for the First-Year Seminar: Moving From Inception to Implementation & Assessment

Presenter: Tim Vick

How does an institution start to build a First-Year program? What steps are involved to insure everyone is on board? Each of the stakeholding populations concerned with the first-year program have different needs from the program and will, therefore, provide varying levels of support. In this session, we will explore ways to garner buy-in and support from different campus populations and how to maintain that support to insure program success from implementation through assessment.

NEW!
2. First-Year Experience Professionals as Campus Change Agents: The Art, Science & Politics of Persuasion

Presenter: Joe Cuseo

Well-intended efforts of first-year experience professionals and student-success advocates are often frustrated and impeded by lack of support or involvement of key players on campus. This workshop offers a systematic set of strategies for motivating and mobilizing key members of the campus community to support first-year experience programs and related student-success initiatives. Both extrinsic and intrinsic motivational strategies for igniting campus interest and involvement will be examined, and a three-pronged or tri-directional approach will be proposed that addresses campus-wide change from (a) the ground-up: building “grass roots” support from those working in the trenches with students (faculty and academic advisors), (b) the top-down: soliciting “trickle down” support form high-level administrators (president and vice-presidents), and (c) the “side-in”: enlisting “horizontal” support from mid-level managers (college deans and department chairs).

NEW!
3. Connecting the Liberal Arts to Major Choice, Career Exploration, & 21st-Century Skills

Presenter: Michele Campagna

Today's students will be entering a world upon their graduation that will require them to take on complex challenges that were not present in our world a decade prior. To enable them to successfully meet these demands, colleges and universities must focus on producing graduates who are able to effectively contribute to a highly technical and global economy. An extensive amount of research has documented that employers are seeking in their recruits a distinct set of cognitive, interpersonal, and communication skills. Interestingly enough, these skills are not rooted in a specific major or discipline, but in the liberal arts.

In this session we will explore the relationship between the liberals arts, major choice, and career exploration. Additionally, we will discuss how the development of 21st Century Skills is rooted in the tenets of the liberal arts and how institutions can, starting in the first year, maximize the development of these skills through intentional curricular and co-curricular initiatives.

SYMPOSIUM DAY 2

Developing Learning-Effective and Cost-Effective Textbooks for Today’s Students: Current Options and Future Directions

Presenter: Paul Carty, Kendall Hunt Publishing Co.

Get answers to your questions in this informal discussion about the realities of textbook costs and the publishing process. Learn about developing customized course materials to fit your institutional needs, college bookstore relationships, direct to student book sales, e-books, and technology.

WORKSHOP SESSION THREE (Choose one)

1. Peer Leadership & Peer Mentoring: Changing Campus Culture from the Ground Up

Presenter: Michele Campagna

Peer leaders are powerful resources in promoting first-year transition and success. They are often used in first-year seminars, orientation programs, academic advising, mentoring, and outreach efforts. A particularly powerful aspect of peer programs is that they are mutually beneficial for all students involved since peer leaders often gain as much from their experience as the first-year students who are receiving the peer support.

This session will provide an overview of the research on using peer leaders to promote student success and the variety of ways that peers can contribute to this effort on your campus. During the workshop you will learn about:

• Recruiting, selecting and training techniques.
• Examples of model programs.
• Assessing the impact of peer leaders on the engagement and persistence of first-year students on your campus.
• Building and maintaining a self-sustaining program through buy-in.
  

2. Critical Thinking: First-Year Foundation, Instruction & Assessment

Presenter: Aaron Thompson

First-year programs should promote the development of students’ critical thinking skills. By proactively and intentionally cultivating higher-level thinking skills during the first year of college, students can establish a strong foundation to apply and refine these skills across the curriculum and co-curriculum.

This workshop will demonstrate how you can introduce higher-level thinking in the first-year seminar and first-year curriculum. It will operationally define higher-level thinking and delineate its key skill subsets, such as: analytical thinking, multidimensional thinking, critical thinking, and creative thinking. You will learn practical strategies for advancing the development of these skills through classroom-based learning experiences and out-of-class assignments.

3. Creative Teaching Strategies in the First-Year Classroom

Presenter: Julie McLaughlin

This session will focus on engaging students through active and creative learning strategies in the First Year Experience Course. Research shows that students often respond better to active learning techniques as opposed to traditional lecture. As educators, we need to respond to the needs of our students. This session will explore creative ways to approach topics such as utilizing campus resources, diversity, goal setting, critical thinking, and study skills, among others. Utilizing these strategies throughout the course will also be discussed. The techniques used and discussed will be particularly helpful for an academically diverse student population. This session will be very interactive with lots of ideas for creative teaching strategies that participants can take back to their institutions.