Proactive Targeted Academic Advising Approach for Students Under Academic Probation and At-Risk Students

Abstract

Academic Advising in higher education has received considerable attention in recent years. This is mainly due to the increased focus on improving education quality, student retention and ranking. The current approach focuses on at-risk students, which includes students with a CGPA of less than 2.3. The Academic Success Program (ASP) is comprised of three main components, which start early in the semester where the targeted students are enrolled in zero-credit courses on the Learning Management System (LMS), i.e., Blackboard. In the first phase of the ASP, we targeted students who are currently under academic probation with the aim to expand the program to include students at risk (students with a CGPA of < 2.3). First, students are asked to answer an online questionnaire, which include carefully designed questions on student status, reasons for academic probation, study habits, social issues, challenges they are facing in their study programs and assistance or services they require to improve their academic standings. Next, students are invited to attend a 2-h workshop that focuses on explaining the various rules and regulations pertaining to academic probation, how to calculate GPA and CGPA along with study plan navigation assistance. The third part of the workshop is a motivational seminar aimed at encouraging and inspiring the students to seek help, talk about the challenges they face, get parents involved and key points on academic success. After the workshop, students are asked to answer an exit assessment that is constructed in the form of a quiz to gauge the gain or impact the program had on the students. The initial results are very encouraging, where 75% of the students who completed the program were able to overcome their academic probation status.

1 Introduction

Academic Advising has received considerable attention in recent years by postsecondary educational institutions. Furthermore, academic advising has been identified as one of the factors that can significantly improve the quality of education by positively impacting students’ academic performance and increasing retention rates in colleges and universities [1]. For decades, there has been significant research interest in the topic of how academic advising contributes to the academic success of students. Over the years, it has been shown by many researchers that the old theories that attributed students’ success to individual characteristics, skills, work ethics and motivational factors are not entirely valid [2]. Recent research findings have highlighted the role of institutions to provide focused academic advising programs, whose primary goal is to provide guidance to students and assist them throughout their selected academic program [3].

The initial focus of academic advising programs focuses on developmental academic advising programs, where the focus is to work on assisting students overcome the overwhelming experience of the college lifestyle [4]. In recent years, several definitions of academic advising have emerged in the literature, the most popular of which is that of Campbell and Nutt (2008) [5], which states “academic advising acknowledges and supports individual student characteristics, values and motivation”. They further add “academic advising connects students to campus and helps them feel cared for, both of which have been shown as essential to student engagement” [5]. Initially, the focus of academic advising programs was on freshmen students, however, it was soon realized that junior and senior students also needed advising as well.

The main objective of academic advising was articulated in several articles to include several key roles:

• Refer students to resources and opportunities that assist them in achieving their academic goals.

• Motivate students by helping them set high expectations.

• Provide academic support to academically challenged students.

• Provide personal support.

• Offer constructive feedback on students’ performance through regular follow-up.

• Conduct regular face-to-face meetings with students to guide them through their academic plans.

As mentioned above, initial research on academic advising has focused on freshmen students to help them cope with or overcome the culture shock some of them faced when they started their college years [6]. This was due to several reported cases where students’ failure was attributed to their inability to properly adjust to the free-style of college life in the absence of the watchful eyes of their parents. In addition, other factors such as course selection, load and instructor preference were identified as factors contributing to students’ performance in their early college years. It was later identified by several researchers such as Light [7] who described “good academic advising” as follows: “the single most underestimated characteristic of a successful college experience”. Other researchers have echoed the same view adding that effective academic advising plays a crucial part in referring college students to resources and opportunities that “support their engagement, success, and the attainment of key learning outcomes” [5]. They further add: “Academic advising is one of the few campus services that promote student interaction with caring and concerned university employees”. The result of these findings led to the common understanding that academic advising should be the responsibility of the institution that must be added to the services provided by the academic institutions to support students in achieving their academic goals. As stated previously, academic advising contributes to students’ success in many ways starting with motivation and support to simply help students feel they are cared for.

Over the past few decades, institutions have taken several approaches to provide their students with effective academic advising programs. These approaches are divided into the following three main categories:

• Developmental Academic Advising (advisor takes the role of a counselor)

• Prescriptive Academic Advising (advisor takes the role of bookkeeper)

• Intrusive Academic Advising (advisor takes a proactive role to communicate with a selected group of students usually identified as “students at risk”).

According to Light (2001), developmental academic advising is considered a type of counseling that aims to assist students by addressing their social and intellectual obstacles [8]. The focus of this form of advising is to offer support to students in areas such as environmental and interpersonal interactions, behavioral awareness and problem-solving, as well as decision-making and evaluation skills. Furthermore, academic advising is student-centered academic advising that focuses on the personal needs and growth of students [9]. The goals set for the academic advisor include.

• Increase student engagement.

• Enhance students’ personal meaning.

• Identify the connection between students’ interests and her/his personal goals.

• Regular assessment and monitoring of students’ performance.

In prescriptive academic advising, the advisor’s role is limited to highlighting to the student what classes she/he ought to take in accordance with her/his study plans [10]. The advisor is also asked to provide her/his advisees with an overview of the regulations and bylaws of the institution. Harrison et al. (2009) reported that prescriptive academic advising is a hierarchical process in which the academic advisor assumes control of the information, and the students take on a passive role as recipients of this information [11]. The example often drawn is the advisor takes the role of the doctor, while the student takes the role of the patient accepting the prescription from the “doctor”, hence the name prescriptive [12]. Advising is conducted over several optional pre-scheduled meetings between the advisor and the student during which the advisor goes over what the student needs to do next. It should be emphasized here that all approaches include meetings between advisors and students; however, in prescriptive academic advising the discussion is limited to policies, regulations, study plans and degree requirements.

The third approach is intrusive academic advising. It owes its name to the intervention strategy taken to conduct academic advising. It is a proactive approach that focuses on providing (or in some cases limiting) academic advising to students who are “at risk” [13]. It involves well-organized and structured steps that start with identifying the targeted group of advisees to be asked to attend a set of special advising sessions. Besides aiding and guidance to selected advisees, additional goals of intrusive academic advising include [14]

• Increase retention rate.

• Reduce early attrition from college.

In addition to academic performance, advisors are also asked to monitor student attendance, their behavior in class and study habits. The advantage of intrusive academic advising is manifested in the fact that it utilizes a systematic approach that solves problems such as the reluctance of some students to participate in or take advantage of academic advising. In addition, it takes advantage of the fact that many college students navigate through college depending on other means of academic advising, especially peer advising, which is considered by many as the most popular form of advising among college students.

At the University of Sharjah (UOS) (Sharjah, United Arab Emirates), academic Advising has been conducted in a prescriptive approach, where every student is assigned to an academic advisor upon enrollment in her/his academic program. Advisors are asked to meet with the students periodically to explain to them the rules and regulations and provide them guidance/assistance with registering for the right courses to ensure they follow their study plan and graduate on time or at the least possible time. Academic advisors are selected among instructors who are very familiar with study plans and well-versed in the field. As a result of the rapid increase in the number of students, academic advisors may find themselves overwhelmed and, at times, unable to meet the expectations established by university academic advising programs. In addition, it has been reported that students do not show up for academic advising sessions due to various reasons, including their reluctance to admit that they need help. To deal with this, the university has experimented with the “pin-code approach”, where students are not allowed to register until they visit their academic advisor and get her/his approval on the set of courses they need to sign up for. This approach did not work very well because of the added logistics and administrative layers, which hindered efforts to improve the online registration process. In addition, students who were progressing well in their academic programs and did not feel they need to meet with their academic advisor were not happy with the additional delays they were experiencing. In the end, the University of Sharjah decided to limit the pin-code approach to students under academic probation.

To deal with this, the Registration Department took the lead in offering a special proactive academic advising program, which is a mix of the three previously mentioned approaches. The approach focuses on students who are under academic probation. The approach utilizes the online tools available at Learning Management Systems (LMS) available at the university. The objective of this endeavor is to develop a creative academic advising approach that provides students who are under academic probation with adequate advising, counseling, guidance and much more. Rather than rely on academic staff who are already overwhelmed with teaching load and administrative assignments as well as research responsibilities, the Registration Department took on the responsibility to establish a “mixed approach for academic advising” that relies heavily on the utilization of technological tools in conducting academic advising. As will be detailed in the next section, this creative approach has many advantages, the most important of which is direct communication with the students through LMS tools, which ensures confidentiality as well as personalized emails.

2 Targeted Approach for Academic Advising

As briefly mentioned in the introduction, the approach targets academically challenged students, i.e., students under academic probation, with the following goals:

• Provide structured academic advising.

• Conduct orientations on bylaws and regulations.

• Increase retention rate by helping students overcome their academic probation status.

• Reduce academic dismissal rates.

• Utilize data available in Student Information Systems (SIS) databases in the selection of targeted students.

• Take a more proactive role in academic advising.

• Utilize the existing IT tools to conduct the associate logistics (communications) with students.

• Leverage the narrow age gap among students and registrars to openly discuss personal and social issues faced by students.

Targeting students under probation was taken to be a testing phase of the approach with plans to expand the approach to include students at risk, i.e., those with a CGPA less than 2.3.

The targeted students were selected three weeks into the semester after all registration processes are completed. The delay was necessary to account for incomplete grades and any changes in the CGPA of the students due to various reasons. A report is extracted from the SIS database containing all students who are under academic probation in all departments. Figure 1 shows a typical example of one of the batches in the Fall of the 2014–2015 academic year.

Fig. 1

Distribution of students under probation in every college, the overall percentage of students under probation is about 10%. The data was taken from the Student Information System (SIS) at the University of Sharjah

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It should be noted here that the percentage of students who are under academic probation at the University of Sharjah hovers around 10%, which is similar to that reported in the literature. After compiling the lists of the students, a course page is created on the Learning Management System (Blackboard). Students were automatically enrolled into the program, and notification emails were sent to everyone outlining the objectives of the program, the dates of each activity and the deadlines associated with the assignments and activities.

To attract the students, the program was given the name “Academic Success Program”, which gave it a positive spin. Students are invited to take part in the following parts:

• Entrance survey.

• Workshop on policies and procedures.

• Motivational seminar.

• Exit survey (in the form of a quiz).

The first activity of the Academic Success Program is the online “Entrance Survey”, which is made up of a combination of MC questions, short answer questions and open-ended responses. In addition to demographic questions, the survey was constructed to gain an insight into the main challenges the students face, and the reasons that led to their sub-bar academic performance. The questions also focus on students’ study habits, utilization of LMS (Blackboard), interactions with instructors outside classes, test-taking strategies, time management and participation in extracurricular activities, such as sports, social and cultural activities. Students are also given the opportunity to list additional challenges, including domestic and financial difficulties. The survey was conducted online using the tools available on the Blackboard. It should be noted that students were asked to write their student number at the beginning of the survey for analysis purposes acknowledging full anonymity. Students were asked to fill out the online survey before they attend the workshops.

In the second part of the program, students were asked to attend a workshop on policies and procedure pertaining to academic probation. In addition, students were trained on how to avoid academic warnings and how to overcome their academic probation status. Students are also taught how to calculate their GPA and to predict how much they need to score in their current courses to raise their TGPA and CGPA. In addition, the workshop highlights policies on repeating courses and advantages of department/program changes.

In the third part of the academic success program, students are given an interactive motivational seminar conducted by one of the senior instructors. The seminar is entitled “You are not alone”. The focus of the presentation is engaging the students in a discussion type of seminar during which students are encouraged to talk about their challenges and difficulties. The instructor steers the discussion using factual stories and figures and success stories. Upon the completion of the workshops, students are asked to fill out a survey containing quiz-like questions on the material covered. In addition to understanding the policies and regulations, the purpose of the exit survey is to gauge the students' understanding of the real challenges they face and how to deal with such challenges.

3 Results and Discussion

A total of 320 students participated in the program. The demographics of the students showed that the number of male and female students participating in the program was 58% (M) to 42% (F). Students from all colleges took part in the program with the highest number of students from the College of Engineering, which is mainly due to the fact that the College of Engineering has the largest number of students in the University of Sharjah. Data on high school curriculum and ethnic background is currently being examined in another research project and will be reported in due time.

Careful examination of the entrance survey showed that most students (about 76%) go on probation by the end of the second semester. While this is typical and attributed to many factors, which include nonacademic issues such as students’ inability to cope with the free-style and responsibility-free college environment [4, 8, 12]. This is evident from the above than average absence and irregular study habits the students have reported. For example, over 67% of the students have reported that they never visited their instructors during office hours, while over 73% reported limited use of the material available on the Blackboard. Over 68% of the students reported they never felt prepared for the exams and experienced high levels of anxiety. Students’ involvement in extracurricular activities is very limited, with less than 20% participating in sports, cultural and social activities. When students were asked to list the reasons behind their poor academic performance, the answers varied with the following common issues:

• Do not have enough time to study.

• Taking heavy load and could fall behind.

• Wrong selection/selected academic program did not meet expectations.

• Personal and family issues.

• The system is different than High School.

• I feel stressed most of the time.

• Did not meet with an advisor to discuss personal and academic problems.

• Health problems.

• Lack of academic advising.

• Language barriers.

• Desire to Learn (DTL).

• Must work to support myself (and my family).

• Distractions such as social media.

• Missing assignments and HW.

Surprisingly, when students were asked if they knew what to do to get out of their low academic standing, 78% of them answered yes, they know. One interesting finding is highlighted when students were asked about their level of participation in discussions during lectures, especially answering questions 68% said they did not participate nor did they answer questions in class. These numbers support research evidence and findings that showed a higher percentage of students under probation tend to be among shy and reluctant students [6]. In conclusion, entrance survey responses have revealed that students are facing a number of challenges, some of which are academic while the remaining can be considered as social distractions, personal and family issues, poor time management, poor study habits and health-related issues.

During the interactive workshop and motivational seminar, the focus was to highlight the UOS policies on probation, calculating and forecasting GPA and CGPA and providing students with tips on how to improve academic standing by repeating courses. The workshop was interactive where students were encouraged to participate and ask questions.

In the second part of the workshop, students were asked to attend a motivational interactive seminar entitled “You are not alone”. The seminar was given by senior instructors who have an outstanding academic advising track record and are well-acquainted with the issues UOS students face, especially those related to cultural challenges and peer pressure. The objective of the workshop is to list some facts and statistics about academic probation within UOS (Fig. 2), available support and motivate the students to overcome their poor academic performance. Some of the key takeaways from the workshop include.

Fig. 2

A slide from the motivational seminar highlighting the distribution of the students under probation among colleges. The figure was taken from the motivational PowerPoint presentation, which was prepared by the authors

• There are almost 10% of the University of Sharjah students who are currently under probation and that is below most of the universities in the region.

• The University of Sharjah has designed a special Academic Advising Program to help these students get over their academic probation (Fig. 3).

  Fig. 3

  

  Announcement for ASP, workshop and motivational seminar. The figure was taken from the promotional posters, which were prepared by the authors

• Students can overcome academic probation if proper adjustments were taken.

In addition, the instructor also highlights the fact that institutions’ approach to academic probation warnings, especially the first two warnings as a signal for immediate action accompanied by immediate actions aimed at overcoming academic probation status. It was highlighted during the seminar that upon receiving academic warnings, students are expected to “hit the panic button” to.

• Revisit their academic goals and priorities.

• Reexamine their study habits.

• Reconsider their college/program selection.

• Reduce their course load.

• Consider seeking help.

After that, instructors listed the five main contributors to academic probation, which are commonly reported in the literature. These include.

• Unmotivated to study.

• Difficulties in adjusting to college life.

• Poor study habits and skills.

• Lack of clear directions/career goals.

• Inability to deal with personal issues (such as financial concerns).

Students are then invited to discuss or share their own experiences with any of the above factors. During the open discussions, students reported additional factors, the most important of which were those linked to the conservative Arabic culture. The first factor was “getting parents involved”! It was evident from the discussion, and, due to various reasons, students tend to hide their academic difficulties from their parents hoping that they can overcome them on their own. Oftentimes, they fail to do so, and the problem is compounded. The second factor is linked to students’ reluctance to talk about their problems to their peers or academic advisors simply because of fear of the consequences. This is more pronounced among female students. At the end of the session, students were given enough time to ask questions and raise concerns in the presence of the registration and admission directors and the dean of academic support service.

The last part of the “Academic Success Program” is the exit assessment survey, where students were asked to answer several questions aimed at.

• Feedback for improvement purposes.

• Gauge students’ level of understanding of the material presented and their benefits from the program.

• Table 1 summarizes the feedback on the benefit reaped by the students who attended the Academic Success Program. As can be seen, the results show that students indeed benefit from the program, especially in raising their awareness of the UOS policies on academic probation, and calculating and forecasting their GPA. In addition, over 90% of the students felt they have benefited from the motivational seminar. Personal communications and encounters with students at the registration office were very encouraging.

  Table 1 Student Responses to some of the exit survey questions. The data was extracted from the survey conducted on the students by the authors

4 Impact of ASP on the Academic Performance of the Students

To measure the impact of the proactive mixed approach for academic advising approach on the academic performance of the students, we conducted the following two exercises:

• Calculated the gain in CGPA over the current semester of the students who attended all activities associated with the program.

• Compared their gain with a randomly selected batch of students who did not attend the program.

For the comparison to be valid, we selected students with almost the same background, i.e., the same academic CGPA, the same college or program and the same level of study. Figure 4 shows the gain of the selected group of students who attended all activities of the Academic Success Program.

Fig. 4

The students’ CGPA gain after taking part in all activities of the Academic Success Program

It is evident from Fig. 4 that our mixed approach for academic advising approach had a great positive impact on the students. More than 75% of the students were able to raise their CGPA above 2 and overcome their academic probation status. This result is even more pleasing when the results were compared to the second group of students who did not attend the program, where only 34% of these students were able to improve their academic standing beyond 2.

5 Conclusions

The mixed approach for the academic advising program at the University of Sharjah was conducted twice in the academic years 2014–2015 and 2015–2016 with overwhelming success. The program catered to students who are currently under academic probation regardless of the number of academic warnings they have. Except for the workshop and motivational seminar, all surveys and supporting material were communicated to the students via the Learning Management System (Blackboard).

The factors contributing to students’ academic struggles were identified. These will be communicated to higher authorities at the university to design special advising/counseling programs for those who need such services. Students experiencing financial difficulties were directed to proper financial aid offices and special funding agencies.

Students learnt “tricks of the trade” where they were not only exposed to the details of the UOS bylaws and policies, but they were taught how to maneuver within the study plan to avoid academic probation. Examples include repeating courses, mixing up courses in accordance with the level of difficulty, student issues and petitions, grievance requests and change program requests. In addition, students learnt how to calculate and forecast their GPA, CGPA and much more.

The impact of the special academic advising program was very pleasing and exceeded the expectations of the authors. Over 75% of the students who took part in the program had a significant increase in their CGPA and were able to overcome their academic probation status. The results were very pleasing not only to the authors but also to the university administration.

Organizers faced several challenges, the most important of which is the lower-than-expected attendance rates. The reasons behind this may be attributed to the fact that students were reluctant to participate in the program so their peers do not find out about their academic status. In addition, those who missed the activities reported logistical issues, such as the time and location of the workshop. This will be resolved in the future by offering the program at different times during the semester. In addition, we are planning to expand the program to include more categories of students above the current cutoff, i.e., students with a CGPA above 2.3.