Student Development Dialogue in groups – what do you want in your educational cocktail? Increase the student’s commitment and motivation in order to promote their autonomy and decrease the feeling of individual pressure – and hopefully reduce the risk of them giving up on their studies.
Academic integration/belonging, Social integration/belongingWorkshop | On campus | In person | Live
Time lineWhat is the main idea or gist?
What does this initiative/support/project look like?
The 2nd semester is often challenging for the students at The Faculty of Humanities at SDU. Returning from a hectic exam period with challenging preparations and exams, and time to reflect on studies and outcome. At 2nd semester we often meet students with waning motivation and commitment.
Therefore, we have the Student Development Dialogue (from here on referred to as SDD) where the aim is to strengthen the students’ commitment and motivation.
The SDD is an extracurricular guidance in group session where the students at the 2nd semester at the dual subject programmes at The Faculty of Humanities are invited.
They are invited in groups relating to their specific study programme.
The main purpose of SDD is:
To support the 3 basic psychological needs (identified by Deci & Ryan) competence, autonomy, and relatedness, in order to help promote the students’ autonomous regulation in context of their studies and at the same time decrease the feeling of individual pressure.
The theoretical framework is Self-Determination Theory (SDT), meaning in work-life (Ravn, 2019), planned happenstance theory (Krumboltz) and mindset-theory (Dweck)
The group session’s main topics
How and timing
It is a two-hour face to face session in groups placed in the beginning of the 2nd semester.
The form is guidance in group to encourage dialogue between peers on relevant topics. The purpose of guidance in groups is to create reflections, to sight and understand oneself in new ways, and to discover options through discussions with peers. The role of the professional is to facilitate conversations based on minor topic introductions and students’ experiences, and to involve all participants to ensure different perspectives.
The sessions are overall run without devices.
Everything is planned and communicated by the Student Guidance office at The Faculty of Humanities.
What are the goals?
We want the students to discover their motivation and competence development as helpful navigation pointers in their decision-making processes and not fear the “abundance of choices”. And to experience that they are not alone in their reactions and reflections on their studies, and to discover sharing university experiences with peers as a positive – not only in facilitated group sessions but on a daily basis.
What underlying constructs or ideas inspired the design?
SDD is a group guidance session because it has proven to be very effective to strengthen relatedness, deindividualize feelings and creates better conditions for transfer to happen.
What the success criteria and the points of attention?
It is essential for this initiative that it is designed as guidance in groups session in order to support the purpose.
strongly agree
(How) is this initiative/support/project evaluated?
Yes, we ask the participating students to fill out a form, and we collect their responses in a report.
The overall response from the participating students is positive (8,4 out of 10). The majority of the students (90% and up) enjoyed sharing their reflections on the topics with their peers, felt competent to form an interesting course of study for themselves, and recommend next year students to participate.
How is it communicated and advertised?
We email the head of studies at the study programmes to let them know, that the event is taking place and because we hope that they too will advertise it to the students.
We send email invitations to the students, but we also send reminders in the LMS. We visit their classes to advertise for the event too (if needed).
The event system where they register also sends out a reminder to those planning to participate.
What is the current and ideal timing and duration?
In the beginning of the 2nd semester, before march 15th (the deadline if you want to apply for another education in quota 2) – they just finished their first exams at the university, and if they want to have enough financial support (SU grant) for another education, they experience this time as a time where “doors are closing”.
During regular ‘school’ hours.
We aim to schedule the sessions in immediate continuation of the students’ courses on campus to increase participation.
What resources are needed to run this initiative?
Staff: Student guidance counsellors or similar professionals with target group knowledge and facilitating skills. 1-2 professionals to run the two-hour sessions
Skills: Designing the group sessions (content, flow and exercises), planning, coordinating, facilitating, insight in the theoretical framework and the target group.
Practicalities:
Event system for registrations.
Classrooms or similar where you can change the table set up from “teaching” to “group meeting”
Communication: email to the head of studies at the programmes, email invitation for the students, reminders in LMS/event system, visiting their classes to advertise the event.
Materials: Handouts, coffee/tea (if you want to stress the group meeting design)
Is it easily transferrable to other contexts or groups?
We think it is quite easily transferable to other contexts or groups.
The theoretical framework and the design could easily be transferred – the content would have to be adapted to the context.