Fostering Student Success

Classroom Strategies to Support CSU Pueblo Students

Create & Nurture Sense of Belonging

Support Growth Mindset

A growth mindset centers on the belief that our skills and knowledge will grow over time through effort and persistence. Individuals may have a growth mindset in some areas of life and a fixed mindset in others.

• Express to your students that you want each of them to succeed and that you are here to support their effort.

• Share your personal academic challenges and your journey to overcome them.

• Share personal instances of times you felt imposter syndrome and how you persisted through those feelings. 

• Normalize these feelings and guide students to navigate spaces where they occur.

Facilitate Peer-to-Peer Connections

• Facilitate small and large group interactions.

• Share information about student clubs, organizations, and events.

• Help Students Connect with Campus Student Services

• Point students to information about accessing campus services in the course syllabus for future reference.

Facilitate Experiences to Build Communication Skills

• Facilitate a class discussion and provide concrete examples of professional communication. 

• Clearly communicate how you prefer that students address you in verbal and written communication (e.g, professor, doctor, Mr./Mrs./Ms., first name)? 

• Provide examples of an eMail to you that is written with the tone and language as a model of professional communication.

• Share ways students can open a conversation about topics such as:

  • Questions about grades

  • When they are struggling to learn course material

  • Absences and making up work

Develop Peer to Peer Communication Norms

• Co-create group norms around peer-to-peer interactions in all the ways those interactions appear in your class (e.g., large/small group discussion, group work, respectful disagreement).

Build skills

• Provide practice with oral and written communication when possible.

Gather Student Feedback

• Early Input: By the end of the 2nd week of class, provide an anonymous feedback survey to the class. Use the survey to learn more about what is important to you (e.g., Can they locate course materials? Do they understand assignment expectations? Are they experiencing personal or academic barriers to learning?) 

• Continue Periodic Anonymous Check-Ins: A simple strategy to increase feelings of support is to use a “3-2-1" method. Ask students 3 of the most meaningful/interesting things they have learned, 2 questions they still have, and 1 suggestion about anything in the class.

• Share: Inform students of the actions you will take now or in the future based on the survey results to reinforce your support for each students’ success.

• Extend Support: Connect survey responses to campus resources in place to assist students.

Representation Matters

• Incorporate learning materials that are meaningful and representative of your student population. 

• Highlight the accomplishments of individuals who mirror individual characteristics of your students in fields related to your discipline. Share barriers those individuals overcame in their journey.

Resources - Sense of Belonging

• MIT Teaching + Learning Lab: Webpage with Video (Watch Time 57:23) and Text

• View CSU Pueblo Faculty Professional Learning Projects AY 2022-2023

Resources - Growth Mindset

• Growth Mindset Video (Watch Time 10:52)

• Carol Dweck at Stanford University and her team created an eight question mindset assessment that instructors can share with students. 

  • The results of the assessment are sent via eMail with an analysis of current mindset and suggestions to strengthen growth mindset. 

• Psychology Today. (2023). Growth Mindset | Psychology Today. Www.psychologytoday.com. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/growth-mindset
  
  

Proactively Remove Barriers to Learning

Design with Learner Variability in Mind

• Offer learning materials and ways to demonstrate learning in more than one modality (e.g., text, audio, video, graphics) to maximize learning opportunities for all students. 

• You are likely incorporating aspects of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in your teaching already. Refer to the guidelines to identify one or two new aspects of UDL to incorporate each term to build your repertoire.

• Leverage AI tools to 

  • Brainstorm ways to bake UDL into your course. 

  • Create multimodal representations of learning materials.

Resources - Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

• Overview: Universal Design for Learning

• AI Training: Contact denise.henry@csupueblo.edu for training and support.

Ensure Accessibility

• Ensure that student-facing materials meet Colorado state and CSU Pueblo accessibility requirements. 

  • Make this manageable by prioritizing the materials for the current learning module, staying one step ahead of your learning timeline as the term progresses.

• Utilize campus resources and assistance.

Resources - Accessibility

• CSU Pueblo Self-Paced Blackboard Micro Credential Course: Opening Access for All at CSU Pueblo

• Create Accessible Instructional Materials (Walk-in and by Appointment) 

• Stacey Khourey coordinates support provided by LINC Navigators 

• State and Campus Accessibility Mandates + Student Accommodations (By Appointment) 

• Justin Hiniker, The Disability Resource Center 

• State and Campus Accessibility Mandates + Staff/Faculty Accommodations (By Appointment) 

• Erin Hager, The Office of Civil Rights Compliance and Title IX  

• Teaching and Learning Course Considerations (By Appointment) 

• Faculty peer-to-peer discussions and guidance, Assoc. Prof. Rachel Zimmerman 

• LMS and Teaching and Learning: Denise Henry via the CTLL 

Increase Transparency in Teaching and Learning

• Make the Purpose, Task, and Success Criteria clear for every graded and non-graded assignment:

  • Unwritten Rules for College Success, (39 second video)

  • Transparency Framework 1) Purpose, (44 second video)

  • Transparency Framework 2) Task, (25 second video)

  • Transparency Framework 3) Criteria, (24 second video)

Resources - Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT)

• TILT Higher Ed Resources: Learn More About TILT, Assignment Prompts for Different Disciplines, and Tools for Teaching

  • Implement Transparent Teaching Methods, (Self Paced) Multidisciplinary resources for class learning activities

Teach Students How to Learn Your Discipline

Guide Learners

• Facilitate student activities to help them understand learning strategies specific to the discipline.

• Create opportunities for students to reflect on the learning strategies they use and the impact on mastery of the learning objectives.

Create and Sustain Culture of Learning

• Break large assignments into smaller chunks or create checkpoints that allow you to provide feedback on process and progress toward the final form of the work.

• Provide ample opportunities for students to receive feedback on their progress toward meeting course learning outcomes. 

• Learn more about updating grading methods that focus students on the learning through feedback that is not centered on a grade.

• Post qualitative and quantitative feedback to students in the LMS on a regular frequency.

• Create and sustain a Community of Inquiry.

• Communicate the ways that students can benefit from attending office hours and in which ways they can attend. 

• If office hours attendance is low, you might consider pivoting the time to facilitate a course Q-n-A or learning strategies sessions. 

Share learning strategies and examples of

• Campus and online resources

• Forming study groups early in the term

• Effective note taking strategies (e.g., written, graphical representation, mind mapping, audio recordings of lecture)

• Writing papers and support services

• Self-quizzing methods and tools

• Identifying what content to study for a quiz or exam and at which levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy they will be assessed

Resources - Teach Students How to Learn 

• Grading Resources

  • Read: Inside Higher Ed Article, August 06, 2024: Is There Harm in Grading?

  • Listen: Teaching for Student Success Podcast, Episode 13: Stress, Grades, and the American Way! Time for a Re-boot.

  • (Listen Time 51:56). 

    • Note: Read additional text-based resources posted on the web page.

• A succinct discussion of the revisions to Bloom’s classic cognitive taxonomy (1950) by Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) and how to use them effectively: Read the Paper

• Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast Episode (1 hour) with additional resources in the show notes

• Community of Inquiry Model for Teaching, Social, and Cognitive Presence