This short video highlights the EOA National Best Education Practices Clearinghouse. The Clearinghouse identifies, validates, and disseminates best education practices to improve student outcomes for GEAR UP and TRIO students. These students are often poor, historically-underrepresented, first generation in their families to attend college, and have little to no social capital to help them achieve their dreams. The Clearinghouse provides practices that equity programs can adapt and employ to support student success in their programs. Also, GU and TRIO programs are eligible to submit administrative and educational practices to the Clearinghouse for inclusion.
David Arendale’s History of the Integrated Learning Course: Creation, Conflict, and Survival
This short video tells the story how in 1972 the Integrated Learning (IL) course was developed at the University of Minnesota to meet the academic and cultural transition needs of their TRIO Upward Bound summer bridge program students as they prepared to enter college. The IL course was an early example of a linked course learning community. A historically-challenging college content course such as Introduction to Anatomy and Physiology or Law in Society was linked with an IL course. The IL course is essentially an academic support class customized to use the content of its companion class as a context for mastering learning strategies and orienting students to the rigor of the college learning environment. The history of the IL course provides lessons for creating, sustaining, and surviving daunting campus political and financial challenges that could face any new academic or student affairs program. The TRIO program leveraged its modest budget and personnel for the IL course approach which flourished and withstood changing economic and political forces that could have terminated the innovative approach to academic support. Lessons from this history of creation, conflict, and survival could be applied to other programs in a postsecondary setting.
David Arendale’s Leader Identity Emergence of Study Group Facilitators Publication
This short video tells the story of a qualitative study at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, USA, investigated leader identity emergence of study group facilitators. There is a gap in the professional literature regarding study group programs and identity emergence of the student paraprofessionals who facilitate the study sessions. This study built upon previous studies of identity formation by integrating educational theories that help explain the changes that occurred. Peer study group programs are powerful co-curricular experiences. This study provided answers to why and how identity emergence occurs. The Leader Identity Development Model for peer study group facilitators was developed based on the findings from this study and other experiences with study group leaders over the past three decades by David Arendale to help predict this change and the experiences that supported identity formation. Among those catalysts were written reflections by the study group leaders throughout the academic term on what they learned about themselves and about their conversations with other study leaders and the study group program manager. Implications are provided that explain how peer programs can become a more transformative learning ecosystem. Peer learning programs present an untapped personal and professional development opportunity for student leaders that would be even more powerful if it were intentional rather than serendipitous.
David Arendale’s Antiracist Activities and Policies for Student-Led Study Groups Publication
This short video highlights issues of race and marginalization that do not often intersect with publications related to developmental education and learning assistance. They have been spaces that ignored them these issues. This guide to antiracism policies and practices for student-led study groups is based on a careful review of scholarly articles, books, and existing guides. While much has been written about culturally-sensitive pedagogies for K-16 classroom instruction, little has emerged for guiding peer study groups regarding antiracism practices. This guide helps address this gap in the literature. In addition to its use for academic study groups, this guide is useful for faculty members to incorporate antiracism learning activities and pedagogies into their courses. This guide identifies effective learning practices that can be adapted and adopted for use in supporting higher student achievement, closing the achievement gap, increasing persistence to graduation, and meeting the needs of culturally-diverse and historically-underrepresented students.