Teaching university students how to learn matters for retaining them

By Deena Kara Shaffer, Toronto Metropolitan University

It’s acceptance letter season. High school students across the country are waiting, nervous for that “yes” or “no” from the colleges and universities where they’ve applied.

These offers come with big promises. Students’ hearts hold big hopes. But what happens when students arrive where they’ve so wanted to go?

Where incoming students have optimism, I have concern. Against a strained financial backdrop for universities, with cuts and mounting deficits as administrators revisit budget allocations, I want to shout, “prioritize student retention!”

Helping learners stay who want to stay has been at the centre of my post-secondary career. In my doctoral work in holistic learning strategies, in professional consulting work supporting students and in my publications, I have focused on how learning interventions can support students.

As an adjunct faculty member in Toronto Metropolitan University’s Faculty of Arts, I am teaching a learning and development course on student thriving, and at York University, I lead a student services department focused on student retention in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change.

Learning and teaching gaps

Post-COVID-19 learning gaps are heavy on educators’ minds. Pandemic-related school closures led to significant learning losses. As Ontario researchers warned, these losses particularly affected “low-income families in which racialized and Indigenous groups, newcomers and people with disabilities are over-represented.”

Educators are slowly understanding and addressing gaps in student learning, but lots was lost for learners, many of whom are soon to start post-secondary education. Some are already there, and are wondering how to keep going.

Turns out, we shouldn’t only be concerned about students lagging behind via missed curricular learning, but also a “theory-practice” lag as well — meaning the very way many courses have been designed too often assumes students understand how to learn.

Learning how to learn

The importance of learning strategies (sometimes called metacognition) has been well studied, and it’s clear that acquiring learning strategies has a positive impact on students. Yet for many students I work with who are struggling with post-secondary studies, the notion of learning strategies is new.

Read Full Story https://theconversation.com/teaching-university-students-how-to-learn-matters-for-retaining-them-225238