NACADA Regional Conference

Today I returned from the last day of the NACADA Region 5 Annual Conference in Bloomington-Normal. I'm very glad I had the opportunity to go! I attended many sessions, including a great one about advisees' parents by our own Julian Parrott :)

A recurring theme of the conference seemed to be the "Millennial" generation and their expectations (which always became generalized and somewhat stereotypical in conversation, although I realize there is truth behind those notions). In one session, a heated discussion began about whether advisors should meet Millennials' expectations for short, tweet-like communication only. One audience member said that he began communicating with his students in 140 characters or less, always, because "they don't read any further than that." This prompted some responses about how this strategy may not be helping "them" develop as critically-thinking students and future members of the workforce. Someone said that it's ok to meet students at their expectations with things like short messages, but then we need to help "bring them up" to a higher level by setting higher expectations for them and demonstrating what they need to do to meet them.

Same goes for email advising. Some advisors have started advising primarily via email because "students don't like to come in, but they like email." The form of email advising from this segment was through electronic worksheets for course programs with highlights on courses that the student still needs. This raised a lot of questions about how advisors can engage in true developmental advising this way (can't really). The argument was that "students today" like black-and-white ideas so they use these worksheets, but others argued that advising, major/career/interest exploration, and even course selection are not usually black and white and it might be dangerous to try to make it so.

One of my favorite sessions was about a program that an instructor created for students on last-chance academic probation. It takes the form of an "intentionally difficult" 2-credit course with required study sessions each week. The presentation was very fascinating and was partially based on the idea that even students who struggle greatly will rise to the instructor's high expectations. In this case, the instructor is there to provide additional support as students struggle through the course and through the semester. I saw the course sort of like training wheels, where the instructor helps students work through their academic difficulties as they get a handle on how to deal with challenging college courses. When the course is over (training wheels removed), they know how much effort and what kinds of strategies are required to succeed in future courses as a result of this program.

Lots of great ideas floated around this conference, and I'm so glad I had the chance to attend! I'm looking forward to sharing more of what I learned with my other advising colleagues.

Also, it's registration time for our students again. We'll be holding Express Advising this week to accommodate everyone; you know the drill.