Colleges and universities are home to a range of resources that can help students thrive and succeed, but many students don’t know them. Just over half (56%) of college students said they were aware of tutoring and academic support on campus, while 94% of college employees said their campus provides resources.
At the University of South Florida, the Center for Academic Success is a central office in the library that houses tutoring, writing labs, peer coaching and supplemental teaching, and other academic support for undergraduates.
She said Zoraya Betancourt became the director of the Center in 2020 during a challenging time — partly because the Center had to reintroduce itself to access students who have never been on campus, as well as those who have experienced Covid-19 college experiences.
National data show that students in large public institutions now spend less time studying extracurricular than in the 2018-19 school year and are unlikely to join research groups with their peers.
“For me, well, we will have to be different. We can’t go back to who we are,” Betancourt said.
Stimulated by student data and feedback, Betancourt and her team led the center’s reshaping more sensitive to students’ needs and meet their location.
Data-based decision making: First, Betancourt worked with Steve Johnson, a data scientist at the university’s student success team to build a dashboard for student data.
“For years, the only data we have is how many students have come to use the service for how many times,” Betancourt said. “I always think that what we need is more than just — we need more knowledge.”
Betancourt now has access to student majors, universities and the types of services they use to identify high-demand topics and create responsive learning support schedules. The dashboard also associates services with student retention and outcome goals.
In addition to automating some work, the dashboard allows employees to attract students more directly. Every week, the system generates reports of new visitors to the center, which is used to lend a hand and personally welcomes students to the center and its services.
Nursing-centric model: One of the clear trends in student interactions is the universality of stress in student experiences, Betancourt said. “Our tutor came to us and said, ‘I have a student…I don’t know how to help them.'”
In response, the office adopted a care model to quickly connect support staff to other departments, reducing the chances of students falling into cracks.
“In this recommendation system, we can get into whether students using our services say, ‘I really need to change majors, I don’t know what to do, I really emphasize it,” Betancourt said. “We were able to get into the system and refer it directly to the consultant.”
Larry Billue Jr. is an academic success center for nursing management, coaching students to receive counseling support, financial aid, basic needs support and academic advisors, or just sit with students to discuss their feelings.
Increase peer engagement: Another new feature of ACS is supplementary guidance. Although academic interventions have been around for decades, this is new to the university and creates opportunities for collaboration between staff and faculty to promote academic achievement and create jobs for student staff.
“It became even more obvious because we heard from students, ‘I don’t just need tutoring. I love working with my peers,” Betcote said.
In USF, supplemental teaching is called Pass, and is the abbreviation of peer-assisted learning courses. ACS is tracking student participation in the pass for metrological use.
Students can also register through the portal (an online resource for tutoring and learning) in certain courses to receive remote tutoring to complement the in-person opportunity when the office is closed.
Influence: Over the past year, the center’s student usage has increased by 75%.
Having a nursing team member on board was also successful. Billue Jr. can physically take students to campus to relevant offices and introduce them as needed.
“The students were well received; they brought him to the offer and they would walk with him,” Batecote said.
The center has also expanded training for academic peer mentors to address learning strategies and effective learning practices, and also addressed how to recommend to other offices.
The biggest lesson Betancourt learned is that there are many opportunities to connect with students and connect with them, and understanding these opportunities only requires a deeper understanding of students’ needs.
“We help to attract students on campus, to engage students with each other, to engage students with faculty and staff, which is close to improving our services and how we build on that.”
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