Learning Strategies – a standard inventory
This section offers a sampling of common learning strategies or tactics dispensed by practitioners, the concrete tried and true of the practice. I use the word “strategies” here for convenience, but “tactics” is probably more precise. (Recall the earlier discussion about the word cloud confusion in terminology – strategies, tactics, skills, goals etc.). The term “learning strategy” is the one most commonly used to refer to the things I describe below, and, while I don’t want to get hung up on semantics, I do think that the question of strategy precedes these more specific “tactics. In fact, the strategy is developed according to the specifics of the student situation and the tactics are chosen that are in service of that strategy. Whatever terminology you chose, it’s helpful to categorize these things into types in order to capture something of their breadth and range.
Monique Boekaerts, for example, and her concept of “self-regulated learning” has suggested three types of learning strategies: (1) cognitive strategies, (2) metacognitive strategies, and (3) motivational strategies. Others have added a fourth category, (4) management strategies, to this list. Alternatively, John Biggs has suggested three approaches to learning: deep, surface, and achieving.
The underlying principle in these categorizations is that the effectiveness of strategies depends on context.
Here I will invoke my model of Academic Resourcefulness described earlier as a potential frame for organizing concrete learning strategies. Recall that, in that model, I propose that the purpose of learning strategy work is to cultivate greater academic resourcefulness in students, and that the relevant domains of academic resourcefulness are: (1) Readiness, (2) Skills and, (3) Belonging. So, here we can use that framing to categorize our sampling of common learning strategies. And it’s important to note that we are not always precisely in the business of dispensing “strategies”, per se. Our work also involves consciousness- raising about the myriad intricacies of and our relationship to study and learning, an attention to the seedbed in which specific strategies and skills and moves can take root.
Readiness:
The learning dispositions, postures, stances, that precede skills. Like the athlete who assumes a “ready-stance” before a sporting event, a student can adopt postures of readiness for learning – the Learning Spirit alluded to earlier.
Approaches to cultivate Readiness
- Student intake – many Learning Strategists will employ, in their first encounter with a student, some sort of “intake” tool designed to gather relevant information about the student’s current approach to and aptitude for study. Although many will use this as a diagnostic instrument to better identify the specific nature of the student predicaments, I suggest it is better used as a teaching or reflection tool – something to help the student better understand themselves. It can help build a vocabulary of learning, foster self-awareness and orient the student towards improvement.
- Equipping the kit – there is a kind of post-secondary equivalent to the 4th grade student arriving on the first day of school with a new backpack, fully equipped pencil case, and crisp binders with neatly inserted dividers (or in my case a dirty backpack filled with cookie crumbs and a baseball glove). The kit. Learning Strategists can help students identify what parts of a kit they will need, that they will be most likely to use, for what purpose etc. In the end, it may be that, like in an athlete’s equipment bag, some things will lie dormant and unused, but there is, in that kit-preparation, some positive effect towards readiness.
- Highlighting support networks – students, especially incoming undergraduates, receive a lot of messaging about the importance of independence in higher education. “You need to manage yourself, nobody is going to hold your hand” etc. are often the well-intentioned but slightly misguided messages. Students can overstate this idea of independence at the expense of something equally important and related which is establishing some sort of support network – whatever that may look like.
- Motivation – a bit laughable to include this sweeping and foundational topic to a bullet item but helping students to achieve a sense of readiness must attend to their reasons for being here in the first place. There are “strategies” to help students find and be fueled by motivation – goal setting exercises, pacing, chunking, managing procrastination, prioritizing, heathly habits etc. Those are tangible things to enact in the midst of the work when projects seem daunting. In those cases, it’s really about finding ways to help students become un-stuck and take little steps to doing something – action precedes motivation sometimes. But, motivation as a feature of readiness is much more basic and this is less a strategic question than simply a personal one. So the strategy here is to talk to the student, ask them questions about what brings them here, what gets them excited, why they chose their program, what their hopes are – in other words, to keep them in contact with the thing that matters: their purpose.
- Reflective Learning – considerations of readiness are typically things to be made early in the adventure but it’s really an ongoing process. So, it’s never too early to engage students in the reflective process and help them scrutinize their own learning and reasons for being here.
Skills:
Skills matter and, as in other domains, they can be honed in students towards more effective learning and study. Let’s further break this down into two sub-categories here: (1) cognitive strategies and (2) metacognitive strategies
Approaches to cultivate Skills
Cognitive strategies – the foundational, concrete, practical, evidence-based study practices
Metacognitive strategies – the knowledge about one’s own learning processes that are in service of study practices. These are the standard fare of most campus learning success offices, common topics include:
- Time and task management
- Test and exam preparation
- How to approach assignments
- Note-taking practices
- Writing processes
- Planning and goal setting
- Managing procrastination
- Active reading
Belonging:
“Belonging” is a much used but often vaguely articulated concept. It typically focuses on the intuitive notions of “fitting in” or of being valued in the community – a focus on social belonging. As Learning Strategists, we are, of course, attentive to that, but I would suggest that “academic belonging” is the more relevant dimension. This is also slippery to define, but a 2015 piece by Lewis and Hodges makes a useful distinction between social and academic belonging and suggests that uncertainty about “fitting in” can manifest differently in social and intellectual domains. In other words, students who perhaps feel socially engaged may nevertheless feel “ability uncertainty” in their academic community, with deleterious consequences on performance and persistence. We are in a unique position to help students connect meaningfully to their academic community and help cultivate greater confidence in their abilities to “fit in” there. Many of the things I’ve mentioned throughout this book related to building trust with students, being authentic and human, creating welcoming settings etc. are the natural mechanisms to cultivate a sense of belonging – not strategies so much as attitudes.
Approaches to cultivate Belonging
- Design participatory workshops hospitable to all students and their points of view
- Establish “cohort” or multi-week programming where students can build community
- Foster peer connections through mentorship and other peer-based initiatives
- Provide feedback to students on their academic work
- Celebrate progress, normalize struggle
- Create opportunities for students to practice academic skills in low-stakes contexts
- Disrupt stereotypes of traditional “student engagement”
- Tell stories about your own academic predicaments
- Attend carefully to the social presence in group/classroom settings
