Working with students one-on-one

Many students, at some point in their postsecondary experience, will reach out to their campus learning and study support centre to make an appointment with a Learning Strategist. What motive, concern, disquiet, impulse, incentive, ambition lies at the root of such a student move is an idiosyncratic thing, the subject of much scholarship and many books. But what actually happens there, behind those closed doors, is a lesser-known thing. What is a learning strategist appointment anyway? What do people do in one? We shouldn’t, by asking the question, overstate the mystery of it all – it is, on some level, pretty straightforward. Student-talks-to-learning-strategist-about-their-learning-experience(s); Learning- Strategist-offers-advice. But, as any Learning Strategist will tell you, there is often much more to it.

But how to describe it? 

In the practice of working with students 1:1, two things will be at play that inform how the Learning Strategist proceeds: first, they will draw upon the “tried-and-true”, the foundational canon of the work, the familiar and safe, and, secondly, when that rote approach results in something unexpected or surprising, they will need to draw upon something new, spontaneous,  intuitive. And these newly formed practices will (hopefully) be integrated into an expanded foundation. Most practitioners would agree that this work is more art than science, in the simplest sense, an interaction that involves intensive listening to and professional advising of students on that most pertinent of all post-secondary endeavours – study and learning. Start scratching the surface of that topic, have discussions with students about their approach to study, their relationship and history with learning – – it can get pretty raw and complex at times, a human exchange on weighty topics, subject to all the contingencies that unfold in the action of it. 

Donald Schon suggests that a profession is, an activity “… in instrumental problem solving made rigorous by the application of scientific theory and technique…”, but further suggests that “…the problems of real-world practice do not present themselves to practitioners as well-formed structures. Indeed, they tend not to present themselves as problems at all but as messy, indeterminate situations” (Schon 1983, p. 4).  I think we’d all agree that a student’s experience with learning through the dizzying tumult of postsecondary education is a kind of messy indeterminate situation. And so is talking about it. And writing about talking about it. So, what follows is simply an attempt to say something meaningful about this work, not a step-by-step guide to conducting learning strategy appointments but, rather, some thick descriptions of what they sometimes are, or can be, so a kind of range of possibility can be revealed.   

What do you do in a learning strategy appointment?

Where to start?

Donald Schon”s conception is useful here.  He posits three components of effective coaching (I’ve used Schon’s words but have altered the order here):

1. Create a relationship conducive to learning   
2. Tailor demonstration or description to a student’s particular needs
3. Set and solve the substantial problems of performance

This, or some variation of this, is essentially what most Learning Strategists will say they do in a student appointment. Variations on this tri-partite methodology might be:

1. Ease students’ stress and make them feel welcome 
2. Adapt to their specific needs and situation
3. Help them develop strategic knowledge

Or:

1. Build trust with students
2. Focus on the challenges applicable to their context
3. Support them in their academic skill development

These are contrivances, of course. Human exchanges are not easily given to such algorithms. But there is something true and common in these three-part formulations as generic answers to the question “what do you do in a learning strategy appointment?” You meet with students, you welcome them, put them at ease and you talk towards a shared understanding of what the student wants help with.

How one does that is, again, an idiosyncratic thing, subject to the personality and experience of the people involved. Let’s elaborate on these three components of the practice. 

1. Create a relationship conducive to learning:

In all discussions with novice and expert Learning Strategists alike, a kind of consensus emerges about the first order of business. The success of the enterprise depends on trust. Students must, first-and foremost, perceive their Learning Strategist to be a trustworthy partner in the endeavour. This, of course, involves conveying a sense of expertise, that we are equipped with the relevant knowledge about learning and study. But there is something even more important that precedes that – conveying that we care.

I ask what brings them to connect with me ( not “ what’s wrong”, “ what can I do for them”- I’m not doing anything for them, they are doing something for themselves- there is no “favour” being granted here) Language for starting a conversation matters- I want to know their motivation for coming; of all the thousands of things they could choose to do, they choose to meet me.  ~Cristina Peter

[My practice is] rooted in a student-centred approach – focused on “curious regard”, emphasizing empathy, authenticity, helpfulness, and the use of storytelling or narratives to support self-regulated learning.  Being a friendly human, but with a specific goal: to solve a specific or general challenge related to learning. Balancing an approach that acknowledges personal, health, or systemic challenges while focusing on the learning experience. ~Rahul Bhat

I found that a helpful ingredient to building trust with students was to treat their exhaustion and cynicism as perfectly rational and not at all aberrant. ~Eugenia Tsao

Establish-trust – a seemingly simple, intuitive thing. But it’s important to remember that, for many students, encounters with support services can be fraught, so trust-building is a not a box to check at the beginning but a thing to be tended. In the sometimes rote execution of the work, what gets detected as potentially undermining of that trust is insincerity, so, at the risk of sloganizing, simply be authentic in character, say what you mean, and avoid the pretense that can come in the offering of counsel.

 2. Tailor demonstration or description to a student’s particular needs:

Trust-building is, of course, an ongoing affair, but after those initial moments of welcome and invitation, the discussions with students turn to their particular needs, a not-so-easy determination. Here the Learning Strategist summons the skills of intelligent inquiry, a kind of human archaeology to unearth what is most pertinent to the student’s learning experience, their needs, their concerns. This is a complex, iterative, conversational process since often the student will resort to a kind of generalized shorthand to describe their predicaments – “I need help with time-management”; “I’m feeling overwhelmed”; “I can’t keep up with my schoolwork”; “I need better study skills” etc. These are real expressions, good starting points. And there are generalized learning strategies that can be applied at this opening juncture. But there can be greater depths to plumb here with informed lines of inquiry, active listening, probing for more specific information. An analogy: think of a struggling carpenter coming to a carpentry strategist for guidance. They may begin with “I’m struggling to build a deck” – identifying in this way a broad, general quandary. But the expert carpentry strategist will probe more carefully to discover the specifics and, in that way, discover that the student needs help getting started with a plan, or getting the right tools, or with making a miter joint. Further, these discussions may also reveal what strengths the struggling carpenter already has – that they are great with a screwdriver, can accurately calculate a cut-list, and know how to install a lag-bolt. And, now there is the opportunity to guide the student with strategies that draw upon existing strengths and apply more specifically to their needs.

Most of the start is a series of questions trying to refine what is usually a pretty nebulous ask about time management, motivation, self-deprecating description of current study habits, etc. It is about narrowing to a diagnosis- what is the most important problem; what is the knot that will loosen the rest of the tightness they feel around their learning; this can take some time. ~Cristina Peter

The goal is to uncover and then augment what students are already doing, using strategic questions instead of jumping to ‘fix’ a challenge – keep choice and agency   ~Alex Bowie

This is the detective work of the job, but it is important to also recognize an over-tendency to materialize and pathologize what might not in fact be there. We can become victim to our own biases, or the lingering echoes of previous appointments, or the prevailing themes-of-the day so common in education circles, and begin imposing those prejudices upon the student predicament.  But sometimes a time management problem is just a time management problem. Inquire, but do so judiciously and honour, what the student is saying.

3. Set and solve the substantial problems of performance:

So, the student has been invited in, has been guided in a process of discovering something specific to their needs and goals, now the work turns to instruction of a sort, the application of suggested strategies to address those needs, a tactic to try, a skill to practice, a habit to form. This is essentially the work of facilitating behaviour change, by offering specific, tangible skills – say, an approach to quantitative problem-solving, a heuristic for effective notetaking, a strategy for making meaning from texts, a method for preparing for tests and exams – and then suggesting ways to practice that new skill. This is the deceptively hard part.

The learning strategy itself is maybe the easiest part. If any of this work can be called easy…it is not. But the learning strategies are usually quite simple and elegant, once the issue is identified- they actually, should be simple and elegant; easy to remember and easy to integrate-this doesn’t mean they are easy to do…. but they are tailored to fit within a students’ ability, competency and life so they can practice them. I guess most important things in life are surprisingly simple in theory but hard to do in practice ~Cristina Peter

When students brought challenges to me that I found surprising, a reliably constructive approach was to walk through strategies that students in similar situations had previously outlined to me (“Here’s what another student of mine who’s balancing a similar load under similar time constraints has tried, and here’s what’s worked well for them and what’s worked less well”) and to treat that not as a static set of suggestions, but as a starting point for further personalization and problematization. This technique altered my approach by helping me realize that students could talk themselves into some pretty good ideas by critiquing—in an encouraging, gently paced dialogue—study strategies they felt were too time-consuming to try but understood as having sensible foundations. ~Eugenia Tsao

Depending on the student’s background and acumen with study and learning skills, you will be asking them either to try something already familiar, a tweak to already established practices, or something altogether novel, an entirely new strategy. In any case, you will be asking them to change their behaviour, to begin establishing a new habit. This is where the load transfers to the student. The success of the new implementation will depend on the degree to which the student bears the responsibility to do the necessary work to enact it. Needless to say, this can be tricky territory, influenced by all the myriad factors that make up the student’s current relationship and experience with learning, and school, and study. By the time they reach us, students have an already well-established, habitual way of thinking about and approaching their study and learning so there may be a kind of unraveling of that. The Learning Strategists will now act as a kind of coach, guiding the student in a process of self-reflection to illuminate a clearer picture of their current practices and generate the necessary motivation to alter them. In other words, we are helping the student form new habits with the strategies we suggest, and this may require a few repeat follow-up visits. There is a substantial body of scholarship and pseudo-scholarship on the subject of habit formation from which we can draw (some notably helpful ones include James Clear’s Atomic Habits; Gretchen Rubin’s Better than Before; Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit; BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits). And we will here begin invoking the language of goal-setting, the importance of cues, mindset, commitment, and motivation – the engines of positive behaviour change.

What I want most is to facilitate their shift/facilitate their reflection and improve relationship to their own learning. There’s something about facilitating moments of insight that lead to small and meaningful changes in their practice as students.    ~Rahul Bhat

Resistance from students can be useful – provide them space to interrupt their thinking, and to see their challenge or experience in a new perspective  ~Ayeshika Wickremasinghe

It’s in this territory most especially that we need to discern the boundaries of our expertise and responsibilities. In many cases, we will be able to appropriately coach the student towards these changes in a relatively straightforward way. But in other cases, the student’s experience with learning may be entangled in long, complicated histories that may require a more carefully calibrated therapeutic approach better suited to our colleagues in counseling, or accessibility offices. Learning Strategy work, like many other domains of education, is prone to fads and unsubstantiated pseudo-science. Foisting this upon students may seem benign but can be counter-productive or ethically and legally suspect. Students’ learning lives are complex and not always given to easy “fixes”, so, when veering into that complex territory, judicious referral to a wider circle of support is an appropriate course.

It’s important to pick up on the subtle cues and clues when students are describing their learning, challenges, and personal life – but it’s important not to jump to conclusions or make judgements about their experiences. (We can jump too quickly to what’s under the iceberg – suddenly it can shift based on a new piece of information or a new question we ask.)   ~Rahul Bhat

There is much to consider in the above and what is likely clear by now is the obvious fact that every appointment will be different, every one of them will have its own flavour and it all requires a kind of openness to that, a willingness to meet every student appointment with a beginner’s mindset. And each practitioner will ultimately do this in their own way, not by reference to a playbook, but with equal parts knowledge, expertise, experience, and intuition. 

In an earlier section, I referred to  Donald’s Schon’s three models of coaching which can be a useful illustration of different styles of approaching student appointments. Learning Strategists, by intuition and preference, may naturally adopt one of these styles, or shift between them according to the situation, playing a Vygotsgian role as the “more competent other”: 

1. The Follow Me approach – the Learning Strategist will demonstrate or model something to be emulated by the student.
2. The Joint Experimentation approach – the Learning Strategist will facilitate a collaborative venture between themselves and the student, resisting the urge to “solve the problem”, but presenting possibilities from which student chooses.
3. The Hall of Mirrors approach – the Learning Strategist and the student will reflect together on the ambiguities of the learning predicaments, seeing together the errors and failures as opportunities for learning.

I offer another heuristic to illustrate a range of possible approaches or styles in the endeavour – another contrivance meant only to prompt professional reflection and experimentation. Consider the following range of possible approaches to the work:

1. A PRAGMATIC APPROACH -valuing and foregrounding what works, what is practical, tried and true, aiming to solve immediate “problems” or functional gaps in effective learning and study.
2. AN EXPERIENTIAL APPROACH – valuing practice and doing, focused on the immediate evidence generated from strategy implementation and its effects.
3. A RESTORATIVE APPROACH – valuing the underlying relationship to and motivations for learning, making space for a broad range of considerations both practical and psycho-social, focusing on the personal experiences with learning and improving that relationship.
4. A HOLISTIC APPROACH – valuing all of the above.

Intake:

That first appointment. What to do? Well, as should be clear from the above, this is the crucial opportunity to establish trust and kick off the endeavor in a good way. Some might simply apply principles of good “customer service” here, ensuring that the student has a good “experience” – the stuff captured on satisfaction  surveys so ubiquitous in higher education. That will serve you well, but it’s a bit cold and transactional. I prefer the concept of hospitality. You are not receiving a “customer or a “user”, but a guest. Conceiving it this way should naturally trigger a set of behaviours conducive to welcome, to nurturing a sense of ease in the visitor. This should begin with the actual appointment booking process such that any nervousness or confusion on the part of the student about what to expect can be reduced. Keep the booking process simple and include minimal up-front information meant to de-mystify the process. And then simply receive the student as you would a guest in your home. Then you can get down to business – which can vary greatly from student to student. A Learning Strategist approach to the first appointment will vary in its focus but will almost always include some attention to: better understanding the student predicament, helping the student better understand the value of learning strategy guidance, setting some feasible goals, and making a plan for follow-up. Some will approach this in a systematic way, perhaps using a structured intake form or some other framework; others will apply a more free-wheeling approach and let the student lead the way. To the receptive and intuitive host, there will be things detectable in the students, spoken and unspoken, that will guide how you proceed.  Remember the earlier reference to the theory of “transactional distance” which posits an inverse relationship between structure and dialogue – more structure, less dialogue, and vise versa. So, the Learning Strategists will play with the levers of structure and dialogue according to their disposition and the specific context of that first appointment. But, in the end, the critical thing of this first encounter is to begin a relationship in a good way. 

Format:

There’s nothing too mysterious about the way in which one-on-one appointments get carried out, the format. Typically, we will simply meet with the student in a private office, or, increasingly, in a virtual, online format. But there are things to consider. This kind of traditional meeting format carries with it a set of perceived norms or schemas, the structure of which imbues the setting with a kind of hierarchical formality. This context can convey a degree of appropriate seriousness and professionalism to the encounter, contributing to the sense of trust the student will feel. But the inherent power dynamic in that formal setup can overlay the whole affair with a kind of heaviness not always conducive to comfort and free-flow conversation. Again, the format of your sessions will vary and you’ll make judgement calls about what works best for you and your students. There are variables to play with here – bright lights, or dim, more moody lighting? Will you have a desk between you or not? Will you prominently display your framed diplomas? Will you have provocative or just decorative art? Will you display pictures of your friends and family? What other visual cues will you display?  On and on it goes. And, of course, you may decide not to use your office at all and choose instead to meet on neutral space, or outside, or go for a walk etc. These will be judgements you make according to the situation, what the student needs, and your own dispositions and preferences for high-structure on one end, or free-wheelingness on the other.  

Notes:

Appointment notetaking practices will vary according to your institutional context, but there are some common goals towards which Learning Strategist notes should align. Your notes should: a) satisfy your institutional documentation requirements, b) adhere to your own departmental note-taking protocols, c) enable efficient administrative processes, and d) above all, should serve students well according to standards of care and ethical responsibility.   All of this is guided by the central principle of student privacy and your notetaking practices should be rooted in that; ie. students should be notified in advance and always know exactly what information about them is being collected, for what purpose, and with whom it will be shared.  Appointment notes establish a useful institutional record of student interactions with you and can benefit the student in various ways:

•  They help students recall the advice and strategies they received in previous appointments.
• They record important information that enables other Learning Strategists and staff to better support students in follow-up appointments.
• They encourage accountability and consistency around previously recommended actions.
• They prevent the needless and sometimes harmful recounting of events.
• They convey a sense of communal care by acknowledging and centering previous conversations.
• They support students in their transitions between various staff offices.
• They create an “institutional memory” of student interactions and recommendations.
• They contribute to a tighter safety net for students in need of community support.

What to include in those notes will be your own departmental decision but consider this table as a heuristic to illustrate some general principles that commonly apply.