What do Learning Strategists do?
Learning Strategists, (and the job title varies) commonly exist on most college and university campuses now. There is variety in the way these roles are situated – embedded in local contexts, or part of centralized services, but the nature of the role is fairly consistent. And while the role of Learning Strategist is generally understood as one that provides study and learning support to students, there remains some misunderstanding about the full range of possibilities entailed in it and the many uniquely helpful ways it can foster in students a more deft and spirited approach to their studies.
It’s useful to think of two primary dimensions to Learning Strategy work:
- To help students develop and practice a range of effective approaches to study and learning befitting the rigours of a post-secondary education. Think “learning/study skills”.
- To nurture in students an enhanced, healthier, more motivated relationship with learning. Think “learning/study dispositions”.
It is the first dimension that most people associate with learning strategy work, but even here there is a narrow understanding. So, what are the possibilities that the Learning Strategist can bring to bear here?
Learning/Study Skills:
Learning Strategists work with all students on the development of that broad range of skills and techniques typically associated with effective learning. This includes the essential skills of processing and making meaning from the materials of learning – reading, taking notes, attending to lectures, critical thinking, problem solving, engaging in scholarly inquiry and dialogue etc. We draw upon a broad range of foundational knowledge in support of this – effective pedagogy, educational psychology, instructional design, learning theory, and a body of research from the “science of learning” which focuses on a number of evidence-based cognitive and metacognitive techniques shown to be effective for encoding and retrieving information. And, related to all of this is the support we provide for students with all the myriad organizational and executive functioning skills necessary to effectively navigate it all – time-management, planning, goal setting, etc. and the effective engagement with other relevant campus supports. All of this importantly helps the student better discern which study tactics are most applicable in their specific curricular context. Finally, it is important to mention that all this work creates opportunities to practice the development of these skills in low-stakes contexts, something essential for confident habit formation.
But much learning strategy work, often the more complex variety, happens in that second dimension mentioned above. So, what are the possibilities here?
Learning/Study Dispositions:
It is in this realm that Learning Strategists arguably have the greater impact on student success since the effective use of skills and techniques for learning is preceded or, more accurately, accompanied by something much more essential: the motivation to learn. There is a mutually reinforcing interplay between the actions of learning and the motivations for learning and Learning Strategists become keenly aware of this more nuanced and difficult to define domain of the work. It requires working with students in all the complexities of their lives to help them better understand and develop their relationship with learning. There is no playbook here but it generally involves exploring with students the deeper entanglements of their learning lives, their purpose, readiness, identity, strengths, sense of confidence and belonging – the complex social-emotional dimensions of learning.
If you ask a Learning Strategist what the end-goal is of their work, you’re likely to get some version of the following: the purpose of this work is to help students become more independent and self-regulated learners, to develop in the them a greater degree of academic resourcefulness. But what does that mean? What exactly is a self regulated, independent, resourceful student? Again, you’ll receive different lists depending on who you ask but most will say it’s a student who:
- is motivated and oriented by both intrinsic and extrinsic learning goals
- has a developed sense of metacognition
- is able to mitigate the adverse effects of stress on learning
- is able to identify, locate, and call upon community resources of academic and other supports
- is able to move productively through academic adversity and setbacks
- is able to advocate for what is needed but perhaps missing from their educational experience
- can pull all of this together into a coherent, confident way of navigating their way through study and learning in higher education.
Learning Strategists support all of this. What we need to know to do it well is the primary subject of this book. It’s useful now to turn to a bit of context and consider some of the developments that influence this evolving vocation.
