Why Developmental Advising?
Experts agree that advising (esp. in the first year) is critical to:
- Set the stage for later growth and development
- Build for a strong academic future through good course selection
- Help students match abilities, skills and interests with career choices
- Help students transition during the critical first six weeks and beyond
- Extend skill development into decision-making and problem-solving areas
- Foster development of strategies for success in all areas
- Connect students to the institution, to instructional staff and to peers
- Increase student persistence and satisfaction; connected students are persisting ones
- Advising for student growth and development
- Challenging students to clarify attitudes and actions
- Helping students find alternatives and make decisions (student problem-solving)
- Taking student developmental readiness into account
- Turning student questions into implications and consequences
- Referring students with personal, behavioral and extra-curricular problems as needed
- Using scaffolding whenever possible to “train for independence”
- Avoiding the “my advisor gave me these classes” attitude and subsequent misplacing of blame
- Begins with highly supportive activities
- Explains the why, not just the what
- Helps students develop choices with rationales and consequences
- Fosters student’s ability to analyze/make decisions and final selections
- Allows students to become strategic and proactive in their approach
- Involves progressive assumption of responsibility by students via guided practice
- Helps students spread effective skills and attitudes to their peers
The Academic Advising Continuum: (imagine a line from top to bottom)
Prescriptive Advising
Course selection and registration
Compliance and advising
Academic planning
Advising/mentoring, connect to life passion
Developmental Advising
Developmental advising is a student-centered approach where the focus is the student’s instructional program and how the program contributes to a coherent and personally relevant manner to educational, career and life goals. This approach implies:
Using a developmental approach can produce proactive advisees who develop from first year novices to seniors who are both confident and articulate about their path. They are more likely to persist at Alma College and pass on their skills (even for advising) to their peers.
Scaffolding versus Hand-holding. Scaffolding is a strategy for building skills, which differs in both intend and actuality from a hand-holding approach of doing things for students, making choices for them instead of with them, or not allowing them to take reasonable risks.
Scaffolding: (and creating proactive advisees):
Please consider giving developmental advising a try. It might be a different approach then you experienced as a student, but studies show that developmental advising benefits a wider range of students, offers a stronger connection and has longer lasting results than prescriptive advising.
