Strengthen Student Relationships to Promote Belonging and Success��David Arendale, Univ. of Minnesota��https://www.arendale.org/2022-pltl

Thank You & Acknowledgement

• Peer study group leaders, www.palgroups.org
• Brian Fredrickson and Erik Tolsrud, UGTAs and Elsa Pan and Kari-Ann Ediger, GRAs

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• PLTL Faculty, Staff, and Student Members
• Reviewers of the CLA Guidelines and the new antiracism policies and practices for PAL
• Colleagues of Color for Social Justice, https://z.umn.edu/ccsjsite
• Colleagues in the field of learning assistance
• Growing professional literature on belonging and peer learning

Recognize Expertise Here Today

Google Images, Creative Commons License

PLTL’s Own Experts

• Nataly Amaya, Florida Int’l University
• James Becvar, University of Texas at El Paso
• Sofia Delgado, University of Texas El Paso
• A.E. Dreyfuss, PSTLIS Executive Board
• Allison McKee, University of Houston-Downtown

Agenda

• Part One: What is known about student belonging
• Part Two:
• Internal and external influencers on belonging
• Activities and policies that promote belonging
• Plenty of interaction and sharing
• Summary thoughts and resources
• Part Three: What you plan to do with this information during session Saturday morning

Four Ways to Interact

• Small group discussions
• Short answers
• Ask questions anytime
• Zoom Chatroom

Part One:�What Is Already Known About Student Belonging?

External Environment

One Relationship Can Make the Difference

• Strong predictor of student persistence is whether one person at the institution knows them by name and greets them
• It does not matter what the role is of the person (advisor, instructor, maintenance person, food service, student)
• Helps explain positive impact of clubs, Greek life, athletic teams, jobs, band, and more
• Ruffalo Noel Levitz Centers for Student Success https://www.ruffalonl.com/

What binds us together?�What is in the center of the circle?

Breakout Group of 5� for Five Minutes

• 15 seconds to introduce yourself
• One person volunteers to write down items shared by group
• Four minutes to discuss the question
• Limit yourself to thirty seconds or less

How does a student or staff member develop a sense of belonging at your institution?

Sense of “Belonging”

• See themselves as members of a community composed of other students, faculty, and staff who value their membership
• Daily interactions with others
• Positive campus climate
• Perceive college as welcome and a culture of inclusion
• Learning occurs in communities
• Curriculum is relevant to them individually

Tinto, V. (2019). Essay on how to improve student persistence and competition, insideHigherEd.com

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/09/26/how-improve-student-persistence-and-completion-essay

Overall Findings

• Academic support in STEM courses is not just about STEM, it is about STEM Culture
• A sense of belonging is part of campus culture, plus much more.
• A sense of belonging is context dependent. It is not a skill that a student has or does not have.

What Works Clearinghouse Studies on Social Belonging Interventions

• Most, but not all, interventions fail to make a difference with higher grades and persistence.
• Common activities:
• Occur prior to entry or during first year of college
• Expose students to success stories of a diverse group of college students who did not initially believe they belonged in college and experienced difficulty with the transition
• New students write reflectively about their future academic success. Create a vision statement.
• Characteristics of successful interventions:
• Occurs face-to-face and not online with self-paced tutorials
• Integrated with entry-level college course

Synthesis of 120+ Belonging Studies�Student Experience Research Network

• Belonging is a prerequisite for effective learning
• There are no culturally-neutral learning environments
• An environment that is welcoming to one student will not be the same experience for another student
• Advantaged students experience an environment that affirms them while marginalized students often do not
• Individual students experience the same cues in the same environment differently

Recommended Science Research

• Fink, Frey, & Solomon. (2020). Belonging in general chemistry predicts first-year undergraduates’ performance and attrition. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 21, 1042-1062. Factors: PLTL, Relevance to real life, Growth mindset encouragement, more
• Upmacis. (2021). Peer-Led Team Learning and student success. Advances in Peer-Led Learning, 1, 25-43. PLTL leads to “community”

Highly Recommended Reading

• Frye, R., Barone, M. C., Hammond, N., Eloi-Evans, S., Trenshaw, K., & Raucci, M. (2021). Incentives and barriers to participation in PLTL workshop spaces: An exploration of underrepresented students' experiences. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering. $35 download https://doi.org/10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.2021029908

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Part 2: External & Internal Influences

External and Internal Influences

Think-Pair-Share

• What are the big non-academic challenges for students?

Tinto’s Themes of Attrition

• Difficulty level high day-to-day
• Incongruence
• Financial need
• Difficult adjustment
• Social isolation
• Negative social group

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Vincent Tinto, Leaving College, 1993.

Mostly academic

Mostly social

A Staying Environment...

• Academic (Curriculum, Instruction)
• Progress toward educational career goal
• Academic success
• Program options clear
• Advising and support services available
• Social/Psychological (Peers, Environment)
• Feeling of belonging
• Social Integration
• Personal involvement
• Positive identity
• High self-esteem

American College Testing Program

Student Attributes

• First-generation college student (often lack social capital)
• Gender and STEM environment (often lack role models and supportive environment)
• Historically-underrepresented (often lack social capital, experience continuing racism)
• Depression and other mental illnesses (29.4% mental crisis, average 8 days a month of mental crisis, 53.9% non-emergency mental crisis, 23% medicated)
• Growing sense of Food and housing insecurities (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs)

External and Internal Influences

Key Elements of Impact�Dr. Alexander Astin

• Time of exposure (when start and end)
• Intensity of the exposure (how much during the particular time)
• Synergy of the Quantity x Quality of the exposure

Astin, Alexander W. (1993). What matters in college? Four critical years revisited. San Francisco, CA :Jossey-Bass,

Campus Culture is Built Daily Through�“Moments of Truth”

• A specific event in time when the student comes into contact with some aspect of the college experience.
• Every time students evaluate whether the price they have paid (time or money) equals or exceeds the value of what they were promised.

Albrecht, K., & Zemke, R. (1990). Service America in the new economy. New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing.

Greatest Threat to a Sense of Belonging is Racism

• Experienced as a single “Moment of Truth” or an accumulation of experiences over time from the same or multiple sources
• Our classes, tutoring sessions, small study groups, and learning centers are positioned as a place for an antiracism environment, more than just the absence of racism
• We are the frontlines of establishing a positive and inviting campus culture

Key Antiracism Resources�All have been field tested

• Antiracist Activities and Policies for Student-led Study Groups
• Antiracism Glossary for Education and Life

Key Definitions

• Antiracism: actively oppose racism by advocating for changes in political, economic, and social life.
• Climate: perceptions and experiences by individual members of the organization environment.
• Microaggression: small daily insults and indignities perpetuated against marginalized people, oppressed people, and women.
• Structural racism: ways history, culture, ideology, public policies, institutional practices, and personal behaviors and beliefs interact to maintain a hierarchy

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Microaggressions

• Microassault is an explicit racial derogation by a verbal or nonverbal attack meant to hurt the intended victim
• Microinsults are communications that convey rudeness and insensitivity and demean a person’s racial heritage or identity (example: subtle snubs)
• Microinvalidations are communications that exclude, negate, or nullify the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a person of color (example: ethnic or identity group jokes)

Breakout Group of 5�Five Minutes

• 15 seconds to introduce yourself
• One person volunteers to write down items shared by group
• Four minutes to discuss the question
• Limit yourself to 30 seconds or less

What behaviors have you witnessed in a classroom or study group session that likely interfered with learning by another student or yourself?

External and Internal Influences

Growth or Fixed Mindset

• Growth mindset
• Intelligence can grow with help from others, hard work, effort, and new learning strategies.
• Academic failure can be overcome since the student can change.
• Fixed mindset
• Academic failure is validation the student is not capable to grow and prosper at school.
• As a result, student avoids difficult challenges and withdraws from school even though their overall GPA would not force the college to drop them.

Hochanadel & Finamore. 2015. Fixed and growth mindset in education and how grit helps students persist in the face of adversity

Post Exam Survey

• Students complete survey during class period or online after they receive grades for first exam
• Only identifying information is whether they earned an AB or a C of lower
• Instructor sorts the surveys on basis of grade category
• Instructor creates summary of the behaviors that were different between the AB and C or Below group.
• Students discuss among themselves the results. The instructor lets them process the results.
• Sample survey available on the website.

Check Your Privilege and�Racial Humility

• Pause and consider how the advantages you’ve had in your life are contributing to your opinions and actions, and how the lack of disadvantages in certain areas is keeping you from fully understanding the struggles others are facing and in fact may be contributing to those struggles.
• Advantages could include others in family completing college, economic resources, attending a quality secondary school, a personal mentor, and more

Breakout Group of 5� for Five Minutes

• 15 seconds to introduce yourself
• One person volunteers to write down items shared by group
• Four minutes to discuss the question
• Limit yourself to thirty seconds or less

• What are your experiences to identify with struggles with the course content and the college experience during a PLTL session?
• What resources do you points students to for working through these struggles?

External and Internal Influences

Imposter Syndrome

• Psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Impostership characteristics are largely organized into three subcategories:
• (1) feeling like a fake, or the belief that one does not deserve one’s success;
• (2) attributing success to luck or other external reasons and not to one’s own internal abilities; and
• (3) discounting success, or the tendency to downplay or disregard achievement of success

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Amanda Chapman, 2017, Using the assessment process to overcome Imposter Syndrome in mature students

First-Day Activities

• Personal journey in education and life
• Briefly share my multiple identities that sometimes align or conflict with one another
• Share my experience as first-gen student
• Share how “fails” (an individual event) in individual homework assignments, exam scores, and manuscript rejections do not mean that I am a “failure” (character trait)

Think-Pair-Share

• Have you ever shared your own personal experience with imposter syndrome during your PLTL session?
• If you do, when do you share that during the academic term?

External and Internal Influences

Stereotype Threat

• Risk of a person confirming unwarranted negative academic capability stereotypes based on an individual’s racial, ethnic, gender, or cultural group.
• This creates fear about academic failure, which results in difficulty focusing on academic tasks and lowering academic performance rather than predictions based on the person’s academic preparation

Steele & Aronson. (1998). Stereotype threat and the test performance of academically successful African Americans

Think-Pair-Share

• How do you battle stereotype threat during your session?
• If you do, when do you deal with this issue during the academic term?

External and Internal Influences

PLTL Can Support a Culture of Belonging for Students

• By the PLTL leaders
• By the other PLTL participants
• Same activities inside PLTL can also be used by the class instructors
• PLTL is on the frontline of engagement with students

Breakout Group of 5� for Five Minutes

• 15 seconds to introduce yourself
• One person volunteers to write down items shared by group
• Four minutes to discuss the question
• Limit yourself to thirty seconds or less

How does PLTL develop a sense of belonging of students to their institution, academic program, the course, or anything else?

Suggested Policies and Practices

• Many of the following actions to promote belonging are based upon common policies and practices of Supplemental Instruction (SI).
• There may be differences between SI and PLTL protocols.
• Treat the following actions as suggestions to add to your approach of leading your PLTL sessions.

BELONG: Welcoming and encouraging environment

• Leader greets each student as they enter the session room. Learn their first names quickly.
• Arrange furniture so everyone can see each other
• Use icebreakers to generate energy, learn names, and start the conversation
• Leader sits among the students and not in front of marker board or behind teacher desk
• Leader establishes a friendly and relaxed environment.

Breakout Group of 5�Five Minutes

• 15 seconds to introduce yourself
• One person volunteers to write down items shared by group
• Four minutes to discuss the question
• Limit yourself to 30 seconds or less

What are specific actions taken while planning a PLTL session or taken during the PLTL session to combat racism?

BELONG: Develop personal relationships

• Learn students’ names and use them
• Understand cultural background of students
• Set ground rules for the group that information shared during the sessions is private
• Everyone is invited to share about themselves: culture, family, pets, hobbies, sports
• Have office hours and talk before/after session

BELONG: Normalize challenges faced by all

• Leader can or could share about their challenges with life-school-work balance
• Leader shares about dealing with ongoing anxiety in school and life
• Leader shares about dealing with feelings of impostership and not belonging in college
• Leader shared how they dealt with loneliness by developing new friendships and becoming involved with college activities

Breakout Group of 5�Five Minutes

• 15 seconds to introduce yourself
• One person volunteers to write down items shared by group
• Four minutes to discuss the question
• Limit yourself to 30 seconds or less

How do you use competitive PLTL session learning activities?��What are the potential negative consequences for students who do not win or complete the activity?

BELONG: Everyone experiences fails along the journey

• Leader shares about some of their fails they have experienced with grades at college and how they dealt with those events
• Talk as a group how failing a homework assignment or exam (an event) does not mean they are a failure (character trait). The Post Exam Survey could be a valuable tool to help students see how they can change behavior to earn higher exam grades.

Think-Pair-Share

• How can you display academic humility during the PLTL session?

BELONG: Each student has an active role in the session

• Use small groups of 2 or 3 to create low-stakes places for students to feel more comfortable
• Invite students to serve as scribe at marker board without requiring them to speak
• Leader offers specific praise for students based on their contributions
• Rotate task roles in small and large group
• Leader rotates calls on students to share
• Plan session activities so all have a part

Breakout Group of 5�Five Minutes

• 15 seconds to introduce yourself
• One person volunteers to write down items shared by group
• Four minutes to discuss the question
• Limit yourself to 30 seconds or less

• How ensure all students understand a concept before moving forward?
• See next slide for deeper dive into this question.

Think-Pair-Share

1. How manage talkative participants who dominate the discussion so much that others do not have time to participate?
2. How do you encourage the quiet students to join the discussion?
3. What do you do when most students do not understand due to the difficulty level of the course content or the problem to be solved?

BELONG: Relevance of the class with each student

• Have occasional discussions how the course material relates to academic majors and advanced courses in the same sequence
• Makes connections to overall learning goals
• Makes explicit connections of the course readings and lectures as needed
• Major point of the course unit
• Connections to previous and upcoming units
• Relevance to everyday life

Breakout Group of 5�Five Minutes

• 15 seconds to introduce yourself
• One person volunteers to write down items shared by group
• Four minutes to discuss the question
• Limit yourself to 30 seconds or less

What are the desirable traits you look for when hiring a new peer leader?

Facilitator Traits

(a) successfully struggled with course material to achieve a final course grade of B or an A and can help others to do the same; (b) understands the challenges with course material and has patience to help all students succeed; (c) possesses good organization and communication skills; (d) possesses a teachable-attitude to learn how to be an effective facilitator of the group and not emulate teacher behaviors; (e) displays cultural competence to work with a diverse group of participants; and (f) joins a team of facilitators that reflect or exceed the demographics of the student body….

External and Internal Influences

Summary thoughts�and resources

www.davidmedia.org

Peer Learning Podcast

Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) Groups www.palgroups.org Currently focused on interviews of peer study leaders and study group program coordinators at 20 colleges in Australia, Canada, and U.S.

Part Three:�What are two changes that you implement when you return to campus as a result of today’s session?

For More Information

• David R. Arendale, Ph.D., arendale@umn.edu and 612-812-0032
• Conference-related materials: https://www.arendale.org/2022-pltl
• Personal website, http://arendale.org
• Peer learning resources, https://www.arendale.org/peer-learning-resources