5317 Discussion 1 (2 of 2)
The ADL program has opened my eyes to exactly how much the landscape of learning has changed and how little the landscape of education has changed. Learners today are digitally connected, and education needs to evolve to include transformative learning opportunities in every environment.
Currently, advisors are tasked with almost every initiative faced by incoming students. This creates a prescriptive advising full of information transfer topics that often leave advisors feeling unfulfilled. Additionally, the environment does not encourage the transformative opportunity found through intentional advisor-advisee relationships. Through an innovation of advising, advisors will have a consistent message to share with their advisees, relieving them of their role’s repetitive and transactional aspects. Digital resources that allow departments to ensure the message and information shared with their students align with their policies and beliefs increase confidence in information accuracy. Collaboration with campus stakeholders ensures that other departments can introduce themselves and their services in a non-anxiety-inducing way.
Most importantly, a blended learning approach to advising can increase learners’ curiosity (Musallam, 2013) about their learning experience while simultaneously increasing advisors’ creativity (RSA, 2010) by creating content, refining the message, clarifying the intentions, and assessing the effectiveness of advising as a learning opportunity. The most challenging part of my innovation idea to resolve and convey is my belief that an effective learning environment allows more profound, more meaningful relationships like those described by developmental and intrusive advising. Adding to this is the concept of connectivity and collaboration. The benefits of forming a learning collective among students that supports the advising relationship and initiatives (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 52). How much more will a high school student listen to a college student than a university representative at orientation to campus? How can an innovation to advising support the feeling of belonging that students and staff feel at the institution?
Consider how the learning environment is changing and how you can share the changes you are making in your learning environment.
- Briefly share one or two possible topic areas that are of interest to you that you can write about. Remember that you do not need to be an expert in the field to have a voice. Please visit http://tilisathibodeaux.com/wordpress/?page_id=841 for ideas from past students.
- I could write about the collaboration and connection aspect of advising and how a blended learning environment could extend and expand the advising relations well beyond the twice-annual mandatory advising requirement for registration/enrollment.
- Another topic to write about is how a blended learning environment could relieve advisors of the sage on the stage soul resource for information. I want to help empower advisors to equip learners with the skills and motivation to seek and verify information for themselves.
- Identify and share 2-3 online publications of interest in your field. Publications can include online magazines, newsletters, state technology publications/articles. Hyperlink your selections so that others may easily access your selections.
- Which digital environments allow the opportunity to collaborate with others as you write and think through your ideas? What is currently well established? What needs improvement?
- Discussion boards, chat apps, blogs, digital classrooms, and file-sharing tools are all digital tools that have allowed an endless variety of digital environments where thoughts, innovations, and hunches collide at just the right time and place to evolve into a perfect solution to a problem (RiverheadBooks, 2010).
Changing Educational Paradigms
I found this talk so interesting I went to see the full discussion, Changing Paradigms
References
Musallam, R. (2013, April). 3 rules to spark learning [Video]. TED Talks. https://www.ted.com/talks/ramsey_musallam_3_rules_to_spark_learning
RiverheadBooks. (2010, September 17). WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM by Steven Johnson [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU
RSA. (2010, February 4). Sir Ken Robinson – Changing Paradigms [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCbdS4hSa0s
Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change (1st ed.). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
The Advisor That Cares 
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