Pathways to Academic Recovery: Empowering Students On Probation
What Is Micro-Credentialing?
A micro-credential is a short, competency-based recognition that allows an educator to demonstrate mastery in a particular area.
View Micro-Credentialing Tour!
Overview
The Success Strategies For Students On Probation Micro-Credential is designed to equip students with essential skills and strategies to help them overcome academic challenges, regain good standing, and thrive in their educational journey. Through a combination of required and elective modules, students will explore topics such as exam preparation, managing failure, critical thinking, and time management. Each workshop includes interactive knowledge checks and action plans to reinforce key takeaways, ensuring students fully grasp the material. Upon completing each workshop, students will earn a certificate of completion. Additionally, after successfully finishing all required courses and the designated elective, students will receive the micro-credential certificate, recognizing their comprehensive knowledge.
This micro-credential aims to foster personal growth, improve academic habits, and develop resilience, empowering students to stay motivated and achieve their goals.
Learning Objectives
By completing this micro-credential, students will be able to:
-
Develop Effective Learning Strategies: Learn key study techniques, note-taking strategies, and methods to improve retention and comprehension.
-
Manage Failure & Build Resilience: Understand how to handle setbacks both inside and outside the classroom with a positive mindset.
-
Prepare For Exams & Assessments: Gain practical tips for exam preparation and effective test-taking strategies to improve performance.
-
Set Realistic Goals & Stay Motivated: Explore how to set achievable academic and personal goals and maintain focus throughout the semester.
- Build Critical Life Skills For Academic Success: Develop time management, stress management, and critical thinking skills to maintain a healthy balance and achieve long-term success.
Customize the Learning Experience: Choose from elective modules tailored to individual needs, such as overcoming procrastination, achieving well-being, and managing stress effectively.
The following 5 courses are required to earn the credential:
- Success Strategies for Probation Students
- Exam Preparation Tips & Test-Taking Strategies
- Handling Failure In & Out Of The Classroom
- Learning Strategies Every Student Should Know
- What It Takes To Be A Successful Student
Success Strategies for Probation Students
OverviewProbation is a term used to refer to a time in which a student’s academic progress is monitored. It is a way for a college to convey to the student improvement needs to be made and to offer resources to help support that student. This workshop delves into what it means to be on probation by defining it and reviewing common requirements for getting off probation. The workshop also discusses potential resources that you can access to improve your academic success. Finally, the workshop encourages you to reflect on your own academic and personal strategies and create a plan for improvement.
Objectives
- Understand what probation can mean at an institution
- Learn what is often required of students on probation
- Identify what other resources may be available to assist students on probation
- Learn how to reflect on academic and personal strategies that have been used
- Learn how to create a plan of action for academic improvement
Duration: 8:02
Presenter
Amy Baldwin
Exam Preparation Tips & Test-Taking Strategies
OverviewTaking tests typically strikes fear, anxiety, and sometimes panic in the hearts of many students. During this session, the presenter will discuss strategies that give students the best chance of alleviating fear and passing those exams. This workshop will explain the difference between studying and learning, demonstrate a 5 step exam preparation process, and provide specific strategies for multiple-choice, essay, and final exams. Students will leave with specific test-taking strategies, which can be applied immediately in order to succeed during their next exam.
Objectives
- Differences between studying and learning
- A five-phase test preparation strategy called The Study Cycle
- How to use campus resources such as the tutoring center, study groups, supplemental; instruction, etc.
- What to do once you’re actually taking the test
- Specific test-taking strategies for multiple-choice, essay, and final exams
Duration: 18:50
Presenter
Dr. Saundra Yancy McGuire
Handling Failure In & Out Of The Classroom
Failure is often something that college students try to avoid, but it can be a transformative learning experience if students take a moment to reflect on how they got there and what they can do differently. This workshop provides an overview of what failure is and what it isn’t and emphasizes the importance of discussing failure as a part of underscoring it as a common experience. The workshop then presents common academic failures. Finally, the workshop describes how to reflect on failures to determine what happened, what needs to be changed, and what help may be needed.
Objectives
- What failure is and what it isn’t
- Why it is important to talk about failure
- Common academic failures
- How to reflect on failure to determine what needs to be changed
- When to reach out for help to manage failure
Duration: 9:22
Presenter
Amy Baldwin
Learning Strategies Every Student Should Know
Excelling in college courses usually requires a different kind of studying than students did in high school. In order to excel, it’s critical for students to understand the difference between studying and learning. One of the best ways to make sure that students are learning, and not just studying, is to introduce the concept of metacognition. This workshop walks students through the basics of metacognition. Using language that students will understand, the expert presenter explains how this concept can be integrated into study strategies and ultimately how it can help students move up Bloom’s Taxonomy from lower-level to higher-level learning.
Objectives
- The difference between studying and learning
- The basics of metacognition
- How to use metacognition when studying
- The study cycle learning strategy
- How this study cycle can help you move to higher learning levels
Duration: 22:15
Presenter
Dr. Saundra Yancy McGuire
What It Takes To Be A Successful Student
Research suggests that students who build strong relationships with their professors and utilize campus resources report a more satisfying college experience and are more likely to succeed academically (Light, 2001). This interactive workshop will challenge you to think about the relationship with your institution as a friendship. Like the beginning of most new friendships, you are likely facing some unknowns; however, you do not have to face these uncertainties alone. “Making friends” with campus resources, departments, professors, and programs that support students inside and outside the classroom will help you take charge of academic uncertainties and the feelings that go along with them. This workshop will help you cultivate and strengthen your relationship with your professors and your institution, and confront those academic uncertainties.
Objectives
- Discover your role in the learning process
- Understand how to clarify professor expectations
- Identify your responsibilities as a member of the campus community
- Clarify the role you play in the learning process
- Understand the ways in which to establish an effective relationship with your institution
- Identify attitudes and habits that contribute to academic success and achievement
Duration: 22:18
Presenter
Laurie L. Hazard
To earn this credential, please select 3 courses from the following list:
- Developing Critical Thinking Skills
- How To Achieve Well-Being, Balance & Success
- Overcoming Procrastination: Causes & Cures
- Setting & Accomplishing Realistic Goals
- Stress Management Techniques
- Study Tips & Note-Taking Strategies
- Time Management: Strategies For Success
Developing Critical Thinking Skills
OverviewThe role of colleges and universities is to ready their students to work and thrive in the 21st century. Simultaneously, employers report that their employees face more complex challenges than they have in the past. As a result, employer priorities for college learning and student success have evolved to include the cognitive skills that can be applied across all disciplines and majors. The purpose of cultivating these critical thinking skills is to meet the demands of our rapidly changing, fast-paced world. This workshop helps students to begin to develop the critical thinking skills to live and learn in a global environment.
Objectives
- Identify the key steps to ready themselves to cultivate their critical thinking skills
- Examine the definition of critical thinking and explore the complexity of this cognitive skill set
- Learn the vocabulary associated with critical thinking
- Reflect on the qualities of critical thinkers
- Consider how their critical thinking works in practice
Duration: 18:00
Presenter
Laurie L. Hazard
How To Achieve Well-Being, Balance & Success
Overview
When students know how to care for their personal well-being they are better equipped to adapt and thrive in the college environment. By identifying college transition and adjustment issues connected to the dimensions of well-being, students can feel intellectually alert, emotionally stable, and physically strong. This workshop helps students develop a sense of well-being that will allow them to embrace change, take action toward their dreams, and live a life of integrity.
Objectives
- Identify the six dimensions of personal well-being
- Identify college transition and adjustment issues connected to the dimensions of well-being
- Identify their weakest life dimension
- Identify their strongest life dimension and how it can be used to strengthen their weakest dimension for a more fulfilling life
- Apply the Change Cycle Model to a challenge they are currently experiencing in one of their areas of well-being
Duration: 24:16
Presenter
Steve Piscitelli
Overcoming Procrastination: Causes & Cures
OverviewInextricably linked to time management and academic goal setting are the concepts of motivation and procrastination. Students may be able to motivate themselves to the point where they’ve planned how they’ll use their time, and they’ve even clearly set the academic goals they’d like to achieve, yet many just don’t follow through and use their schedules, even though they made them. They just can’t seem to get motivated. Why is this? What is motivation exactly? How does procrastination affect motivation? In this session, you will learn strategies to combat procrastination and ways to get motivated to reach your goals and achieve academically.
Objectives
- What thoughts, feelings, and attitudes fuel procrastination behavior
- The consequences of procrastination
- How to gain control over procrastination
- To identify replacement activities
- Anti-procrastination behaviors and habits
- Solutions for combating procrastination
Duration: 21:46
Presenter
Laurie L. Hazard
Setting & Accomplishing Realistic Goals
Overview
Students aren’t born knowing how to set effective goals, but it is a skill that can be taught. Goal-setting is an important behavior management skill that can support students to sustain motivation and achieve success. According to research in business and general psychology, goal-setting works to help individuals focus efforts, stay motivated, and prolong persistence (Weinberg and Gould, 2010). This interactive workshop is designed to help students understand the goal-setting process and implement it as a tool to reach their potential and achieve their educational goals.
Objectives- Learn the importance of goal-setting
- Understand the definition of goals
- Explore different types of goals
- Be able to articulate SMART goals (Smith, H.W., 1994)
- Develop an awareness regarding roadblocks and obstacles to effective goal setting
- Learn how to stay focused on achieving goals
Duration: 20:11
Presenter
Laurie L. Hazard
Stress Management Techniques
OverviewThis workshop provides an overview of the dimensions of wellness and how they impact the everyday choices students make about their health and their overall level of well-being. Areas covered include: physical health, emotional health, intellectual health, spiritual health, and social health. An explanation of how each of these “ingredients” when combined together, help in forming a balanced student. Within each of these dimensions, there is a further breakdown of information. These areas include: fitness, nutrition, sleep, stress management, substance use/abuse, depression/anxiety, relationships, getting involved in groups/organizations and studies.
Objectives- Learn the importance of viewing themselves as a whole and not as separate parts. That much like a recipe, if ingredients are not included in certain amounts, or are left out altogether, the final product may fall flat.
- Realize that taking care of the basics (eating well, exercising, sleeping well, avoiding/eliminating alcohol, tobacco, other drugs, and talking to someone when they need to) can go a long way in reducing stress levels and achieving their educational goals.
Duration: 18:50
Presenter
Jennifer DiPrete
Study Tips & Note-Taking Strategies
OverviewDo you think you’re ready for your first college exam, test, or quiz? This interactive session will provide you with proven reading, studying, and note-taking strategies for optimal performance in lectures and on exams. Facing the testing situation in college is inevitable. This workshop will show you a comprehensive system of reading, studying, and note-taking for demonstrating mastery of course material and showcasing to your professors what you have learned.
Objectives- Consider the ways in which your learning style influences how you study
- Take effective notes in college
- Reconcile class notes with out-of-class notes on your readings
- Self-evaluate level of preparedness for exams
- Apply higher-order thinking strategies to study methods
- Improve performance on multiple-choice exams
Presenter
Laurie L. Hazard
Time Management: Strategies For Success
OverviewThe various aspects of college life place many demands on your time. Psychologists have studied time management practices extensively and have concluded that effective time management practices have a significant influence on college achievement. Consider that academic achievement takes time and you have to complete a large number of tasks in a short period. You may feel overwhelmed and stressed, thus leading you to consider how you might manage your time more effectively. This workshop will help you do just that: manage your time and behavior so that you can achieve academically and still have some room for fun.
Objectives- Strategies to self-regulate learning
- The 8-8-8 Formula for effective time management
- To plan for both long and short-term goals
- How to follow a three-tier time management system for college students: creating a semester schedule, designing a weekly schedule, and making a daily schedule
- Tips for following through with the time management plan
Duration: 25:12
Presenter
Laurie L. Hazard