Helping Students Succeed (Part 1)

In her Occasional Paper, “Promoting Student Success: What Faculty Members Can Do,” written in 2005, Jillian Kinzie discusses six ways faculty can help students succeed. These suggestions are based on the National survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). The first suggestion is to embrace undergraduates and their learning. Collaborative learning and learning communities and “engaging pedagogies” are included in this suggestion. Setting and maintaining high expectations is the second suggestion offered by Kinzie. If we limit students based on the belief that they can’t reach a higher level, they never will. We need to allow them to achieve as much as they can with a push to “higher-than-average expectations.

The third suggestion is to clarify what students need to do to succeed. One professor, Dr. John Toothman, in his article “How to be a Successful College Professor” discussed what it was like to receive a paper with a big “F-“on the front of it. The professor giving the grade did not provide any constructive feedback and would not go through papers with students. John had no way of knowing what to do to get a better grade. While I am sure no instructor at EPCC would behave in such a way, we may be less specific in our guidance than we could be. According to Kinzie, “Do not leave students – especially newcomers – to discover on their own what it takes to be successful. Become familiar with and promote the available academic and social support resources such as writing centers and tutoring support programs.” A tour of the various writing centers, Tutoring centers, PASS programs, ESL Labs, and others may help in steering the student in the right direction.


I find that our students really don’t know how to study. They look over the book and notes the night before the test, and often rely on the outlines that were given to them in PowerPoint presentations given in class. They may not understand that the exams are not likely to be straight from class notes, and are not likely to be exams that look only at identification rather than the understanding of ideas and concepts.

The Student Academic Resource Center at the University of Central Florida has an inventory of college level study skills that gives student feedback in the areas of text reading notetaking, test pre, concentration, memory and time management. Students can put “MCLCW Seminar” as their advisor so that they can receive results. Study skills handouts, located at the left side of the webpage can then help students become more proficient in their weaker areas. This may be an inventory that you direct your students to throughout the semester.


Helping students succeed should be more than our jobs; it should be our passion.  The next blog article, after spring break, will focus on the next three things faculty members can do to help their students succeed.   Enjoy your spring break!

Avoiding Plagiarism

Plagiarism is one problem that affects almost all academicians. We write our policies and warnings in our syllabi, yet we still get papers that we know are not the student’s work. Then we spend time googling phrases that may direct us to the original source and discuss with the student why he or she is receiving an “F” on the paper. Part of the problem may be the students don’t really know what plagiarism is and isn’t. Students may turn in work they think is OK because they’ve changed a few words in the original text, or they may site a source in the paper and feel that this allows them to use anything from that source for the rest of the paper.

In the January 26 issue of Inside Higher Education, Scott Jaschik discussed a study done by Thomas Dee and Brian Jacob. The study showed that students who received a tutorial about plagiarism were “less likely to plagiarize” on their papers (Jaschik, 2010).

If you want to teach your students about plagiarism and how to avoid it, you might want to start with the tutorial and quiz from the Plagiarism Resource Site. The information on this site was also used by Dee and Jacob in their study. There are excellent materials under the “Resources” section on the right side of the webpage.

As instructors, we talk a lot about plagiarism, but we may not follow up with concrete examples of what it is and how to avoid it. Threatening students with a bad grade or expulsion may be a deterrent to plagiarism, but education is even better. Send your students to the Plagiarism Resource Site to give them the information they need.