When I joined DIA in the summer of 2023, my marching orders were simple but not easy: help institutions make use of ISSAQ noncognitive data to improve student success.
Back then, our primary focus as a company was on plugging these data into academic advising. We argued that if institutions truly wanted to improve student success, academic advisors should spend less time helping students select courses and more time providing holistic, targeted, personalized support based on students’ unique noncognitive strengths and challenges.
With this righteous message on repeat, we started training advisors at our various partner institutions. “Look at these cool noncognitive data,” we would say, “here’s how to use them to facilitate developmental conversations with your students.” The polite ones in the audience would just smile and nod. The blunt ones would tell us plainly, “that sounds nice and all, but I have 500 advisees to meet with in the next three weeks that all need help picking a major and registering for the right classes...I just don’t have the time."
In short, we were being hired by institutions that wanted us to give advisors a new tool to magically boost retention. But advisors were adamant that another tool was the last thing they needed. They cared about their students and saw the value of a more holistic approach to advising, but the prospect of pulling up a third, fourth, or even fifth screen before advising appointments—all with different bits of student information they were supposed to digest and somehow integrate into a 15-minute long advising conversation—was just too much.
We realized they were right. If an advising model isn’t designed from the start to provide holistic student support, expecting advisors to use noncognitive skills data is like expecting them to drive a car with no key. It doesn’t matter how fast or reliable the car is—it won’t get them (or their students) anywhere.
This realization was the beginning of a major shift for our team.
We still firmly believed that holistic, targeted, personalized support was the key to improving student success in higher education. And we still believed that institutions needed insight into students’ unique noncognitive strengths/challenges to provide this support. But we abandoned our attempts to “make ISSAQ happen” (a reference for my fellow millennials 😉) in advising contexts that were simply incompatible. Instead, we took a step back and asked ourselves:
What would an advising model that supports holistic student success look like?
If we could articulate a clear vision for advising, we could help institutions build advising systems that stood a chance of making a lasting impact—systems that would be ready and eager to make use of data on holistic student needs.
So, like the visionary thinker he is, our founder, Ross Markle, attempted to answer this question by opening a blank Word document and putting on his thinking cap. Soon, the term “assessment-informed holistic advising”—or AHA for short— was born. (“Get it?? ‘Aha’ like when you have a lightbulb moment!” he told me with much excitement).
Like the information-seeker I am, however, my attempts to answer this question led me down a rabbit hole of advising websites, journal articles, and blog posts. And while (spoiler alert) our different approaches ultimately led to similar destinations, I discovered something fascinating along the way: there are DOZENS of approaches to advising out there being discussed and promoted. (Whether they’re being practiced is another question.)
The Modern Advising Landscape
These days at DIA, we talk a lot about “holistic advising" (or holistic student support). But there are those who talk just as compellingly about appreciative advising, intrusive/proactive advising, developmental advising, strengths-based advising, learning-centered advising, Socratic advising, transformational advising, multicultural advising, “Advising as Teaching”, “Advising as Coaching” …and the list goes on (and on). It seemed to me that if we wanted to support institutions to transforming their advising practices, we first needed to make sense of this crowded and confusing landscape.
In researching these modern approaches to advising, I discovered many similarities. Moreover, where differences did exist, I found that the approaches were often complementary. In an effort to make sense of these similarities and differences, I sketched out a visual, which eventually turned into the matrix below. While certainly not the only way to meaningfully classify these approaches, I found it useful to distinguish between 1) approaches with a macro focus (systems/institutions) versus a micro focus (advisors/students), and 2) approaches that focus on the content of advising (the “what”) versus the process (the “how”). This created four distinct quadrants. It’s rare that an approach fits neatly into just a single quadrant, but I do find that most tend to have a primary emphasis.
To make them easier to discuss, I’ve given each quadrant an illustrative nickname:
Goal Post Approaches (Macro/Content Focus)
The models/theories/frameworks in this quadrant articulate the purpose or goal of advising in broad terms. Developmental advising (Crookston, 1994) is a prime example. Often contrasted with a more traditional or prescriptive approach to advising that focuses on ensuring students make timely progress towards degree completion, developmental advising posits that “the fundamental purpose of academic advising is to help students become effective agents for their own lifelong learning and personal development” (Chickering, 1994). In other words, advisors help students cultivate the knowledge and skills they need to achieve their goals in college and beyond.
Less widely discussed, the integrative learning theory of advising (Lowenstein, 2014) also fits in this quadrant. It states that the primary purpose of advising is to facilitate integrative learning—to help students make meaning of their educational experience by constructing “an overall understanding of how the pieces of their education fit together, so that the whole emerges as more than the sum of its parts” (Lowenstein, 2014). Notably, while both developmental advising and integrative learning theory make broad claims regarding what advisors should strive to accomplish, neither of these approaches get into the specifics of what topics should be addressed or how advising should be carried out.
Teleprompter Approaches (Micro/Content Focus)
Like the goal post approaches previously discussed, the models/theories/frameworks in this quadrant also focus on the “what” of advising, but at the level of individual advising interactions. I call them “teleprompter” approaches because they provide a template for advising conversations. On the more directive end of the spectrum are approaches like Terry O’Banion’s academic advising model (1972), which asserts that over the course of one or more advising interactions, six tasks should be accomplished: exploration of life goals, exploration of career/educational goals, selection of an educational major, selection of classes, and scheduling of classes. On the more general end of the spectrum are approaches like strengths-based advising, which argues that advising interactions should focus on identifying students’ strengths, affirming those strengths, and helping students apply their strengths to any challenges they face in the pursuit of their goals (Schreiner, 2013). While these approaches differ in their level of specificity, they both provide clear guidance for advisors regarding the content of advising interactions.
Camcorder Approaches (Micro/Process Focus)
Like teleprompter approaches, the models/theories/frameworks in this quadrant are also focused on providing guidance for individual advising interactions. I call them “camcorder” approaches, however, because they focus less on what advisors say and more on what they do. As such, these models and approaches don’t provide a checklist of topics or steps for advisors to follow. Instead, they provide strategies/tools that can be applied across contexts. For example, under a Socratic approach to advising, advisors/advisees may strive to “provide opportunity for each to speak, pose questions to facilitate mutual understanding…be willing to give up arguments, investigate differences of opinion, and strive for consensus” (Kuhtmann, 2005). Under the “Advising as Teaching” approach, on the other hand, advisors are encouraged to apply effective teaching strategies to their advising practice, such as backwards design, scaffolding (e.g., use of Bloom’s Taxonomy), active learning strategies (e.g., “flipped” advising, open-ended questions), and evaluation of learning (Coleman et al., 2021; Rose, 2020).
Blueprint Approaches (Macro/Process Focus)
I intentionally saved this quadrant for last because, despite its importance, very few models/theories/frameworks fall into this category. Whereas goal post approaches provide a high-level vision for advising and teleprompter/camcorder approaches provide on-the-ground guidance for advisors, blueprint approaches bridge the gap between vision and reality by answering the question, how should institutional systems be designed to support the overarching goals of advising? Without a framework to help answer this question, institutions may find that their vision for advising does little to guide practice and that the strategies/approaches they share with advisors go largely unused. In short, a blueprint is needed to help institutions design systems in which effective advising (i.e., advising that enhances student success) can occur. This is where holistic advising comes in.
Holistic Advising: A Blueprint for Transforming Student Support
For the purposes of the matrix, I’ve categorized holistic advising as a blueprint approach because of its strong focus on advising systems. However, it actually touches on all four quadrants, making it—in my opinion—a truly comprehensive approach to advising. It draws from many of the most prominent modern advising approaches (e.g., developmental advising, strengths-based advising, proactive advising, learning-centered advising) and, most importantly, ties them together with guidance on how to build advising systems in which these approaches can be effectively practiced.
In general, holistic advising is based on the idea that in order to improve student success (particularly for traditionally underserved students), institutions must look holistically at the student experience. This means recognizing that students are whole people who come to college with a host of academic and personal needs, goals, strengths, and challenges. Furthermore, because the academic and non-academic realms of students’ lives aren’t independent, a holistic advising approach acknowledges that institutions can’t maximize success in one area while ignoring the other.
That said, holistic advising involves identifying each student’s unique academic and nonacademic (e.g., financial, social, developmental, basic) needs so that personalized support can be provided to help students address the most salient barriers to their success (Lyn et al., 2022). This type of advising is built on a foundation of care and trust between student and advisor as such relationships create space for honesty and openness.
*It's important to note that “advising” in this context refers to a function, not a position. As such, an “advisor” can carry any number of titles: advisor, counselor, coach, mentor, professor. I will continue to use the term “advisor” throughout this post, but I consider it an umbrella term for all higher education professionals who promote student success by providing guidance and support.
So far, I’ve described the “what” of holistic advising, and even a bit of the micro level “how”. But the question remains, how should systems be designed to support this type of advising? According to the Community College Research Center’s (CCRC) Evidence-Based Framework for Holistic Advising Redesign (SSIPP), a holistic advising system must meet five criteria (Klempin et al., 2019, p. 3):
Sustained support is offered to students throughout their tenure at the college.
Strategic deployment of advising resources is achieved by creating systems that differentiate support for students depending on their needs and interests.
Integration of advising with other student supports as well as other aspects of the college experience is likely to serve students more effectively.
Proactive advising is needed to make sure that all students are reached; students who most need support may not come and ask for it.
Personalized advising is achieved when advising is offered by someone who knows the student well and is attuned to their needs and interests.
Unfortunately, few colleges and universities have advising systems that look anything like this. Instead, many institutions’ advising systems are defined by student-advisor interactions that are short, infrequent, transactional, and reactionary—focused almost entirely on responding to students’ immediately presenting, surface-level needs (Troxel & Kyei-Blankson, 2020). When these institutions purchase ISSAQ, it is almost guaranteed to be an exercise in futility. To be clear, it’s not that these institutions don’t have good intentions—in our experience, they often care deeply about their students. The problem is that they’re trying to fix with patches (i.e., ISSAQ and other tools) a system that is fundamentally broken.
The Four Pillars of Holistic Student Support
So, what do we do about these fundamentally broken advising systems?
At DIA, the Blueprint Collaborative is our response. Hosted by the League for Innovation in the Community College, the Blueprint Collaborative is a free multi-year community of practice that helps participating institutions redesign their institutional structure, policy, and practice to be holistically supportive of student success. Open this fall to both community colleges and four-year institutions, our goal is to provide tools and guidance to help institutions assess, redesign, and evaluate their institutional student success efforts.
To do this, each month (starting September 2024) we will dive into one aspect of the SSIPP holistic advising framework. For September 2024, our focus is on exploring what it means to provide student support that is strategic. In addition to a webinar and podcast episode on the topic, we’ve developed a self-assessment tool that participating institutions can use to 1) reflect on the extent to which strategic support is currently provided and 2) identify opportunities to strengthen strategic support efforts. The self-assessment focuses on four pillars of holistic student support:
Vision & Support: Leadership demonstrate support for holistic advising principles/practices in word and deed (through infrastructure, expectations, resource allocation, etc.).
Culture: Faculty, staff, and students perceive holistic advising as essential to the college experience.
Training & Resources: Faculty/staff have the knowledge, skills, and tools to engage in holistic advising practices.
Data Access: Student support faculty/staff have access to timely, high-quality data on holistic student needs.
In our experience, a minimum threshold must be met in all four of these areas if attempts to create an advising system that is more sustained, strategic, integrated, proactive, and personalized are to be successful. It doesn’t matter, for example, whether advisors receive training on holistic advising practices if, due to a lack of investment in advising, the student-to-advisor ratio is 300:1. Conversely, it doesn’t matter how many advisors an institution hires if those advisors don’t have access to information on holistic student needs or aren’t trained on how to respond to these data appropriately.
So, where does your institution fall on these four pillars? How can you begin to address challenge areas? Who needs to be part of the conversation? By asking these questions, you are taking the first steps towards building an advising system that has the power to truly transform lives. The journey won’t be easy, but the payoff for our students is worth it. I wish you the absolute best of luck!
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Interested in joining the Blueprint Collaborative? It’s not too late! Click here to learn more about the Collaborative and find out how to participate.
References
Chickering, A.W. (1994). Empowering Lifelong Self-Development. NACADA Journal, 14(2), 50-53.
Coleman, M., Charmatz, K., Cook, A., Brokloff, S. E., & Matthews, K. (2021). From the classroom to the advising office: Exploring narratives of advising as teaching. NACADA Review, 2(1), 36–46. https://doi.org/10.12930/NACR-21-04
Klempin, S., Kalamkarian, H.S., Pellegrino, L., & Barnett, E.A. (2019). A framework for advising reform. Community College Research Center. https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/media/k2/attachments/framework-advising-reform.pdf
Kuhtmann, M. S. (2005). Socratic Self-Examination and Its Application to Academic Advising. NACADA Journal, 25(2), 37–48.
Lowenstein, M. (2014). Toward a Theory of Advising. Mentor: An Academic Advising Journal, 1.
Lyn, J.S., Hilliard, K.A., & Seabold, J.A. (Ed.). (2022). Advising at HBCUs: A resource collection advancing educational equity and student success. University of South Carolina, National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition.
O'Banion, T. (n.d.). A brief history of academic advising. The Terry O’Banion Papers. https://www.theterryobanionpapers.com/_files/ugd/9f4457_b2c45dce3bd841828d0250a228600f52.pdf
Rose, C. (2020, February 24). Advising as teaching: The power of evidence-based teaching practices in academic advising. NACADA Academic Advising Today. Indiana University Bloomington. https://nacada.ksu.edu/Resources/Academic-Advising-Today/View-Articles/Advising-as-Teaching-The-Power-of-Evidence-Based-Teaching-Practices-in-Academic-Advising.aspx
Schreiner, L. A. (2013). Strengths-based advising: A new lens for higher education. In J. K. Drake, P. Jordan, & M. A. Miller (Eds.), Academic advising approaches: Strategies that teach students to make the most of college(pp. 105-120). John Wiley & Sons. https://advisortraining.wayne.edu/docs/strengths-based-chapter-from-approaches_book_accessible_pdf_from_jb.pdf
Troxel, W. G., & Kyei-Blankson, L. (2020). The “typical” advising session: An exploration of consistency.NACADA Research Report 201. NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising. nacada.ksu.edu/Resources/Research-Center/Research/R101.html
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