Supporting Student Success Practicum

By participating in this program, participants will:

• Identify multiple factors shaping student’s holistic success.
• Explore strategies for co-creating and communicating course expectations with transparency and collaboration.
• Integrate resources into course design that support equitable access to learning opportunities.
• Apply a student-centered framework to reflect upon current assessment practices.

Transforming Institutional Cultures: Holistic Approaches to Student Success by Dr. Jillian Kinzie

• Driven by an intensified focus on increasing educational value and measurable outcomes, today’s approach to student success involves promoting academic rigor while ensuring students feel a sense of support across their institution. In response, colleges and universities have launched new efforts to emphasize holistic student success, relationship-rich education, evidence-informed pedagogy, involvement in high-impact practices, and intentional exploration of career and life purpose, along with improved resources for basic needs and overall support. This keynote introduces tested approaches to student success, encourages the use of data to assess and improve, and invites greater consideration about how institutional cultures can better foster student success.

• This recording critically analyzes the dominant narratives of student success. Digging deeper to redefine “student success” by integrating multiple perspectives and experiences in and outside of the classroom, it examines the importance of a shared understanding of “this is what success means in our classroom” at this time.

Session 2 | How are we creating an environment for student success?

• This recording shares best practices for designing course materials that recognize students' and instructors' lived experiences while counteracting the hidden curriculum. Through activities like gift-identification exercises and syllabus analysis, it considers how to create spaces where everyone's nuanced contributions are valued, and course expectations are transparent and student-centered.

Session 3 | How are we facilitating student success?

• This recording discusses practical solutions to enable student success, while recognizing the limitations and boundaries that instructors work within. Additionally, it explores ways that instructors can demonstrate commitment to multifaceted student success through pedagogical practices, course materials, and other aspects of course design.

Session 4 | How are we assessing student success?

• This recording surveys a variety of student-centered approaches to assessment and facilitation, that align instructional goals with students' varied motivations and strengths, to enhance the achievement of student learning outcomes.

Learning Lab | Create an Accessible Canvas Site in 7 Easy Steps

• Making a Canvas page accessible is often, mistakenly, viewed as a difficult task. This recording covers seven simple things to do to their Canvas course site to remove barriers for all learners. It introduce the Pope Tech Dashboard and Accessibility Guide, tools to help easily identify and fix accessibility issues in Canvas. 

Learning Lab | Creating Rubrics x AI for Student Success

• Rubric creation is often perceived as time-consuming and complex, but with the assistance of generative AI tools, this process can become more efficient and accessible. Grounded in the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework, this learning lab guides viewers through the steps of creating a rubric for an assignment using Copilot. 
• Note: The Northwestern community can access Copilot in Bing with Northwestern credentials.

Faculty Panel on Student Success | Reflections and Illustrations

• Colleagues across academic disciplines at Northwestern share their experiences with (re)defining, creating an environment for, facilitating, and assessing student success for their classrooms. Participants can further engage by asking questions for faculty panelists.

Northwestern's University Practicum on Supporting Student Success is recommended for instructors, graduate students and postdocs preparing for future instructor roles, and staff—such as program coordinators—whose work shapes course content and delivery.

All levels, backgrounds, and teaching contexts are welcome.