Remember the Student Readiness Survey (the SRS)?  We built this survey and compendium report two years ago to give each first year student and his or her adviser a better way to start a recurring conversation about strategizing to succeed during the first year.  We modeled the SRS after research that examines the various psychological and behavioral factors that can influence college success – things like academic habits, academic confidence, propensity to persist, stress management, etc. Faculty advisers who have used the reports as they were intended have found that their interactions with first year students have changed dramatically.

However, we’ve only had anecdotal data to suggest that this might be an effective tool until now.  So in our new mid-year survey of first year students, among several questions about the interactions between student and their adviser, we included one item that specifically focuses on the SRS.  Students responded to this statement.

• “My first year adviser helped me understand my Student Readiness Survey (SRS) results.”

The available response options and the response distributions were:

We never talked about them (what is the SRS?)	76	20%
only briefly	74	20%
yes, but they weren’t all that useful	131	35%
yes, and they influenced how I approached the beginning of my freshman year	94	25%

As you can infer from the response options above, we would like to find that the students who selected, “Yes, and they influenced how I approached the beginning of my freshman year,” also had more positive responses to other items that we know are important for a successful first year.

Although we still have a lot to analyze, we’ve already found one statistically significant relationship that I think is worth sharing.  Another item on the same survey asked students to respond to the statement,

• “My first year adviser made me feel like I could succeed at Augustana.”

Student responses to this item were:

Obviously, this is an important question because students’ self-belief is often vital to their success.  Moreover, this self-belief is directly influenced by the messages students get during their interactions with faculty, staff, and administrators.

One of the more important interactions shaping this belief involves students and their advisers.  So we tested the relationship between these two items while holding constant several factors that we thought might also impact whether or not the student might indicate that (a) the student’s adviser helped him or her understand the SRS results, and (b) this  conversation influenced how the student approached the beginning of his or her freshman year.  These controls included measures that might account for the degree to which the student might already be fully prepared to succeed in their first year (and thus not really need the additional advice) or the degree to which the student might find guidance through other means like peer groups or faculty interactions (that would then “wash out” the impact of the SRS report and subsequent conversation).

Sure enough, we found a statistically significant and relatively large positive effect.  In other words, as students indicated a more positive response to the notion that their adviser made them feel like they could succeed at Augustana, students were also more likely (much more likely, to be frank) to report that their conversation with their adviser about the SRS results had influenced the way that they approached their freshman year.

This finding seems to validate the way that we designed the SRS report and the way that first year adviser training has emphasized using it as a formative conversation starter. Students often seem to respond particularly well to advice when they hear it as strategizing to increase their own likelihood of success rather than just something more that someone else has told them to do.  In addition, this finding suggests that a ready-made way for advisers to be successful in getting their students to act upon their good guidance is to use the SRS as a tool to start this conversation, revisit the strategies they discussed with the student on a later date, and continue to work with the student to build an actionable plan for success in college.

So even though it is almost the middle of the spring term and you might have long since forgotten about your students’ SRS reports, now might be just the time to get them out and revisit those results with your students.

Make it a good day,

Mark