J.Randolph Radney's List: Coaching

• This online training  program is designed to prepare college students and other paraprofessionals  for working with academic coaching and tutorial groups. Each of the four modules  focuses on a different aspect of the role an academic coach plays in helping  students achieve success in their courses.

  • It is not known whether this program is available to those outside the immediate school district where it is being developed.
• Contact: Vicki Helms, vhelms@sdcoe.net 
  

  • The contact information for Vicki Helms may prove valuable in getting access to the academic coach training program.

• An academic coach, like an athletic coach, observes your strategies and techniques, makes observations and suggests changes to your approach, and provides encouragement as you implement new ways of learning. One-on-one sessions are a great opportunity to learn how to fine-tune your unique ways of learning.

  • From the discussion, it would appear that an academic coach is a very short-term role for a student (i.e. make "an" appointment with a coach). It would seem to be better to have students coached throughout at least a course by the same coach, rather than merely "making an appointment" as needed.

  • This is a positive picture of the academic coach.

• Academic Coaching is a unique, specialized service, geared towards helping individuals reach their education potential. This service proves helpful as it enhances structure and accountability while providing new study strategies, better organization and time management skills, and general moral support.
• This service is not generally for help in specific subject content

  • I think that coaching is possible without regard to a specific discipline when it is done in an individual setting. However, I believe that the full potential of academic coaching may be seen in group, as well as individual sessions. In this vein, it would seem best to organize coaching connected to specific courses.

• Academic Coaching vs. Tutoring

• Academic Coaching is most appropriate when:

   
   
  • - Student is underachieving
   
  • - Student is struggling across subject areas
   
  • - Student is dependent on their natural abilities to suceed
   
  • - Declining results are effecting the student's confidence and effort

  • This is a relatively negatively focused view of what academic coaching is. Imagine how different sports would be if the only athletes being coached were "underachievers," "struggling," "dependent," and "declining!"
    In my view, coaching is a positive and supportive role aimed at maximizing a person's performance over the long haul. It does not have the correction of a problem in view, and it is not limited in its scope to a particular obstacle or hindrance (in fact, not even to the completion of a particular course, though for practical reasons a coach may be engaged in connection with a particular course).
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• individualized process

  • Although coaching involves individualized elements (consultation, critique), it is best not to limit it in such a way. Just as sports coaches often work with teams of athletes, so academic coaches can work with learning communities dedicated to the exploration of a given subject (course).

• Your Academic Coach will:
  

   

  
  

   
   
  1.  

     *Make at least five (5) monthly visits
     

      
   
  2.  

     *Set up your loved ones’ “dream” resume with events, activities, and awards that will match with their hobbies and personalities
     

      
   
  3.  

     *Give you constant feedback of progress with monthly progress reports
     

      
   
  4.  

     *Meet with your loved ones Monday-Sunday, flexible hours
     

      
   
  5.  

     *Meet with your loved ones at the locations convenient for you
     

      
   
  6.  

     *Become your loved ones’ Mentor, or Advisor, available personally or via telephone, email, instant messaging, or text messaging.   
     

      
   

  • Though the meta-message of this quote involves an appeal to parents regarding the education of their children (or dependents), it reveals some of the features necessary to academic coaching: regularity of contact, learner-centred activities, promise of critique, flexibility of time and location for meetings, and a long-term relationship.

• At Taproot we recognize that each person is unique in the way that they learn best. Therefore, we match skill strategies to the individual learning needs of each client, which allows for the greatest possible transformation and growth. 

  • Clearly, the situation envisioned is one academic coach and one client meeting together. While coaching should be personal and individualized at times, it should not be narrowed in such a way as to exclude group coaching and collaborative learning communities.

• Key Coaching Competencies

   

  In a typical coaching meeting, coaches follow the eleven core competencies as set out by the International Coach Federation to identify the issue, garner the client's commitment, and support the client in developing a plan of action. Here is one of those competencies.

   

  Creating Awareness

   

  The coach invokes inquiry for greater understanding, awareness and clarity, identifies client's strengths, and helps client find new possibilities for action.

  • This is clearly a document being developed. Hopefully, future editions will specify more of the core competencies promised at the outset.

• Coaches are trained to listen, to observe and to customize their approach to individual client needs.
• A coach relates to the client as a partner.
• Coaching concentrates primarily on the present and future.

• Coaching can be used concurrently with psychotherapeutic work.

   
• Academic Coaching is not academic tutoring, counselling donning, advising, or academic accommodations but can be a useful support along with these services.
• Coaching is not consulting or facilitating.

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• We are a nonprofit organization formed by individual members-professionals who practice coaching, including Executive Coaches, Leadership Coaches, Life Coaches and many more, from around the world.

• Annual Membership: $195 (USD)* (This equals only $16.25 per month!)

  • The ICF membership is on an annual billing schedule; all memberships expire on March 31 of the following year.
  • Membership fees for new ICF memberships will be prorated based on the month you join the ICF.
  • Membership fees for January, February and March include the prorated amount for the current membership year plus next year's membership fee. Membership would then expire March 31, 2010. Please see below.

• Peer Academic Coaching connects experienced student coaches with a student peer to examine personal strengths and challenges in his or her academic career. Students in the program are paired with a Peer Academic Coach who will mentor the student in their academic life at UBC. Participants will also have the opportunity to attend faculty specific workshops on learning skills and resources and meet regularly with their coaches throughout the term to discuss learning tools, study tips and academic issues such as those highlighted below: 
   

   
  • Study habits 
  • Study techniques 
  • Study resources 
  • Student norms 
  • Academic tutoring 
  • Academic advice 

  • Academic coaching can be extended to peer-mentoring relationships, but it would seem that the prototypical concept would be oriented toward more of a professional-client (i.e. less peer-oriented) relationship. It would seem that true security on the part of the education-seeking client would be more easily achieved in a relationship where the educational knowledge and experience are deeper than would be possible among a student's peer group.

• Academic coaching is an evolution of mentoring applied to academics. Mentoring implies the student is an empty vessel into which knowledge is poured. Coaching involves a more collaborative approach, assuming the student is already in the "game" of learning. Coaches help students learn how they best learn and how to operate in an academic environment. Coaches help students learn the material in individual courses while coaches help students learn how to be successful in school. In college, that includes such topics as: study skills, time management, stress management, effective reading, note-taking, test-taking, and understanding how to use a syllabus. Academic coaches meet with the student regularly throughout the semester, usually once a week. Coaches work with students in all kinds of situations, not just those who are struggling academically. Some highly motivated, high-achieving students will have a coach to improve their learning efficiency. Academic coaching also occurs to help students prepare for entrance exams to gain entry to schools or universities. Academic coaching is a huge industry in Asia. For example, in India, a majority of students be it of any class or stream, visit a coaching centre or a 'study circle'.

  • Perhaps there will soon be a separate article in Wikipedia on academic coaching. For now, it is discussed within the concept of tutoring.

• academic coaching and courses for at-risk students

  • It is important to ask why coaching is only needed in "at-risk" situations. It would seem to be better to implement coaching as a preventative, more than a corrective, measure.
• The goals of academic coaching is to provide intensive coaching and mentoring in a student’s first two terms at Kaplan, with an effort to prepare students to be increasingly academically and personally self-sufficient, more adept at solving and preventing barriers to education, and to be better positioned for greater and consistent academic success as they move through the first two terms and into the remainder of the degree program. The ultimate measure of success will be demonstration of a higher retention rate of students into their third term than is presently the case.

  • This could be better-written, but the essentials are there. Again, one wonders why this program is only for "at-risk" students.

• Dinkins (2008) pointed to similar evidence and stressed that many students believe that “face time with instructors and class time with other students [is] critical to their success in college.”