I am interested in finding out more about the interventions that faculty are using.  I like the practical idea of requiring the student come for help before allowing a retest.  I do an optional cumulative final that can serve as a "retest" but I noticed that students still missed the same types of questions that they had missed in previous tests, even though solutions were posted and there are opportunities to ask questions and visiting office hours is always encouraged.  I can see how offering an opportunity to retry something, but only if they come for help could result in students realizing that they can learn this.  I am interested in finding out more about the virtual conference.  Will the registration be at that same link?

Thank you so much for your interest. We will post a link to the registration for the conference on the same page.

One thing that I've recently had success with is changing my "office hours" to "help sessions." This past semester I had students visiting me in every one of my Zoom help sessions. They were just office hours. All I did was change the name. Go figure.

Thank you so much Mariam. We hope you can participate in our July conference where we will highlight all of that.

Hi Cassy,

That's an excellent idea. Although our faculty training does have a number of activities and interventions we have not focused on collaboration but it is a great idea. That is a good idea for a topic during our conference. We're planning some sessions that are a bit different than your traditional 1-hour presentation. We'll have a session in which faculty, graduate students, or administrators perform a 10-15 minute demonstration of something they do to encourage growth mindset. In addition, we will have "birds-of-a-feather discussions, in which people interested in the same topic can chat and bounce ideas off of each other. This sounds like a good topic. You are welcome to propose it as a session for our conference.

We assess faculty growth mindset before and after our training activities and we assess student growth mindset at the beginning and end of each semester. Both are done mainly through surveys but this past semester we also collected dependent student data (i.e. grades). Our research consultant who developed the student-based intervention will present this at out virtual conference in July.

I love Cassy's idea about students and faculty collaborating to foster mutually beneficial growth mindset.  I hope this can be a session at the conference.  Count me in!

It's a deal. It sounds like a perfect birds-of-a-feather topic or demonstration session. I will add it to our schedule.

I'm delighted to see this interest in faculty and student collaboration to cultivate growth mindset! I'd be happy to propose/be involved in a session - I'm taking a look at your CFP now. Thanks!

Thank you for your interest, Remy. You are so right about the importance of faculty in student engagement. I teach my students that hard work always beats talent if talent doesn't work hard. As a scientist, I also know that we learn most from our failures and perseverance. Faculty should definitely share those lessons with students.

So many students think they just need to work harder and show "grit' to succeed. But that can result in "over-efforting," in which the students work very hard but inefficiently and in isolation, and get discouraged if the results are not what they had hoped. It is critical that students seek help (and that there is help available when they seek it) when they face obstacles so they persist in their fields.

I too am interested to see what others think about ideas about a growth mindset. You, as teachers we're asked to have a "teaching philosophy." Maybe we should have students write their "learning philosophy," and see how that changes over time. That self-reflection may help them put things in perspective. An other idea for our conference....

Asha - I think your phrase "over-efforting" captures it well - I too observe students working hard, but inefficiently, and in isolation (even more pronounced after so much COVID isolation).  And the discouragement and feeling like a failure is real.  And no matter how much I share lessons about learning most from failure (many good examples, including personal ones), I think the students don't really buy in to this or maybe are afraid to be vulnerable.  I think the "learning philosophy is another great idea for a conference topic.  

I appreciate your interest LaShawnda. We measure faculty attainment of objectives through pre-and post-surveys. We measure student objectives through our research project with interventions early in the semester and at the end of the semester, we use post-surveys and dependent data collection. 

We offered multiple training opportunities over the past 3 years. I will compile some numbers for you and post them.

Thank you for this information.  I look forward to learning more about your project.

Thank you for your comment, Harrison. To provide access to higher education 2-year colleges play a critical role in funneling underrepresented minorities through the higher education pipeline. 

We are currently in our final year of funding for this project but are exploring follow-up study opportunities specifically geared toward improving interventions and scaling up.

Thank you, Sharon. Our research showed that help-seeking behavior is critical and that students with a growth mindset are more likely to seek help. This is why we must improve the growth mindset of faculty and students.

Thank you for the support, Molly!