USING THE FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR IN RESPONSE TO CRISES: LESSONS LEARNED FROM COVID, PROTESTS FOR RACIAL JUSTICE, AND THE 2020 ELECTION

Holly Gastineau-Grimes, Marian University

When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters -- one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.

— John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, synonyms for crisis include: boiling point, breaking point, clutch, crunch, emergency, extremity, tinderbox, and zero hour. A few synonyms, such as crossroads and juncture, stand out as a bit more positive, but still don’t promise a great outcome. Crisis quickly pushes many instructors and students out of their comfort zones, yet at the same time, offers an opportunity to foster important growth and needed change. Students need to embrace change as they begin their journey in college to live on their own, take ownership of their academic goals, and expand their social bubbles. Programs and instructors need continual change to adapt to the needs of students in an increasingly digital and diverse world. Thinking of ‘crisis’ as an opportunity for change provides lasting lessons for First-Year Seminar (FYS) programs.

The emergence of COVID-19, the protests surrounding racial injustice and the Black Lives Matter movement, and the 2020 Election brought a year of ongoing crises for students, administrators, and instructors. Part of the First-Year Experience (FYE) program and FYS strives to empower students to handle ‘expected’ unexpected crisis moments as they learn to navigate campus and college classes. Missing an exam (or even an assignment), realizing they don’t like a particular major, or losing financial aid are just a few examples of crises that students may encounter in their first year, not to mention relationship issues, family misunderstandings, or health concerns that might prompt a crisis for some students. Taking stock of how FYS classes responded to the series of crises from 2020 provides additional strategies to strengthen curriculum for student success going forward.

LESSONS LEARNED IN THE MIDST OF 2020

The past year has been difficult, but also a source of many powerful lessons that can be applied to the creation of powerful learning experiences for students.

Letting Go of the Best Laid Plans

Many FYE/FYS programs allow students to choose the course ‘themes’ blended with a common read. The common read allows FYS classes to develop themes, yet still come together with a central idea for program content and resources including guest speakers, films, and shared projects. Extensive planning and time go into selecting the common read well in advance of each academic year. Even so, moving away from the common read can allow for FYS to introduce a collection of readings that may better address student needs and the world around them. A selection of excerpts from nonfiction and fiction sources can be incorporated and can pull from the expertise of the entire campus community to address everything from time management to implicit bias. Current event pieces can be added at the start of each semester or even during the semester to give students a broader context for processing and interpreting their understanding of crises, such as the initial handling of COVID, the science behind vaccine development, and the history of past government responses to pandemics.

A committee of instructors can develop a ‘ready-made’ theme course that incorporates a packet of readings rather than one common reader, and provide activities and assignments for instructors to use going into the fall or spring of a semester; with 2020, these could specifically address social distancing, social protests, and the general election.

Modeling a Growth Mindset

First year success partly stems from helping students understand how they learn and helping them become active learners. As students embrace a growth mindset, they see how both challenges and setbacks strengthen their ability to succeed. Assignments and concepts that are hard ‘flex’ the muscles in the brain and build them, similar to how weight lifting to strengthens biceps and triceps (McGuire and McGuire 2018). Administrators and instructors who embrace a growth mindset exemplify how to do this for students. In times of crisis, learning and implementing new strategies and technologies is difficult. With the onset of COVID, many instructors found themselves learning how to use online class platforms more extensively, how to record lectures and teach effectively online, and how to teach simultaneously in the classroom and online.

During times of frustration, it’s okay (and good!) to be open with students and share both the trials and triumphs of using new technology, course formats, and even time management and study/work strategies. In the spring of 2020, as many colleges went to completely virtual classrooms, many instructors at first found it uncomfortable to record their lectures with sound and video, struggled with how to hold a Zoom meeting, or how to respond to losing connection during an online class. Student Services and Campus Resources experienced similar learning curves as they worked to shift student programming. Sharing ‘how’ new strategies have been implemented exemplifies how to deal with challenges, whether in times of crisis or with hurdles that are more expected and common during the first year of college. For example, many programs during 2020 recorded ‘introductory’ videos in their offices for FYS classes to incorporate. Recording can be a difficult skill – if it took two hours and ‘20 takes’ to record a video, this can be an important example to model the growth mindset through trying different strategies and practicing. Acknowledging how to embrace a growth mindset can build a better relationship between students and instructors and give students a visual, real-world example of how to be successful despite a few frustrations and setbacks.

Creating FYS Assignments That Focus on Recognition of Self and Others

In addition to balancing classes and learning a new college vocabulary (e.g., FAFSA, General Education, Registrar, Provost), student success depends on knowing one’s self. No one identity defines any person – various identities make up each person, and some identities matter more for how one individual may see themselves. Ideas to accomplish this include:

» Having students take part in an identity walk to reflect on how religion/ spirituality, ethnicity, age, first-language, socio-economic status, physical/ emotional/developmental ability, biological sex, gender, race, nationality, and sexual orientation affect how they see themselves and how others perceive them.

» Participation in an anonymous class poll can be used to visually show students how their fellow peers see themselves and set a strong foundation to explore the implications of bias (implicit and explicit) both on campus and in the community through low-stakes activities.

» Project Implicit Assessments (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ takeatest.html) that provide insight on individual biases in a variety of areas (e.g., Arab-Muslim, Gender-Career, Skin Tone Weapons) followed by a written reflection for personal and social assessment.

» We all watched as protests took place to highlight racial injustice and police brutality with the George Floyd case, and others. As racial injustice continues in the United States, program administrators, instructors, and students need to work in creating shared language and concepts to process crisis moments and to continue working toward equality in the aftermath.

Creating FYS Assignments to Help Students Deal Effectively withInformation Overload

FYS should provide students with key academic skills, including how to use library databases, how to distinguish reputable sources, and how to use specificity and substantiation in both spoken and written communication. In the culmination of several crises–COVID, Racial Justice Protests, and the 2020 Election–directing students to step back and focus on skill development is an effective way to help them defuse their emotions and gain objectivity. For example:

» As students are introduced to the library, create a workshop centered on finding and registering for at least two diverse national news sources (e.g., the New York Times versus the Drudge Report ). Use this opportunity to explain how the databases are organized in the library, how to distinguish between reputable news outlets, and how to identify key information for building citations of sources.

» Ask students to find a current event article on a crisis and craft an annotated bibliography, including an overview of the article, three-four sentences on how the argument is developed, and a few sentences on the significance. The focus on skills gives students space and a strategy to process crises.

Broaden the Definition of Service

When students and instructors participate together in service-learning experiences, the result is often an enhanced sense of community. As part of FYS, students often carry out campus-wide service projects or have class requirements to attend several service opportunities, both on campus and in the larger community. COVID quickly highlighted both the need for community members to help one another with food drives and other economic resources, just as much as it also called for administrators and teachers to implement new safety requirements for those students still attending classes. The need to social distance offered an opportunity to emphasize the many forms of service that are equally important as physically working in the community. Service includes supporting others in the community by: 1) being an informed citizen; 2) listening to the experiences of others; and 3) sharing and spreading awareness of key issues. Hearing the experiences of others gives visibility to voices often unheard. As StoryCorps founder, Dave Isay (2008) argues, “listening is an act of love” and something that many don’t do enough.

As an example, in place of students going off-campus, they could create StoryCorp Posters ( https://storycorps.org/ ) or webpages by researching current events, interviewing individuals in the community, and working as groups to create virtual representations of varied lived experiences. The timing of the 2020 election amid COVID and the protests addressing racial injustice, offered an opportunity for students to carefully look at the pandemic’s effect across the globe, the uneven treatment of minorities in the criminal justice system, and an explanation of how the Electoral College works. Recognition of “being informed” and “listening” as forms of service create a foundation for meaningful community involvement beyond FYS.

Embracing New Class Formats as a High Impact Practice

Identification of high impact practices includes the FYS as a key to helping students succeed in their college experience. The onset of COVID led to new creative class formats:

» FYS courses traditionally offered fully in-person ‘went fully online’ while others shifted to remote learning, and some incorporated a mix of inperson and online learning.

» Requirements for social distancing meant that many classrooms could no longer accommodate 18-20 students.

» Hybrid classes may split students into two groups. Each group can meet for one in-person class meeting each week and then carry out collaborative work and online activities, discussions, and assignments throughout the rest of the week.

To fully embrace the opportunity for FYS to spur engaged learning, the course needs to incorporate several high impact practices while adapting to the needs of diverse groups of students and institutions (Skipper 2017). Building a complete, comprehensive online course to work in tandem with the traditional in-person course can create more opportunities for collaboration among students, service in the community, and research, while also providing an opportunity for instructors to make their classrooms and teaching more inclusive.

Through intentional practices, help your students to develop the skills necessary to respond in times of crisis.

REFERENCES

Isay, D. (2008). Listening is an act of love: A celebration of American life from the StoryCorps Project. New York: Penguin Books.

Kuh, G. D. (2008). High-impact educational practices: What they are, who has access to them, and why they matter. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.

McGuire, S. Y., & McGuire, S. (2018). Teach yourself how to learn: Strategies you can use to ace any course at any level. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Skipper, T. L.. (Ed). (2017). What makes the first-year seminar high impact? An exploration of effective educational practices. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition.