Grappling with the Complexities of Supporting Students

by Clare Creighton

Last term, over four thousand Corvallis-based students responded to the Fall 2021 survey designed to help us better understand their experience and needs during this transition back to primarily in-person modalities. The results are available for OSU faculty and staff through a Box folder, and can be requested by emailing Clare Creighton, Maureen Cochran, or Erin Bird.

While I hope folks explore the rich data students have provided, I’d like to use this space to share insights I gained from reading student responses. I had the honor of reviewing open-ended survey comments from a few of the survey questions—over one hundred thousand words from students.

Student responses helped me understand that if it feels like a complicated and challenging time, it’s because it is. Throughout the pandemic, anticipating and making decisions has felt difficult. Part of that is because students have a range of needs and desires:

  • Some students feel more comfortable accessing resources in person, some prefer remote.
  • Students want more information but feel overwhelmed by the emails.
  • Students want courses offered in a range of modalities but have varied perspectives about which courses are a good fit for each modality.
  • Some students want to see more enforcement of masking requirements and COVID-19 protocols, others want masking requirements to be reduced or eliminated.

I don’t paint this picture with the intention of implying that the student body as a whole are a fickle group – quite the opposite. We have students who are clear on their needs and comfortable sharing them. The challenges come when those opinions and needs diverge. The puzzle we have is how best to meet those needs. Here are a few ways the Academic Success Center & Writing Center is working to support students:

  • Offering multiple modalities of services not just because of COVID, but because offering choice to students better meets student needs and preferences. For example, students can access writing support through drop-in in-person consultations in the Studio, they can schedule Zoom consultations, and they can submit writing for written feedback via email.
  • Creating some transparency for students about the resources, expectations, and guidelines. It can be confusing and discouraging to not understand why things are being done the way they are. Winter term may bring some irregularities in our staffing and services, and greater transparency will help students understand what is available and what they’re experiencing.
  • Encouraging compliance with COVID guidelines and holding compassion for those are struggling because they’re anxious about getting ill or fatigued with the rules and want things to be “back to normal.” There are students visiting our spaces who are not wearing masks – while we can acknowledge the frustration many feel in the need to wear masks, encouraging compliance will help other students feel comfortable to stay, learn, and ask questions.
  • Acknowledging student perspectives. Students have great ideas – we’ve learned a lot about their needs through these surveys. Similar efforts are happening across the US as higher ed seeks to understand the perspectives of students during this unusual time. We can highlight for students in small and big groups that we count on their ideas and perspectives to shape our work.

The students who completed the survey this fall gave us some great insights into their needs. I am inspired to do what I can to make full use of that gift. And it’s helpful to keep in mind that even the observations above are generalizations. We are best able to meet student needs when we engage with them as individuals wherever possible.

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