Supporting first generation college students

Workshop Takeaways

NIU’s Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning recently hosted a workshop on Supporting First-Generation Students. The workshop featured Kimberly Shotick (Assistant Professor, Student Success Librarian), Katy Jaekel (Associate Professor, Higher Education), and Nichole Knutson (Vice Provost). To further our rich discussion, CITL is providing our campus community with an artifact that encapsulates some of what was discussed and includes a list of helpful resources that will further our campus work in supporting first-generation college student success and persistence.

A few of the key takeaways from the workshop discussion include keeping in mind the identity intersectionality and cultural wealth of our first-gen students (Kimberly Shotick), recognizing that first-gen student have skills like tenacity (Katy Jaekel), and remembering that language matters to reframe the conversation of the value of a college education away from how students may be unsuccessful and toward student support (Nichole Knutson). Other takeaways included potential strategies to assist first-gen students, such as a visual syllabus (Shotick), being vulnerable and sharing your own stories (Jaekel), and keeping in mind that student support is not just for the struggling students (Knutson).

Supporting First-Gen Students

There is no monolith of “first generation” students who share the exact same characteristics and needs. First generation students have diverse, intersecting identities. Institutions of power, including higher education, have a long history of privileging the dominant, heteronormative culture. So, how can we make our teaching and support services more inclusive and draw upon the assets that diverse learners bring to education? We should be careful not to look at our diverse learners with a deficit model, as if it is our job (or theirs) to catch them up to where their more privileged peers are. Instead, we can and should consider the assets that diverse learners bring to the table and how we can activate their lived experiences, desires, goals, and sources of capital (Yosso’s community cultural wealth model). These are the pools of resources that have gotten them to this point—to your class—despite the pandemic, despite maybe hunger, language barriers, lack of access to healthcare or housing, systematic racism, and/or anti-trans violence. They pulled from sources of capital and made it to you.

Here is a two-fold approach to working with all new students: (1) help to decode college and (2) create a more inclusive learning environment through pedagogy.

Strategies

Visual Syllabus and Syllabus Activity

Reformat your syllabus to be more visual and include a syllabus activity, such as having students annotate the syllabus.

Transparent Assignment Design

Explain why you are assigning the assessment and how it contributes to course learning goals, and include a clear rubric or grading explanation with examples.

Normalize Help-Seeking

Normalize help-seeking and asking questions by requiring everyone in the class to visit a tutor, writing center, or librarian. Consider doing this during class time.

Solicit Student Contributions

Do you center student voices? Include students in assignment creation and selection of readings and topics. Allow them to be producers of knowledge and to realize their own wealth and ability to contribute.

Collect and Use Student Feedback

Throughout the semester, allow students to direct the course and draw from their knowledge and feedback. When you solicit student feedback during your course, make sure that they see you applying it.

Utilize Small Groups

One method designed to advance students’ productive persistence is called a “group noticing routine” (ACUE), which draws on psychology research and can be applied across disciplines. If students feel accountable for one another’s engagement in their classes, it will strengthen their feelings of belonging within the course and in college.

Process: 1. At the start of the semester, assign students to groups and encourage them to learn about one another’s interests and goals outside the course. 2. At the beginning of each class period, ask each group to report which members of their group are absent. 3. Instruct the groups to contact any group members who are absent to provide them with missed materials and encourage their attendance in subsequent classes. This process pulls from multiple funds of cultural wealth (Yosso): navigational and social.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

Utilizing UDL makes learning more accessible and inclusive. The 30-second version of UDL is to create multiple means of engagement, representation, action, and expression. For example, teaching course content through a variety of formats, allowing assignment choice (such as responding via writing, video, and/or audio, which VoiceThread is great for), or allowing choice in how students demonstrate their progress in course assessments (e.g., recorded presentation, multimedia project, portfolio assessment, term paper, etc.).

Special thanks to Kimberly Shotick, Katy Jaekel, and Nichole Knutson for their insights for this blog post and for contributing to the CITL workshop discussion on Supporting First-Generation Students (26 Jan. 2022).

Resources

NIU Resources

CITL Workshop Recordings

Guides

First Generation College Students: Navigating Higher Education (Da Graca, M., & Dougherty, L., 2015)
First-Generation Students Checklist (California State University LA Center for Effective Teaching & Learning)
Strategies to Effectively Teach First Generation Students (University of South Carolina Center for Teaching Excellence)
Teaching First-Generation College Students (Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching)
Teaching First Generation College Students Guidebook (MiraCosta College Tutoring and Academic
Support Center)
First in the Family: Advice about College from First-Generation Students (WKCD)

Video

A Pedagogy of Kindness (Cate Denial, 28 Jan. 2021)

Articles

Beyond a Deficit View (Inside Higher Ed)
The Challenge of the First-Generation Student (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
First-Generation College Students More Engaged Than Peers (Inside Higher Ed)
Five Things I’ve Learned This Summer (Cate Denial)
Let’s Help First-Generation Students Succeed (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Maximizing Success for First-Gen Students (Inside Higher Ed)
Supporting First-Generation Students (Inside Higher Ed)
Teaching First-Generation Latinx Students (Inside Higher Ed)
Think of First-Generation Students as Pioneers, Not Problems (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Using Technology to Help First-Gen Students (Inside Higher Ed)
What Do Our Syllabi Really Say? (Cate Denial)
Who’s in First (Generation)? (Inside Higher Ed)

Scholarly Research*

Gillen-O’Neel, C. (2021). Sense of Belonging and Student Engagement: A Daily Study of First- and Continuing-Generation College Students. Research in Higher Education, 62(1), 45–71.
Graham, B., Baldivia, S., Cuthbertson, W., Leon, K., Monson, J., & Trask, J. (2021). Collecting First-Generation Voices in Academic Libraries and Archives. College & Research Libraries, 82(1), 44–58.
Harper, C. E., Zhu, H., & Marquez Kiyama, J. (2020). Parents and Families of First-Generation College Students Experience Their Own College Transition. Journal of Higher Education, 91(4), 540–564.
House, L. A., Neal, C., & Kolb, J. (2020). Supporting the Mental Health Needs of First Generation College Students. Journal of College Student Psychotherapy, 34(2), 57–167.
LeMire, S., Zhihong Xu, Balester, V., Dorsey, L. G., & Hahn, D. (2021). Assessing the Information Literacy Skills of First-Generation College Students. College & Research Libraries, 82(5), 730–754.
Luedke, C. L. (2020). Developing a College-Going Habitus: How First-Generation Latina/o/x Students Bi-directionally Exchange Familial Funds of Knowledge and Capital within Their Familias. Journal of Higher Education, 91(7), 1028–1052.
Orbe, M. (2004). Negotiating multiple identities within multiple frames: An analysis of first-generation college students. Communication Education, 53, 131-149.
Padgett, R., Johnson, M., & Pascarella, E. (2012). First-generation undergraduate students and the
impacts of the first year of college: Additional evidence. Journal of College Student Development, 53, 243-266.
Parnes, M. F., Suárez-Orozco, C., Osei-Twumasi, O., & Schwartz, S. E. O. (2020). Academic Outcomes Among Diverse Community College Students: What Is the Role of Instructor Relationships? Community College Review, 48(3), 277–302.
Reid, M. & Moore, J. (2008). College Readiness and academic preparation for postsecondary education: Oral histories of first-generation urban college students. Urban Education, 43, 240-261.
Roksa, J., Silver, B. R., Deutschlander, D., & Whitley, S. E. (2020). Navigating the First Year of College: Siblings, Parents, and First‐Generation Students’ Experiences. Sociological Forum, 35(3), 565–586.
Rovitto, T. L. (2020). (Cultural) Humility in Practice: Engaging First-Generation College Students. Journal of College Student Psychotherapy, 1.
Soria, K., & Stebleton, M. (2012). First-generation students’ academic engagement and retention.
Teaching in Higher Education, 17, 673-685
Stebleton, M., Soria, K., & Huesman Jr, R. (2014). First-generation students sense of belonging, mental health, and use of counseling services at public research universities. Journal of College Counseling, 17, 6-20.
Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69-91.

*Some scholarly links require NIU University Libraries login.