Megan P. Wuebker and Angela Cook, NACADA Advisor Training & Development Commission Members

As with any profession, academic advising requires training, but institutions often struggle to identify a centralized resource or approach for implementing advisor training.  With obstacles of limited financial support, workloads stretched beyond capacity, and autonomous centers with disparate advising structures, advisor training has been a challenge for many institutions.

Some examples of new advisor training programs exist.  For example, Utah Valley University (UVU) offers a comprehensive in-person training plan that includes technical competency, best practices, and effective student interaction (Moser, Nuttall, & Wade, 2014).  The University of Wisconsin-Madison provides a face-to-face training series for their new advisors (Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, 2013).  Other institutions utilize new advisor checklists to help advisors become acclimated to both the institution and the profession.  As the Advisor Training and Professional Development Staff at the University of Cincinnati, we completed a thorough search for online advisor training programs, but we were unable to find an existing model that met our institutional needs.  So, we built one.

At the time this training was developed, our job responsibilities included dedicated support to advisor training and professional development for the entire undergraduate advising community at the University of Cincinnati (UC).  Though we have different professional backgrounds—student affairs and instructional design—together we possess a combination of knowledge and skills that creates a perfect storm of online training development.

Theory

Our approach centered on NACADA’s (2017) Core Competencies for Academic Advising, which includes three components: conceptual, informational, and relational.  The conceptual component provides advisors with ideas and theories of advising, while the informational component includes institution-specific knowledge for accurately advising students.  The relational component connects the conceptual and informational components to effectively communicate and build rapport with students (NACADA, 2017).  It is worth mentioning that the NACADA model is reflective of Habley’s (The National Center for the Advancement of Educational Practices, 1987) framework for effective advisor training.  Our training development process at the University of Cincinnati also utilized Knowles’ (1973) theory of andragogy, which posits that, for adult learners, information must be timely, relevant, and contextually appropriate with opportunities for reflection, self-evaluation, and application.

Course Development

As the Advisor Training and Professional Development Staff, we knew the desired framework for our New Advisor Training (NAT) would be based on the NACADA Core Competencies (2017) structure; we also needed to address where it would be located online.  The logical solution was to build the training in Blackboard, our learning management system (LMS).  This afforded the opportunity to monitor enrollment and activity in the training course while also ensuring that advisors have an easily accessible resource.  Using the LMS also provides access to collaboration tools (e.g., discussion boards) to facilitate engagement with the training and other new advisors.

The development of the training itself began with a general outline of eleven modules, ensuring they aligned with the Core Competencies framework (NACADA, 2017).  Table 1 shows these modules and their descriptions.  The next step included creating learning outcomes for each module to guide content acquisition, which included book chapters, NACADA articles, institutional websites, and public resources.  Each module includes a Training Materials section of text-based materials and a Media section for video- and audio-based materials.  Some modules include a More to Explore section, where advisors can access optional resources for further engaging with the topic.  Several modules provide a Resources section for specific on- and off-campus resources.  Each module concludes with a Theory to Practice section, where advisors complete a journal entry to reflect on the module content and integrate it into their daily work with students.  This reflection process adheres to Knowles’ (1973) theory for adult learning, ensuring that new advisors immediately apply the content to their advising practice.

Table 1
NAT Modules and Descriptions

The LMS journal feature was utilized to promote reflection and communication in the course.  This feature provides space for individualized writing without relying on other participants (a replacement for discussion forums which may not be successful without a substantial number of participants).  The training encourages new advisors to discuss their journaling with their supervisor, and likewise encourages supervisors to ask probing questions.  To help facilitate this, a supervisor section in the training program offers a high-level overview of the training content, list of the journal prompts, and additional discussion questions.  Table 2 provides an example of a journal prompt and its corresponding supervisor questions.

Table 2
Sample Journal Prompt and Corresponding Supervisor Questions

Deployment and Assessment

At UC, we developed the NAT online course over 6 months.  At the time of deployment, the university had two new advisors who could pilot the training.  As part of our training role, we also met individually with the advising administrators in each college so that we could demonstrate the NAT, gather buy-in, and solicit feedback.  When new advisors join the UC advising community, we meet with them in-person to explain the training and to conduct a pre-training self-assessment.  The self-assessment questions, modeled after the learning outcomes in each module, use a four-point Likert scale (strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree).  After the advisor completes the training, we meet with them for the post-training self-assessment.  The results from both self-assessments will be used to evaluate the training’s effectiveness and identify any needed improvements.

We as the program’s developers have met with the advising administrators and have received overwhelmingly positive feedback about NAT.  While we had anticipated that new advisors would benefit from the training program, we also received consistent feedback that experienced advisors and even advising administrators would find the content very helpful in their professional development.  Some advising units have also started using selected content and journal prompts as discussion topics in their weekly staff meetings.

At UC, we anticipate that NAT will continue to progress as both advising and the university evolve.  As the Advisor Training and Professional Development Staff, we are regularly adding new materials and features, including a section on collaborating with parents and a keyword search for ease of navigation.  We will also continue to collect the pre- and post-training self-assessments to determine the effectiveness of the training, making revisions as needed.

Conclusion

Prior to the creation of NAT, each advising unit developed their own approach to onboarding new professionals, leading some advisors to feel underprepared for their new roles.  Now, our advising community at UC has access to a university-wide tool that not only helps prepare new advisors, but also enhances the knowledge and skills of experienced advisors, alleviates the responsibility of advising units to create their own trainings, provides consistency across independent advising offices, and enables advising administrators easy access to resources for staff development.  We hope that our UC advisor training can serve as a model for other institutions.

Megan Paxton Wuebker
Instructional Designer
University of Cincinnati
[email protected]

Angela Cook
Assistant Director, MBA Program
University of Cincinnati
[email protected]

References

Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. (2013). Advising resources for faculty and staff. Retrieved from https://advising.wisc.edu/facstaff/?q=content/training-new-advisors.

The National Center for the Advancement of Educational Practices (ACT). (1987). Academic advising conference: Outline and notes. Retrieved from www.nacada.ksu.edu/Portals/0/Clearinghouse/advisingissues/documents/AcademicAdvisingConferenceOutlineandNotes.pdf

Knowles, M.  (1973).  The adult learner: A neglected species.  Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing Company.

The Global Community for Academic Advising (NACADA). (2017). NACADA Academic Advising Core Competencies Model. Retrieved from https://www.nacada.ksu.edu/About-Us/NACADA-Leadership/Administrative-Division/Professional-Development-Committee/PDC-Advisor-Competencies.aspx

Moser, C., Nuttall, S., & Wade, O. (2014, October). The ultimate adventure: Developing an advisor training and certification program. Pre-conference workshop presented at the Annual Conference of the Global Community for Academic Advising (NACADA), Minneapolis, MN.  

Cite this article using APA style as: Wuebker, M., & Cook, A. (2017, September). Online training for new advisors. Academic Advising Today, 40(3). Retrieved from [insert url here]