Dreaming and
Designing in the Eccles School
The Appreciative Advising team in the David Eccles School of
Business wanted to develop tools to help students explore their dreams by
sharing their ideas during advising appointments, then help them move on to the
Design stage by identifying specific and measurable goals.
The group
developed a visual to help with the Dream
phase.
The team made attempts to use this tool in advising
appointments over the Spring 2015 semester and have the students list dreams
and values. Advisors reported that starting this conversation felt very awkward
and students didn’t seem comfortable with the vagueness of this exercise,
especially if the relationship was newer (needed more time in Disarm and Discover).
The 30-minute appointment structure also didn’t leave much time to dive into
such an open-ended activity. The intent was that the Dream conversation would
lead discussion on the same worksheet about short and long-term goals as part
of the Design phase, but very few
advisors were able to get to this stage.
Accepting Roadblocks
and Moving on
After another month of weekly discussions and more suggested
edits, the Eccles Appreciative Advising team realized that this dream and goal
sheet didn’t fully embrace the spirit of the Appreciative Advising approach in
which the advisor and student celebrate strengths, encourage reflection, and
co-construct new understandings.
Modify Counseling Instrument
for Educational Use
Through the Appreciative Advising online course and training
with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Nicole Legarreta adapted a counseling
activity that is used for values-clarification into a tool that can be used in
an Appreciative Advising educational setting. Using this tool with students
embraces all of the Appreciative Advising stages in a fluid and interconnected
way. ACT is a behavioral therapy that helps a person take committed action toward
a rich, full, and meaningful life through working with a therapist. Nicole has
applied this counseling theory to the higher education setting to explore how
students can create a high quality and meaningful educational experience using
an Appreciative Advisor. This exercise encourages the six phases of
Appreciative Advising: Disarm, Discover, Dream, Design, Deliver, and Don’t Settle.
ACT identifies work/education, personal growth, leisure, and relationships as
primary domains important in life. These themes were modified in relation to
achieving a higher education.
A visual representation of this activity is below:
1-Academics: Relates to how well students are performing in the
classroom, how well they understand content, and the ability to think
critically about learning concepts.
2-Experiential Learning & Career Development: Explores the
ability to apply classroom knowledge to real-world settings. Includes hands-on
learning through internships, undergraduate research, career counseling, and
future academic planning such as graduate or professional school aspirations.
3-Personal Growth, Self-Discovery, and Leisure: Students participate
in actively thinking about who they are and who they want to become. Students
develop interests through hobbies and exploration. Students develop a value
system for what is important to them and what kind of life they want to have.
4-Campus and Community Relationships: Students access their
relationship to the campus and broader community. They foster connections to
peers, faculty, staff, and community leaders through club participation,
leadership, and community service.
These domains are interconnected. For example, students who
participate in an Alternative Spring Break service project will likely develop
personal growth and return from the trip with more of an understanding of who
they want to be. This may give them more passion to engage more in the
classroom and improve their academic success.
Using the Tool in an Appreciative
Advising Context
Advisors present students with a blank Bulls-Eye and help
explain each domain. Conversation organically develops through this interaction
and rapport is established (Disarm).
The goal is for students to feel happy with their development in each domain
and feel they are in the “bulls-eye”. Students can mark an X where they feel
they currently are in each domain. Appreciative Advisors will celebrate the
identified strengths first (Discover)
and then help students process through the areas they have identified that need
improvement (Design). Advisors
should make appropriate referrals to Career Services and the Counseling Center
as needed. This is an on-going tool that can be used at each advising
appointment, and as students progress to their junior and senior years, more
development can happen in the Deliver and
Don’t Settle stages.
Future Directions
The next step for the Eccles Appreciative Advising team is
to pilot this approach in a more structured way to business students who have
been admitted to their desired majors, typically junior standing, and assess
student satisfaction with the tool. Data will be collected to identify these
students through use of our customer relationship management (CRM) software,
Salesforce. The Eccles School uses Salesforce to manage upper division and
major application decisions, and data is imported in nightly from PeopleSoft
providing access to GPAs, class standing, advisor notes, and a target
population can be identified through use of queries. Our hypothesis is that
this tool will help students become more motivated to engage in more domains,
improve academic performance, apply classroom learning to real-world
situations, and provide a richer educational experience overall leading to more
student satisfaction and goal attainment.
