Vol. 38, No. 18

9-22-2004
By: Randy Gammage

Helping students achieve

The Walter E. Dennis Learning Center offers assistance with learning strategies

The name has changed but the mission remains the same: to help students achieve academic success at Ohio State by learning new study and motivation strategies.

The Academic Learning Lab, located in the Younkin Success Center since 2000, was renamed the Walter E. Dennis Learning Center in late May, in recognition of a $750,000 gift from Walter E. Dennis Jr. The funds will help create an endowment to maintain technology at the learning center.

An arm of the College of Education, the learning center is central to Ohio State’s efforts to improve student learning and support academic achievement, retention and graduation, said Bruce Tuckman, director of the center and professor of educational policy and leadership.

“The Dennis Learning Center complements the wide array of programs housed in the Younkin Success Center that enhance teaching, learning, career exploration and counseling in support of all students and faculty,” Tuckman said.

Open to all Ohio State students, the learning center teaches test-taking strategies, learning skills, time and life management and academic motivation, among others. The staff consists of Tuckman; Rebecca Simmons, associate director; D’Arcy Oaks, technology specialist; and Danielle Lee, off-campus outreach.

Assisted by a strong network of graduate students, the learning center last year offered 13 success series seminars to 1,300 students and 15 survey classes to an additional 300 students. They presented 32 learning and motivation strategies workshops on demand to 500 students and advisers across campus, provided individual consultation to 150 students, and taught similar learning strategies at high schools, community colleges and OSU’s regional campuses.

The capstone of the learning center is a five-credit, computer-assisted course, “Individual Learning and Motivation: Strategies for College Success” (EPL 259).

“After building this course from scratch in 2000, when the Younkin Success Center opened, we reached more than 1,100 students this past academic year,” Tuckman said.

The course is designed to teach students strategies or approaches that enable them to better learn, understand and retain what is being taught, and the ways to manage one’s time and life in the new environment of college. It employs a classroom-based, computer-mediated instructional model, called Active Discovery and Participation through Technology (ADAPT), that includes more than 200 learning performance activities with strict deadlines imposed.

Tuckman said outcome studies have shown that the course can improve a student’s academic performance by as much as 0.7 GPA points in a single quarter, regardless of their beginning GPA.

“When they walk out of this class, academic motivation is not a thought anymore, it’s a way of life,” Tuckman said.

Effective outreach
A significant challenge to post- secondary institutions nationally is the enrollment, retention and graduation of high-risk urban students, fewer than half of whom continue their education beyond high school, and only about 15 percent of whom earn a baccalaureate degree, Tuckman said. Of the continuers, more than half select community colleges as their preferred option, but only half of them remain in school.

With the help of a $340,200 Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) grant, a modified Individual Learning and Motivation course is being taught to community college students at risk for dropping out and urban high school students who may lack the skills to handle a post-secondary education.

Ohio State provides program coordination, training for instructors, and a modified version of the ADAPT software, and will evaluate outcomes when the program is complete.
The course was introduced at Brookhaven High School in Columbus during the second semester last school year.

“I think the course is definitely helping to develop the skills of my students so that they will be more successful in college, as well as in their remaining time in high school,” said Roger Brand, a teacher at Brookhaven.

Although it is currently an elective, he sees tremendous potential for the course as more students and staff hear about the benefits.
He said primarily juniors have taken the course thus far.

“Personally, I would like to see it modified to become a required class for ninth graders. The skills that are taught in the class are just as useful for having success in high school as in college,” Brand said.

Future expansion
This fall, Tuckman said the course will be offered in as many as six high schools in the Columbus Public Schools district, while four community colleges in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky will offer the study skills and motivation course. A total of 21 institutions will be involved next academic year — the final year of the FIPSE grant.

Tuckman said Ohio State has site-licensed the software program used in the course and is currently offering it to the participating schools at no cost.

“However, the university stands to gain monetarily in the future if this venture is successful and user fees are charged for the software,” Tuckman said.

A professor of education policy and leadership at Ohio State since 1998, Tuckman is a world-renowned specialist in the psychology of procrastination. The Procrastinators’ Support Center, called Don’t Delay, a Web site he developed for the learning center, gives students information about procrastination, offers tips for avoiding it, and helps them measure their own degree of procrastination tendencies.

To access the Procrastinators Support Center, for study tips, or for details on Dennis Learning Center programs, visit the Web at http://dennislearningcenter.osu.edu, or e-mail the center at wedlc@osu.edu.

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