About Session
Sometimes we find ourselves stuck between a rock and a hard place in higher education. On one hand, we do not want to let deficits influence how we work with our students. On the other hand, we are seeing an increasing number of scholars who are not academically prepared for the rigorous learning in college. One of many challenges we face as student and academic affairs professionals is, how do we help students learn the rigorous content in a way that they can apply on the exam and to the profession. Sometimes we must go back to the basics, in effect, we must take them back to Sesame Street. Students often try to learn the advanced content of their courses from the instructors PowerPoint presentation bypassing the textbook. In many cases, this is a learned behavior from High School and as more students report not using textbooks in high school, we must show them how to build context around the content. The question becomes, how do we help them learn advanced content when they may not have contextual understanding of the material. We take them back to Sesame Street by unpacking objectives. Unpacking objectives is very similar to unpacking a box, one item at a time. By unpacking objectives student can access the content at a basic level and then build their understanding of the content, much like how we learn a second language. By unpacking objectives at a Sesame Street level, students can build a contextual framework (a schema) around the content to be learned.
