News & Events

A Profile of Success

We're excited about the latest issue of the International Journal of Process Education because it contains scholarship that gets at the heart of what we believe Process Education can do. The article, "Key Learner Characteristics for Academic Success" may not be exciting, but the research and discoveries behind it are. We have long held that the Learning to Learn Camps (and Learning to Learn courses) are capable of turning lives around because they give participants the tools, understanding, and opportunity they need to become successful learners. We can now show why this is true! (psst: read the article.)

In writing the article, Dan Apple, Wendy Duncan, and Wade Ellis accepted the challenge of compiling a universal list of the characteristics of successful learners. While Process Education scholarship informed the initial creation of the list of characteristics, they surveyed far beyond PE, across myriad sources offering ideas of what makes college students successful. Their final list contains 50 characteristics that naturally fall into 7 categories:

Growth Mindset Academic Mindset Learning Processes Learning Strategies

Affective Learning Skills Social Learning Skills Productive Academic Behaviors

This in itself is interesting and allowed them to create a Profile of a Quality Collegiate Learner. But what is really critical is that the more of these characteristics a learner demonstrates, the more successful he or she will be. The implication is that to increase academic success, a learner should gain, grow, or improve these characteristics.

And that's where Learning to Learn Camps come in. What they discovered is that ALL 50 of those learner characteristics are targeted by Learning to Learn Camps. The paper itself includes statements from actual students at actual Learning to Learn Camps, explaining how the Camps challenge and grow students, imbuing them with those characteristics that will enable them to succeed.

---

PE Conference 2017

Until the 2017 Process Education Conference!

With a theme of Equity through Empowerment, the PE Conference website for the 2017 conference is up and running. Planning is further ahead this year than previously; much of the program is already available! The conference is being hosted by California Health Sciences University, where Wendy Duncan (long time PE educator and scholar) is the the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, Provost and Interim Dean of Pharmacy. The school itself is located in Clovis, California, a town that justly calls itself, "The Gateway to the Sierras". With attractions such as Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia National Parks nearby, Clovis certainly doesn't seem to suffer from its location! While there is some time left until conference kick-off, we are already making our plans to be there AND in time for the pre-conference Teaching Learning-to-Learn Institute, scheduled for June 19 - 21.

More Details

---

---

PE Tools and Resources

Tools and Resources! Building on the 25-year History of Process Education article, a team of authors has created a directory of PE scholarship & tools. The article itself (Major Topics in Process Education: A Directory of Scholarship and Tools) is available in the latest issue of the IJPE, but a far more useful INTERACTIVE version is available as well. It has been carefully designed to make finding resources, tools, and scholarship as simple as possible. We could go on and on about this but a picture (especially one you can interact with) truly is worth at least a thousand words. So we'll simply end with: Go play with the interface. You won't be sorry!

---

The Academic Recovery Course

It makes SO much sense:

Instead of sending out dismissal letters to students who have failed, we have a different idea:

Give these students the chance to prove not only that they want to stay in school, but that they have what it takes to succeed.

The course was much more than an opportunity for my son to get off scholastic suspension and excel academically. As a mother, I witnessed a life change for my son. He went from doing enough to get by and doubting his abilities to being committed to do and give his personal best. I am so thankful for the course and the life- changing opportunity that was given to my son.

The Academic Recovery Course is an intensive 1-week course where students confront and own their failure, work through it, and actively demonstrate they have the will and grit to turn things around. The college or university decides the standards for success... Our job is to equip these students with the skills to achieve that success. Based on our Learning to Learn Camp model, we're turning lives around and helping students recover, academically. 

It makes so much sense for colleges and universities too! Not only does the Academic Recovery Course increase retention and lead to higher graduation rates, the course itself is better than free: The Pacific Crest charge for readmitted students is exceeded by the combination of the course tuition and/or fees along with the next term tuition leaving the institution with a surplus. 

Learn More