Students who receive one-on-one coaching may be more likely to graduate from college, according to a study released from Stanford University’s School of Education.
The study, published on the Web site of the National Bureau of Economic Research, may be particularly beneficial to colleges struggling to improve graduation and retention rates, says Dr. Eric Bettinger, the Stanford associate professor who co-authored the report with doctoral student Rachel Baker.
In the study, a group of 13,500 students from eight colleges and universities were divided into coached and non-coached sub-groups. Students from both groups came from a wide swath of educational and demographic backgrounds, ranging from merit scholarship recipients to developmental math and English students.
Surprisingly, the results were consistent across all groups. After six months, coached students were 5 percent more likely to remain enrolled in school. After 12 months, the number declined slightly, to 4.3 percent. But overall, retention and graduation rates were higher among coached students.
College coaching, a hands-on form of college mentoring, provides support for students who want to improve study habits, gain time management skills and balance work and family obligations. Data for the study was provided by InsideTrack, an organization specializing in providing hands-on counseling services to students.
Bettinger says his findings suggest that coaching may be more effective than counseling or advising, which most colleges provide.
“Traditional advising is passive,” he says. “We generally wait for students to come and seek advising help. Coaching is much more active. Coaches call, e-mail and text students. They actively pursue students in more aggressive ways.”
Previous research suggests that students who feel isolated from their college environment are more likely to drop out. This report, says Bettinger, is yet another confirmation of what researchers have suspected all along.
“Coaching targets many of the reasons why students might drop out. It makes them feel more integrated to their institution; it helps them build organizational and study skills; and it helps them confront and overcome barriers they might encounter,” he says.
Dr. Sylvia Hurtado, a professor of education at UCLA and director of the college’s Higher Education Research Institute, says the report aligns with previous findings on the effectiveness of peer coaching, a form of mentorship that may be even more effective than the traditional model.
“One thing that peers do is they provide a social network. They share information about how to navigate the institution, they share information about how to study for professors, they share information about who you see to get help,” she says. “Once you control for students who have actually seen counselors and all of that, having the additional impact of a peer network is probably key. Together, it’s actually more powerful.”
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If you have a learning disability, you may have trouble with skills such as reading, memory, math, time management, writing, or reasoning. But if you have a mobile phone, you have access to a number of apps and functions that can help you compensate for those deficits.
Your cell phone can be used as an alarm clock, camera, calculator, notepad, appointment reminder system, daily schedule, dictionary, encyclopedia, and a way to access teachers for extra help and answers to homework questions outside of the classroom. Apps for Android and iPhone can help you access nonprofit educational videos like those offered by Khan Academy at any time of day.
If you have difficulty with note-taking, use your phone to record lectures so you can review material for tests and essays and fill in details you might have missed. You can also download a dictation app to help you generate emails, reports, and other assignments. Apps like American Wordspeller and Reading Machine can help you pronounce words you can’t read and look up word spellings and meanings phonetically.
An app like Multiplication can help students who have difficulty memorizing math facts. Other apps help you practice, graph problems, and make math more visual. Need help generating papers? An essay writing app can help you organize your thoughts, lay out your work, and review your efforts. Students with weak memory skills find that apps such as Noteshelf and Popplet can help them recall information, mind-map their ideas, and collaborate effectively with classmates.
Of course, the best part about using your smart phone as a learning tool is that it’s so much fun. And OMG, if you find an app you love, it’s so easy to share it with a friend.
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by Keath Low
Study Finds Coaching Improves Executive Functioning for College Students with ADHD
A recent study finds that coaching helps college students with ADHD improve their ability to learn and succeed in college. The research conducted at Wayne State University in Michigan is the largest and most comprehensive study of ADHD coaching conducted to-date. Research findings for the pilot study and the field-test were presented at the annual international Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) conference on November 12, 2010. Results from the pilot study are slated to be published in the Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability in late 2010 or early 2011.
The transition to college can be a very challenging one for a student with ADHD. Time is less structured. There are many more distractions, greater responsibilities and expectations, increased academic demands, and generally less support systems in place. Lead investigator, Sharon Field, Ed.D., explains further:
“Expectations of students in college are very different than they are for students in high school. For example, in high school grades are often based on multiple, short-term assignments. However, in college, students are typically assessed on two or three large assignments for the entire semester. College students are expected to complete their work with high levels of initiative and independence. Plus, in college there is usually a wide array resources and activities available to students. This also means there are more potential distractions. Making the transition from high school to college is difficult for most students, but it can be especially challenging for students with ADHD.”
Dr. Field also notes that students with ADHD often have difficulty with executive functioning skills like organization, time management and focusing on specific tasks. In addition, students with ADHD do not receive any support services or accommodations in college unless they self-identify and register with the Disabled Student Services (DSS) office on campus. The support available to students to accommodate for their ADHD may be very different from what they had available to them in high school.
ADHD Coaching
ADHD coaching is a specialized type of life coaching that addresses the common challenges ADHD can often bring, particularly in the areas related to scheduling, goal setting, confidence building, organizing, focusing, prioritizing, and persisting at tasks. In addition, ADHD coaching can help in the development of effective self-advocacy skills. This study specifically examined the model of coaching developed by JST Coaching and used by the Edge Foundation to help college students with ADHD improve their ability to organize, set and achieve goals, and self-regulate.
Benefits of ADHD Coaching for College Students
“The most exciting finding from the study was that ADHD coaching made a significant difference in students’ executive functioning skills, particularly self-regulation,” says Dr. Field. “We administered the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) to a group of students who received coaching and to another group of students who did not participate in coaching. The students who participated in Edge coaching services scored significantly higher than students who did not participate in coaching on assessments of self-regulation, will and study skills. On average, students who participated in Edge coaching nearly doubled their scores on the self-regulation assessment.”
Study investigators also interviewed students who participated in coaching. Interview results confirmed what researchers found in the pre-post assessment with the LASSI. “Students who participated in coaching told us that coaching helped them learn how to better manage their time, especially how to break down large assignments into smaller, manageable steps. They also reported that coaching helped them decrease the amount of stress they experienced and helped them feel more supported,” says Dr. Field.
In summary, students who received coaching showed substantial gains in their overall approach to learning – including improvements in their ability to organize, direct and manage cognitive activities, emotional responses and overt behaviors. They were able to formulate goals more realistically and consistently work toward achieving them, manage their time more effectively, and stick with tasks even when they found them challenging. In addition, students reported that coaching helped them to feel less stress, greater empowerment, increased confidence, and have more balanced lives.
Getting More Information Out About ADHD Coaching
One of the limitations Dr. Field and her research team found is that many students aren’t familiar with coaching and the possible benefits it can have. “There is a need to provide more information to students with ADHD, and those responsible for supports and accommodations on college campuses, about coaching and how it is different from many of the other services that are more typically available to students,” explains Dr. Field. This is especially true in light of the findings that ADHD coaching can be a highly effective intervention to help students improve executive functioning and related skills and improve overall success in college and beyond.
To read the complete report go to:
Quantifying the Effectiveness of Coaching for College Students with ADHD
Source: Sharon Field, Ed.D., David Parker, Ph.D., Shlomo Sawilowsky, Ph.D., Laura Rolands, MA.
“Quantifying the Effectiveness of Coaching for College Students with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder”.
College of Education, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI. August 31, 2010.
Sharon Field, Ed. D., Interview/Email Correspondence. November 22 and 24, 2010.
Article from: http://add.about.com/od/treatmentoptions/a/The-Benefits-Of-Adhd-Coaching.htm
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By Gail Johnson
Growing up in Edmonton, Alberta, Pete Quily always did well in school, even though he found it hard to finish some assignments. He procrastinated, was easily distracted, and had trouble managing his time. It wasn’t until he was in his early 30s and living in B.C. that he happened to notice a poster in a library that had a list of signs of attention deficit disorder on it.
“I read that checklist and just went, ”˜Oh, my God’—check, check, check,” Quily tells the Georgia Straight in a phone interview. “That was me. If you have ADD and you don’t know what it is, life can be very frustrating. I wish I would have found out a lot earlier.”
Part of the reason Quily, who’s now 45, was never suspected of having the neurobehavioural condition—which is marked by sustained patterns of inattention, hyperactivity, and/or impulsivity—was that he succeeded scholastically. Although he did some of his projects at the last minute, he threw himself into others with all his energy and attention. He says that if he found something interesting, he could spend hours concentrating on it.
“It’s a myth that if you have ADD you’re on the verge of dropping out of school,” Quily explains. Although some people with ADD—which is also known as ADHD, for “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder”—have learning disabilities, many others have high intelligence. For proof, Quily points to the MENSA special-interest group for people with ADD that has more than 500 members and successes like that of David Neeleman, who founded JetBlue Airways.
After he learned he had the disorder, Quily researched approaches to managing it and found many that worked for him, including exercise, personal coaching, talk therapy, support groups, and spiritual exploration. He’s come a long way since the early ’90s, when he was diagnosed.
“Back then, it was, ”˜Here’s your Ritalin; here’s your Dexedrine; you’re on your own.’ ”
Quily was lucky just to get a diagnosis. The condition is still widely misunderstood and often either misdiagnosed or missed altogether by doctors.
According to a February 2009 British Columbia Medical Association policy paper, it takes an average of 18 months for a person to be treated for ADD following his initial contact with a doctor, and as few as 11 percent of adults with the condition actually receive treatment. Part of the problem is that few family physicians are qualified to diagnose ADD.
Psychiatrist Derryck Smith explains that the disorder is genetic in about 80 percent of cases. “Twenty-five years ago, the belief was that children grow out of ADHD by age 12,” Smith says on the line from his office. “What started happening was child psychologists would make a diagnosis in a child, then give the family all this information to take home to read. Then the dad would come in and say, ”˜Hey, doc, I think I’ve got this too.’
“Now we know that symptoms persist into adulthood”¦and if you’re born with it, you’ll have it all the way through life.
“With adults, it’s mostly inattention; the hyperactivity and impulsivity tend to reduce.”
In adults, ADD can take a serious toll on multiple aspects of people’s lives. Some have trouble with substance use and abuse, while others get involved in crime. Then there’s the way many handle motor vehicles.
“These people make terrible drivers,” Smith says. “They’re more prone to accidents and are more inclined to speed.”
Furthermore, ADD is linked to an average of 35 missed workdays per year as well as poorer job performance, lower occupational status, and less job stability than those without the condition, according to the BCMA paper.
People with the condition experience other problems when it comes to treatment, which can include behaviour modification and neurofeedback. Simply writing a prescription, however, is “woefully insufficient care”, the BCMA report states. Making matters worse is that ADD often takes a back seat to other mental-health disorders, like anxiety, depression, and psychosis. Many mental-health teams don’t even consider ADD part of their mandate.
When people do take medication, the drug they’re often prescribed needs to be taken several times a day. That’s because B.C. PharmaCare doesn’t fund a long-lasting drug that only needs to be taken once a day. Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Quebec cover or provide restricted access to this pill.
“You’re getting people who are distractible, forgetful, to take meds three times a day? Isn’t that sadistic?” Quily says. “We’re pretty backward here in B.C.
“And what about people who need more than meds, who can’t afford coaching or don’t have extended benefits for psychologists?”¦It’s a condition that the government, the health-care system, doesn’t take seriously.”
What helped Quily the most was personal coaching. He got so much out of the one-on-one sessions, in fact, that he became a coach himself. Now he specializes in helping adults with ADD who, like him, have a natural curiosity but who might be overwhelmed by paper clutter or unable to finish tasks, or find it hard to handle stress.
Quily helps others focus on the positive aspects of ADD. “People with ADD are creative; they think out of the box,” he says. “The thing that bothers me is that ADD is a mixed bag. It can really drag people down if you don’t know how to manage it, but it can propel you to great heights if you do manage it.”¦Coaching helps with the practical, day-to-day challenges: work, relationships, social things”¦time management, underemployment, job-hopping.”¦But there has to be an openness to change.”
Smith applauds the BCMA paper’s call for more services for adults with ADD. “In the medical profession, many people have the mindset of 25 years ago, that it isn’t a problem that affects adults,” he notes. “There’s a big education process we need to undertake.”
Source: http://www.straight.com/article-214255/adhd-coach-improves-focus
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