Student Success Strategies: How Colleges and Universities Can Help Students Thrive

There’s more to college success for your students than the excitement of acceptance and enrollment. The real fun begins after the start of the semester. If you want your students to graduate and find gainful employment, you need to equip your students with student success strategies. 

Student success strategies are tips and tricks students can use to gain and strengthen their skills to thrive in their courses, internships, and degree programs. These include skills like communication, preparation, and goal setting.

Let’s look at how you can share student success strategies with your students so they can gain the skills they need to be successful throughout college and beyond.

Essential Student Success Strategies: Opportunities for Skill Development

Providing effective student success strategies boils down to offering your students opportunities to learn and strengthen their skills. Many institutions require freshmen students to complete a College 101 course, which is often dedicated to teaching students critical skills, such as how to access mental health services or how to enroll in subsequent courses. 

However, you don’t need a course dedicated to these strategies to ensure your students gain the necessary skills. Instead, you can create opportunities, like offering campus-wide workshops throughout the academic year. Campus-wide workshops provide all students the opportunity to gain new skills, particularly transfer students who may have missed the required skills course in their first year.

Here are a few ideas you can use to create workshops to teach students necessary student success strategies and skills.

1. Time Management

According to Princeton University’s McGraw Center for Learning, time management is a critical skill for college success. With so many things competing for students’ attention, they need to learn to be picky with their time and set their priorities.

However, saying “no” to fun activities because of homework or research assignments can be challenging, primarily if students aren’t used to setting boundaries and holding themselves accountable. To help your students learn effective time management strategies, consider teaching them how to: 

• Make and keep commitments
• Effectively use the time block method
• Set healthy routines they can stick with 
• Organize their planners for efficient task scheduling 

Be sure to provide your students with actionable takeaways, too. Actionable takeaways from your workshops can help them quickly implement these strategies and improve their time management skills. 

2. Organization

Organization is a critical skill students need to be successful in their academic careers. These skills can help them stay on top of their assignment deadlines and keep their notes and notebooks organized so they never lose or miss an assignment. Organizational skills can also help them manage their thoughts for assignments, like creating outlines for research papers or presentations, so they can hand in better, more organized work.

You can teach this skill in a workshop or encourage your peer leaders to discuss their strategies during peer mentor meetings. 

3. Communication 

Effective communication strategies might be one of the most critical student success strategies in this list. Students don’t just need this skill to be successful in their future workplaces. Instead, it’s a great skill to learn to connect with their peers, community, and professors on a deeper, more personal level.

Connections are everything, especially when it comes to networking and job searching.

You can start small by offering your students workshops on:

• How to write an effective email
• Tips for overcoming anxiety
• How to successfully resolve conflict in the workplace (or classroom!)
• How to be politely assertive, compared to passive-aggressive 

4. Emotional Regulation

Emotions can play a significant role in students’ success. A recent study in the Journal of Professional and Applied Psychology suggests college students who are emotionally repressed might experience a decline in academic performance.

Holding workshops on emotional regulation to help struggling students is a good idea. You might consider providing resources for: 

• Mindfulness
• Breathing exercising 
• Journaling techniques

It’s also important to advertise your mental health services if your campus provides them. One-on-one discussions with a qualified mental health professional can help students work through their emotions and learn personalized coping skills.

5. Goal Setting 

It’s essential to have goals, especially for college students eager to start their careers. However, it’s too common for students to set unrealistic or unattainable goals. That’s why it’s essential to understand the importance of SMART goals.

SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. In other words, these goals, which students can set, are attached to an actionable plan to help them reach their academic and career dreams. 

However, learning to set appropriate and actionable goals isn’t just a skill students need to improve their lives. This skill can also help them in the workplace. For instance, students who go into business need to understand how to set business goals for each quarter. Students who are marketers might need to determine conversion goals for their next campaigns. 

Consider offering your students a workshop on SMART goals. Explain the parts of a SMART goal and help them set their own goals for the semester. 

Using Mongoose to Promote Student Success Strategies on Campus

Offering workshops throughout the semester is perfect for students to gain soft skills and learn student success strategies.

Your institution will need to advertise these workshops well to ensure your students know about them. You can print flyers to hang around campus or use conversational engagement software like Mongoose to remind and inform students of upcoming events. With Mongoose, you can send SMS and WhatsApp messages to students so you can be sure they’re aware of upcoming events. 

If you’re ready to learn more about how Mongoose can increase student participation in your campus-wide events, book a demo today.

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