Journal Archive

In most universities, counseling and education programs aimed at enhancing the learning strategies and skills of undergraduate academic probation have been implemented for the purpose of “development and evaluation of intervention programs” since the cause of the academic probation were identified. These programs focus on time management, setting learning goals, self-directed learning strategies, understanding learning styles, academic guidance, overcoming test anxiety, and strengthening writing skills[15]. Focusing on students’ career counseling content and psychological characteristics, these programs focus on enhancing self-determination, self-control, self-esteem, motivation, and stress response. Personalized intervention programs for individual students are operated under such programs as group counselling, orientation for freshmen, and courses related to learning strategies[15].

Universities in the U.S. require undergraduate college students to participate in programs, requiring small groups or one-to-one programs to acquire learning strategies and skills, while Korean universities’ programs are being conducted with learning motivation improvement programs, self-discovery programs, self-determination and stress control programs, resilience improvement programs, and self-directed learning skills[16], according to the diagnosis of the causes of poor learning among college students. This tendency was aimed at addressing academic probation or under-performance by focusing on counseling rather than learning, as the understanding and approach for under-performing students at local universities was conducted mainly by certain departments, such as the University Counseling Center or Center for Teaching and Learning, in the early 2000s. Recently, the number of programs that various departments of universities are in charge of problem-by-problem linking has increased, and the trend is to pursue growth programs that enhance learning flexibility and link students to employment and graduation so that the purpose of the program can be transformed into self-directed learners rather than just to overcome academic warnings[16]. The college-led education support program for students with academic probation is a must for students to participate in the program voluntarily because it has limitations in operating as a comparative program. To this end, students who are experiencing poor academic performance must come up with specific education support programs to overcome academic difficulties and operate them more easily to participate.

For Gangnam University, a three-stage ABA-Learning program is in operation to provide multi-tiered learning support to students’ needs and levels[30]. Based on the three-step learning support model of ALL, Before, and After, the program provide preventive education for under-achieving students and intensive education for those in academic probation. In the case of Korean Institute of Industrial Technology, with the intention of focusing solely on engineering knowledge-base, the school has implemented the Creative Project-based Community of Practice(namely, CP-CoP), starting in 2017 to derive operational performance internally and externally[31]. The CP-CoP activities are meaningful in that project-based learning activities are developed by expert feedback in each major activity leading to planning presentations, study seminars, intermediate presentations, result presentations, and exhibitions, and by actually producing knowledge learned through proper monitoring and theory of the sluggish team through creative study seminars and exhibitions. Catholic universities have customized programs for under-performing students by categorizing the characteristics of underachieving students[32], in the case of students with academic probation, the overall academic activity level is low and undergraduates lack an understanding of effective study strategies, while re-entering students have high motivation for studying, but are under pressure to adapt to school life, so they are identified in detail by dividing their characteristics[33].

As examining the universities under-performing student support programs, some schools have already established a continuous management system by assigning them to a group of students within the model of the programs for all students. While most of the learning support programs are customized for granularity, however, there are not many cases of intensive preventive care system like Gangnam University. In order to make a self-directed learning project beyond the preliminary measure of academic probation, students need to guide into practice, an integrated and holistic, not to mention, preventative, model of education needs to be presented.

The reason why K university was chosen as the subject of case studies in this study is because it is possible to analyze the reflective view based on the researchers’ operational experience. Since 2010, about 6 percent or less of K. university students have been determined academic probation, and the dropout rate is about 3 to 4 percent due to academic leave or discharge. The analysis of adademic probation management system that operated in K. University in the first semester of the 2019 academic calendar year is as follows.

At first, diagnosis phase is initiated by the meeting with Faculty(department) academic guidance consultation. It is required for students with academic probation to have a academic guidance meeting with their respective academic advisor in the department. This is set for a mandatory meeting which participated 97.7 percent turnouts. According to the result of guidance meetings, the data analysis informed that the reasons for the under-achievement were “unfit for aptitude,” “difference in learning difficulty,” “school transfer preparation,” “home-bound personal problems” and “small business preparation.” After consulting with their academic advisory faculty, the preparation rate of professional counseling and tutoring programs offered by the university was relatively low at 33 percent. In particular, it was found that 67 percent of programs designated as “others(reasons),” which was not specified at all, therefore, make them less suitable for program matching.

Second, consulting management phase, namely Academic Counseling Program, is usually followed by departmental interviews with the students. But, with reasons such as low attendance records, minimal contact, no appearance after scheduled appointment, and refusal to receive further consultation, academic counseling program participation conducted by professional counsellors was low. Such the consultation program is operated for 10 sessions, participating students are required to complete a total of 10 sessions of counseling, but none of the courses have been completed.

Third is a management of learning monitoring phase. The alternative options for students with probation is peer tutoring program. The participation rate of the tutoring program was 21.1 percent, but the reason for non-participation was due to a leave of school or refusal to respond. Among the students who received two consecutive academic probations except for four students on leave, four students who took part in the study support program, the study-aid program, improved their grades by 72.4 percent compared to the previous semester.

The analysis of the implications of the operating case of K. University is as follows.

First, the structural education support system through appropriate learning support should be established and continued follow-up support should be provided to prevent students from dropping out of school and improve their motivation for learning underachieving students. The reality of Korean universities is that students who have been given leave of absence and transfer do not have the basis to strengthen their insufficient learning capacity and adapt to school life. For K university, 48(85.7%) of 57 students who continued their studies by registering for the first semester of the 2019 academic year have improved their average point scores. These results show that the difficulties experienced by lower grades in learning and in adapting to schools can be solved by programs such as counseling or tutoring, as the first and second years account for 39(81.2 %) of the academic-sustained probation warning students. In addition, nine(18.8%) students who improved their academic performance among third and fourth years are also encouraging when compared to four(7.15%) who had slightly poor grades. The result derived from the fact that even if student with academic probation, the grade points will improve for the next semester, and in many cases, they will be able to avoid the further academic probation.

Second, the pre- and post-care system for underachieving students should be introduced in order to prevent them from dropping out of the classroom and keep them from academic poor performance. Active intervention is needed for underachieving students often leading to leave of absence or transfer, suggesting the need to run programs on a proactive level. The current management system for students at the college of academic probation has a high rate of academic probation for those in the first and second years, and their leave and transfer rates are high. For example, if a academic probation students return to school after a leave of absence, a variety of motivational measures will need to be taken, such as support for learning and adaptation, restriction of applications for next semester to reduce the academic burden of the probation and increase the benefits of scholarships for students coping well with the probation.

Third, the program prescription should be properly linked after diagnosis and analysis of the reasons for the academic warning of students and consultation. In addition, it is necessary to provide customized programs for students whose study aid measures are placed in blind spots of care not taken within the academic warning student management system. As in the case of K. University, if post-consultation measures are classified as “other” and these students are managed on their own by each college or department, there are difficulties in verifying their effectiveness or overcoming academic warnings caused by the promotion of students’ learning or triggering their participation in academic activities. Counseling specialists conducted a total of 10 courses in the program, which can be a significant stress on students. Therefore, it will be necessary to adjust the number of counseling sessions and operation methods according to reality so that students participating in the program can complete the consultation process, and to operate group counseling as well as individual counseling. In particular, accurate guidance and promotion of each phase of the management system are also essential to ensure that students can participate in the program.

Fourth, the learning model for efficient management of underachieving students, including academic probation at the university level, requires a customized program for high-rises studies by grade and level through step-by-step program operation. In the case of K. university, the undergraduates of the academic probation who took part in the program generally improved their academic performances.

These results may be meaningful in that there is an institutional system in place that allows them to make more autonomous efforts to get out of the academic warning status by providing them with counseling and tutoring programs. However, it seems difficult to determine the effectiveness or professional counseling program. Thus, systematic learning management should be carried out to promote contiguous improvement of learning ability.

The theory of learning mastery, which is a curriculum design and learning strategy that contains constructivism, can be achieved by most(90% or more) learners if conditions are met to improve learning that recognize individual differences. In this process, if a learner fails to achieve educational goal, he or she should re-do their mastery of education program so as to reach to the full understanding. Understanding learners’ individual differences is the cornerstone of improving the overall quality of education and preventing academic fallouts, which is also an important point of competency-based education that has been recently emphasized greatly in higher education.

Academically challenged students’ learning management program centered on capacity building means that they achieve learning skills or learning contents while properly adjusting their learning levels. This is how students to improve their academic competency while learning various academic skills accordingly by their level. In addition, this learning approach is linked to adult learners’ ability to help them solve the various problems they may encounter in real life[34]. Competency-based teaching methods are characterized by a more clearly structured approach in which learning is enhanced by mastery of learning, outcome-based learning, and master-novice or apprenticeship learning[35, 36, 37]. The overall purpose of capacity building learning is to realize learner-centered learning skills[38] as all students “demonstrate what they know, what they are able to do, and their level of expertise with special skill set.”[39] The mastery learning approach education model for academically challenged undergraduates is shown in Figure 1.

Fig. 1. 
Mastery Learning Cycle for the Underachieving

In order for an individual student to fully understand the specific tasks or concepts that he or she has learned in the class, he or she should take sufficient time to understand the learning materials and contents, taking into account that each student’s academic performance varies with the time as he or she invests in the learning process. Influencing the efficiency of cognitive skills or study to improve learning is due to different variables such as each student’s ability to learn, learning opportunities, learning sustainability, class comprehension, and sometimes the quality of the teaching they had in past schooling. Therefore, the shared emphasis of learning is to consider individual differences and time-spent in learning. In order to apply a mastery of learning to under-performing students, there must be given and fully understand at least five process of intervention elements. In the diagnosis phase, the goals are set for student’ competency diagnosis, pre-teaching evaluation, and a clearly stated set goal. The next step is to actively interact with learning support to provide high quality corrective instruction service such as learning with peer tutoring and small group activities. If there is some progress in this step, it is necessary to confirm, modify and supplement the learning goals that has been set in the beginning with the mid-term evaluation assessment such as formative ones. In this case, the monitoring is carried out with a paraprofessional aides, such as graduate students with expert advice in their field of study. The next step requires a speculation of learning outcomes and confirmation of the completion of the learning goals, at which point, if there is insufficient improvement in the academic performance, they will continue to participate in the education programs to improve their academic performance. On the other hand, if a learning capacity improvement has been made, it can be induced in a direction to improve its continuing learning capacity by participating in advanced learning activities or in a deep learning support program.

Recently, there has been a movement to provide students with individualized education services by analyzing their poor learning conditions or predicting their learning performance before getting into academic probation [23, 39]. They use a vast amount of academic data(class calls, extra-curricula activities, academic information and log, etc.) to predict who might be the possibly falls into academic probation each semester and thus, provide supportable services within the university. Using the LMS(Learning Management System) of universities, or data accumulated in academic probation, and admission information system, the exploration of these predictive models can carry out programs for academic continuity by giving warning signals to the possible students who have a high probability of failing poor grades. In order to achieve an educational sense of achievement beyond predicting the academic probation, underachieving students should develop self-reliant learning plans and know the result of self-directed learning program that can be implemented throughout the undergraduate programs.

If the program for improving learning or supporting learning is properly operated on the underachieving students who need it, they can cultivate their learning capacity to show their ability to study the subject matters, and overcome the learning crisis, that is, academic probation, by improving their self-management in learning. Developing mastery of learning cycle that intend to gear upward spiral, therefore, support learning praxis link intending to design education program contents for academically challenged undergraduates.

The contents of education enhancement program for academically challenged undergraduates as shown in Figure 2.

Fig. 2. 
Education Enhancement Program Contents for Academically Challenged Undergraduates

First of all, the contents for improving learning of underachieving students is via the learning community activities such as one-to-one consulting, peer consulting etc. Educational learning consulting programs consist of identifying and advising individual learner’s learning environment, and directing learning improvement as each has different problems and learning styles, and supporting programs to enhance flexibility of learning recovery after analyzing students’ problems and needs through diagnosis and individual consultation from various perspectives. Through the study consulting, customized diagnosis of under-performing students can be in need of guidance to the most appropriate learning resilience enhancement program by checking basic education skills, enhancing subject matters in their chosen major as well as studying knowledge based classes offered in general education.

Next, it will consist of a learning environment such as administration, counseling for psychological and emotional awareness, library assisted education through school library service system, education support program such as learning tutoring and learning circles, and a personalized learning integrated management system that enables mobile application-based learning management. It is expected that this will enhance the resilience of underachieving students to recuperate from the under-performing cycle by participating in a better education program based on the aforementioned master of learning education model.

The program that intended to improve academic performance for underachieving students should be implemented in a step-by-step education program as well as a program for enhancing basic learning capacity linking majors and liberal arts classes to freshmen, which should be flexibly linked to mastery of learning support program operated by current education enhancement program in the university.

In supporting the learning environment that forms a upward spiral circle that link to academic administration, student counseling, career development, library education, etc., are linked to mobile app. base learning analytics that is integrated with the learning management system. This, then, connected with competency oriented curricula and education consulting program that reflect the characteristics of core competency development. The cycle, eventually and hopefully, enable to form students’ life-cycle that ingrained to be a life-long learners toward the end of their college life. For instance, even those who experienced an academic probation can provide customized education programs based on analysis by learning analytics through integrated management system and other big data, such as learning behavior and adaptation to learning environment and learning methods.