Authors at Collaborative member the Urban Institute recently published a brief titled "Strategies Colleges Can Use to Support Student Navigation." Student navigation supports are the actions college staff members take to help students move successfully through their college experience. Examples include advising, mentoring, orientation programming, and other approaches that provide information, access, and connections to support services useful for getting ahead. Effective student navigation interventions support persistence, build students’ social capital, strengthen connections to resources and professional networks, and, when used effectively, increase the likelihood of success for students of color and other historically marginalized students and underrepresented learners. (The DC Education Research Collaborative’s research agenda focuses on programs and resources for students up to grade 12, but our members know equity-centered support for student success doesn't stop at high school graduation. This Partner Spotlight highlights some of their work.)

Working with community colleges participating in the Career and Technical Education CoLab (CTE CoLab) College Community of Practice, researchers learned how the schools are implementing student navigation strategies to improve outcomes for students of color. The publication shares insights from college practitioners and related research and identifies ways colleges can support the implementation of student navigation strategies. Findings include the following:

• Equity-centered student navigation strategies use data to identify student needs, provide multiple avenues to connect students to support services, and leverage existing initiatives to better deliver services to students who need them most.
• Navigation strategies from the participating colleges include surveying students to understand their needs, redesigning orientation programs, and offering peer-to-peer tutoring and professional development for adjunct faculty.
• A key strategy to create lasting change and shift organizational culture and structures is to find partners within the institution to serve as collaborators and allies in equity work aimed at improving student outcomes.
• Successful navigation leverages a school’s existing capacity and infrastructure. For example, colleges can embed new strategies into ongoing student success initiatives or more effectively target ongoing initiatives to the students who need them most.

Read more:

https://www.urban.org/research/publication/strategies-colleges-can-use-support-student-navigation