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The Mentor: An Academic Advising Journal

Online Advising through Virtual Interest Groups

Louis Lucca and Paul Arcario, LaGuardia Community College/The City University of New York

Like many community colleges, LaGuardia has developed an array of advising services for students. Yet with a student population that commutes, works, and is increasingly part-time, we wanted to create new ways to reach out to students rather than relying mainly on drop-in services that were not being used by all students to full advantage. In response to this situation, LaGuardia developed online Virtual Interest Groups (VIGs) designed to assist students in career development and transfer to senior colleges through:

involving more faculty in transfer and developmental advising;
connecting advising and transfer preparation more closely to the curriculum;
familiarizing students with the transfer process;
engaging students more actively in the process of career development and senior college selection;
guiding students to the wealth of career and transfer-related resources on the Internet;
providing students with information about particular disciplines;
introducing students to the academic discourse of a particular discipline;
creating a sense of community among students that provides encouragement and support.

Originally funded by a U.S. Department of Education FIPSE grant, VIGs are essentially asynchronous, five-week advising “seminars” that have been attached to various learning communities and key courses at the college. Faculty agreed that participation in a VIG would become a requirement in these courses and counted in the grading standards. Students participate by selecting a VIG that matches their interest, majors, and career plans; we have offered VIGs for humanities, social sciences, math and science, teacher education, and general career exploration.

Each VIG presents students with online assignments that are fulfilled by posting responses and questions to an online discussion board utilizing the Blackboard course management system. Using these assignments, online discussion, and faculty feedback, the VIGs help students explore possible career fields and issues relating to transfer to a senior college. The online discussions are facilitated by faculty leaders (not necessarily the faculty member teaching the class to which the VIG is attached) assisted by LaGuardia graduates who have successfully transferred to senior colleges. These graduates, called Senior College Transfer Mentors (SCTMs), are paid a stipend for their services. In addition, some faculty leaders also invite professionals in the fields related to the majors to join in the online discussion; we have also had counselors participate. The faculty leaders create and post the assignments, generate questions, moderate the discussions, and respond to postings. The students complete five online assignments and engage in an ongoing dialogue with faculty, mentors, and each other.

Faculty leaders were asked to follow a general “template” in developing the five assignments; within these broad parameters, faculty developed their own variations.

The first VIG assignment was designed to find out about students' backgrounds and interests—and for participants to get to know each other. Students were asked to begin to identify their own interests and start the process of linking interests to potential career fields. Some faculty did this by having students write an “about me” statement; others had students respond to a series of questions and statements (e.g., why did you choose to come to LaGuardia? What is your major? Describe a time you enjoyed learning something, in or out of school. Why are you interested in the field of . . . ? What do you know about the field?).

The second assignment was designed to help students relate their interests to career fields and specific occupations. Most faculty leaders decided to use this assignment to direct students to utilize some of the Web- and computer-based resources (e.g., Discover) available at the college. The following is an example the second assignment.

Sample Assignment 2

Since you have identified career areas of interest, the next step is for you to learn about the specific occupations in each field. Go to the Discover site at http://actrs19.act.org/discover/eDISCOVER/ and log on using the User ID and Password provided to you.

Click on OCCUPATIONS.
Click on BY WORLD-OF-WORK MAP. On the right side of the screen, you will see a list of career fields. From the list, click on the career area of interest to you. (If you are interested in several areas, you must do one at a time).
Click on CHANGE EDUCATIONAL LEVELS.
Check the four-year box and the graduate box. Click SUBMIT.
Scroll down until you see the list of occupations in the chosen field.
Click on the occupation about which you want information.
Click NEXT at the bottom of each information screen until you reach the last page, at which point you may click SUBMIT to print or create a file.
Now that you have completed this process and understand more about each occupation, choose the one or two that are of the most interest to you. In your posting, write a summary of what you learned about these occupations. Was it what you expected? Do you think you can fulfill the requirements? What are potential obstacles for you?

If you could not find your career area of occupation on the DISCOVER site, or if you would like more information about your career area, you may:

visit Transfer Services (C266);
go to the Transfer Services Web site: www.laguardia.edu/transfercenter.

The third assignment was designed to encourage further exploration of the discipline. For example, in the social science VIG, students were asked to review Web sites of the major social science associations (the American Psychological Association, the American Political Science Association, etc.) and write about what they thought was most interesting to them in the discipline. An important part of this process is revealing to students the issues, problems, and concerns in each discipline, enabling them to begin to judge better for themselves the extent to which these issues are of interest to them and whether the field is really one they wish to enter. Students in the media studies VIG, for example, were asked to respond to a set of questions meant to immerse them in the discourse of the discipline (e.g., if you were a top TV/cable executive, what changes would you try to make in the programs that America watches? How could TV be used to improve the social and political life in the U.S.? How much do you know about television ratings? What problems do these ratings attempt to solve?). Before responding to the questions, students were asked to review a number of relevant Web sites, again providing them with a wealth of information as to what a career in media would really involve. Sites for the media studies VIG, for example, included Nielsen Media Research (www.nielsenmedia.com), MediaStudies.com (www.mediastudies.com), and the Motion Picture Association of America (www.mpaa.org).

The goal of the fourth assignment was to start students in the process of researching the education necessary for the careers in which they have expressed an interest. Students were asked to outline their criteria for selecting a senior college (majors available, cost, location, etc.) and then attend LaGuardia's transfer fair in order to collect information on five colleges that met those criteria.

The fifth and final assignment was designed to have students reflect upon what they learned as well as to evaluate the VIG process itself. Students were then asked to write a 250-word essay on the VIG experience and fill out an online evaluation survey (which had also been administered as a pre-VIG survey). Results indicate that students have found VIGs extremely valuable:

Prior to their participation in a VIG, 23 percent of students indicated that they had a good idea about the steps needed to prepare for the career they had in mind; following their participation, 60 percent felt confident about the steps needed.
Prior to participating, 21 percent of the students knew what the daily tasks were for the career they had in mind; following their participation, 65 percent said they knew the tasks.
Prior to participating, 38 percent were certain about the requirements needed for the career they were interested in (degrees, licensing, exams, certifications, etc.); following their participation, 80 percent understood the requirements.

Other outcomes included an increase in the use of the Office for Transfer Services (140 percent increase) and a similar increase in the use of the Transfer Services Web site (a monthly average of 3,600 hits). In addition, the representation of colleges at LaGuardia's transfer fair increased from fifteen participating senior colleges to approximately seventy senior colleges, and student attendance at these fairs increased from 200–300 students to almost 1,000.

Virtual Interest Groups have been successful in disseminating information about transfer and careers as well as stimulating interest and motivation. Perhaps more importantly, we believe that an essential aspect of career development and transfer preparation is for students to begin to regard themselves as being part of a community that shares their specific academic interests—a community that engages students in the professional discourse of a particular field. Virtual Interest Groups create such communities, reaching out to students who might otherwise not have access to the exchange of ideas and information with faculty and students who share their interests.

About the Authors

Louis Lucca is associate professor of humanities at LaGuardia Community College/CUNY. He can be reached at luccalo@lagcc.cuny.edu or 718-482-5692.

Paul Arcario is dean for academic affairs at LaGuardia Community College/CUNY. He can be reached at arcariop@lagcc.cuny.edu or 718-482-5405.

Published in The Mentor on October 9, 2006, by Penn State's Division of Undergraduate Studies
Available online at www.psu.edu/dus/mentor/
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