EPAAWS Project--Framework

•  Framework--The Discovery Advising Curriculum

The Discovery Advising Curriculum is designed to help students discover, learn, construct, assess, and apply knowledge about themselves, about the educational opportunities of their institution, and about the processes of learning, thinking, and making meaning in order for them to develop personal responses to their advising questions and take responsibility for their educational planning and decisions.

A learning support structure is needed to assist the student in making informed educational decisions, reflecting a knowledge of self, educational environments, and interrelationships between self and environments.

More specifically, students need to be supported in:

a. learning how to plan for (gaining educational planning knowledge):

· academic development--set knowledge acquisition and learner development goals and strategies, select options, monitor actions, and assess outcomes.

· learner development--set learner competency and skill goals and strategies, select options, monitor actions, and assess outcomes.

b.   Learning about and how to assess (gaining self-knowledge):

· their own knowledge, career interests, and educational goals.

· their own state of development in knowledge acquisition and learning competencies and skills.

· appropriate actions to take in learning how to match personal interests and competencies with the opportunities and requirements associated with particular curriculum and extra-curricular options.

· progress toward goal achievement resulting from past and current choices.

c.    Learning about the institution's educational opportunities and expectations about (gaining institutional knowledge):

· the curriculum, extra-curricular, and career options available to them and what are the associated knowledge and learner development opportunities, expectations, and requirements.  

· the institutional processes for enrollment and scheduling of curriculum and extra-curricular offerings.

d.  Learning about knowledge structures, learning, and cognition (gaining meta-knowledge):

· different methods of inquiry and constructing meaning in the disciplines (meta-discipline knowledge)

· deep learning and how to develop their own skills in deep-learning (meta-learning)

· meaning making and how to develop their own skills in meaning making (meta-cognition).

Advising Learning Modules.

The discovery advising curriculum consists of learning modules collaboratively constructed by advisers for use by advisees to guide learning about their own readiness and about the institution's educational goals, opportunities, expectations, and requirements.   The learning modules include syllabi, learning content, learning activities, and learning assessment components, as well as links to the institution's educational information data bases.   Through engagement in the discovery advising curriculum, students gain the knowledge necessary to establish and assess their own educational, learning, and development goals and plans.  

The discovery advising curriculum also includes learning modules on components of the educational planning process in which the student learns how to set educational targets--goals, objectives, requirements, and expectations--as well as how to identify appropriate learning strategies, formulate learning action plans, and assess learning outcomes, and evaluate and modify educational outcomes based on evidence.   The student applies the educational planning model to each of the curricula offered by the institution:   the academic curriculum consisting of course work in the major area and in general education; the co-curriculum involving community engagement programming opportunities provided by Student Affairs; and each of the four Discovery Advising Curriculum components consisting of Educational Planning, Self-Knowledge, Institutional Knowledge, and Meta Learning and Cognition Knowledge.

The discovery advising curriculum is, in actuality, the institution's meta-curriculum--it facilitates and guides the student's learning about, actual engagement in, and navigation through the institution's formal academic curriculum and co-curriculum opportunities.   It also guides the student in personal goal setting, planning, and assessment.   The design and delivery of the discovery curriculum by advisers are activities and responsibilities of educators.   Advisors need special expertise, knowledge, and experience in designing the discovery curriculum and in guiding and mentoring students through the learning activities embedded in the discovery curriculum.

The student's engagement with the discovery advising curriculum is focused on the process of the student's solving the problem of gaining meaningful answers to core advising questions such as: What should be the goals for my college education?   How do I choose a major?   How do I plan for and make course selections that will lead me on the path toward fulfillment of requirements for the major?   What co-curricular programs should I participate in?   The student's problem-solving process involves constructing and evaluating knowledge about her or his own educational state of development and the institution's environment for educational development, while following models of "good practice" for educational decision making under the guidance of and through interactions with the adviser.   

In the dialogue between   the student and adviser as they interact in developing responses to these core advising questions, additional questions are likely to arise. These advising questions can be grouped into four categories.

Categories of Advising Learning Modules in the Discovery Advising Curriculum

· Conducting customized educational planning --i.e., how to personally set goals, design action plans, make major choices and course selections, assess progress, and evaluate and revise goals and plans.

· Gaining self-knowledge --i.e., learning about and how to assess personal readiness, learning capacities and styles, and stages of personal and intellectual development.

·   Gaining institutional knowledge --i.e., learning about institutional educational goals, opportunities, requirements, and expectations for personal and intellectual development.

·   Gaining meta-knowledge --i.e., learning about knowledge structures, learning about personal learning and development, and learning about personal epistemology and the construction of meaning.

Design Strategies for the Discovery Advising Curriculum:  

•  For each of these categories of advising questions, provide learning opportunities for the student in the form of advising learning modules that include a syllabus and that deliver information content,   prescribe learning activities, and offer assessment protocols in ways that incorporate principles of good pedagogical practice.

Correspondingly, the Discovery Advising Curriculum will have four principal components--one for each of the Advising Question Categories:   The Educational Planning Component; the Self-Knowledge Component; the Institutional Knowledge Component; and the Meta Knowledge Component.  

For each component, professional advisers will construct Advising Learning Modules, following the standards and formats prescribed by the Discovery Advising Curriculum Advisory Committee.

•  For each component of the Discovery Advising Curriculum, provide a navigational tool that enables the student to assess and evaluate her or his own individual knowledge status and learning needs; in turn, to search repositories of advising learning modules for appropriate learning experiences; and, finally, to update the progress and status of individual learning gains and development.   The navigational tool should focus on ways of solving the educational planning problem--"what are my educational targets, my learning strategies, my learning action plans, and my learning outcome assessments?"--for that particular component of the Discovery Advising Curriculum.

Correspondingly, for each component of the Discovery Advising Curriculum, an individual educational planning profile shell will be provided that serves as a tool or template for the individual student in comparing current knowledge status with desirable knowledge levels and for identifying areas where additional learning needs to occur for each step in the educational planning process--establishing educational targets, identifying learning strategies, formulating learning action plans, and assessing learning outcomes. Four Personal Educational Planning Profile navigational tools will be provided for the Discovery Advising Curriculum:   the Personal Educational Planning Profile for learning about Educational Planning; the Personal Educational Planning Profile for gaining Self-Knowledge; the Personal Educational Planning Profile for gaining Institutional Knowledge: and Personal Educational Planning Profile for gaining knowledge about Meta Learning and Cognition.  

Personal profile learning tools will be utilized by the student to conduct educational planning and construct navigational paths through all of educational curricula of the institution:   the major and General Education components of the traditional academic curriculum; the educational program offerings in the co-curriculum; and the four components of the Discovery Advising Curriuculum as well.   This mapping of educational planning on the various curricula for a particular student is captured in an Aggregate Educational Planning Profile.

The individual student's personal profiles are maintained and updated by the student after each engagement with an advising learning module in that component of the Discovery Advising Curriculum.   The student's own Personal Web-repository is used to store, access, update, and share the student's Personal Profiles and learning products developed through engagement with the Advising Learning Tools and Modules.  

•  The organization of learning activities in applications of each curriculum's personal educational planning tool will be based on Problem-Based Learning protocols, i.e., the student starts with an assessment of student's current knowledge, then forms a comparison of that knowledge with desired levels in order to identify "learning issues or needs." then assembles an agenda of learning actions to meet those "needs," and, finally, after engaging in the appropriate learning activities on the agenda, the student makes another assessment and evaluation and updates the educational planning profile.

•  Delivery of the Discovery Advising Curriculum is part of the development and fulfillment of the advising/mentor relationship between the adviser and student. The student's engagement in the Discovery Advising Curriculum, including the use of navigational tools, assessing and evaluating learning agenda and learning outcomes,   and maintenance of Personal Profiles is all under the guidance and sponsorship of the Adviser, as supported by the institution's instructional and technology infrastructure. Management by the adviser of the student's involvement with the Discovery Advising Curriculum is to be accomplished in the context of the institution's Instructional Management System.   At Penn State, the Angel system is the adopted Instructional Management System.

•     Framework--ePAAWS System Components and their Relationships.

See ePAAWS Schematic in Appendix I.

ePAAWs Model of the advising process.

The ePAAWS system is an advising support system that incorporates six basic propositions as it models the advising process:

•  The institution's curriculum consists of programmatic offerings designed to provide the student with   opportunities to learn, develop skills, and construct knowledge while seeking to attain educational goals and objectives.

•  The institution's curriculum of program offerings can be deconstructed into components defined in terms of knowledge domains, educational goals and objectives,   and professional expertise responsible for the educational quality of their design and delivery.  

Institutional Curriculum Components

•  The Basic Advising Problem:  

Version I:   How to guide the student in navigating an optimal path through each of the several components of the institution's curriculum.   An optimal path efficiently and effectively leads the student to the attainment of her or his educational goals.   

Version II: How to guide the student in learning about, conducting, and assessing educational planning in each of the several   components of the institutional curriculum.

Solutions to the basic advising problem are jointly sought by the adviser and student through interactions conducted in the context of a trusting, caring relationship and a supporting communications and technology network.

The Basic Educational Planning model:   Educational Planning is a learning and decision-making process involving:

· establishing educational targets--learning and developmental goals, objectives, expectations, and requirements;

· adopting learning strategies;

· formulating and implementing learning action plans;

· assessing learning outcomes;

· evaluating and revising, as appropriate,   initial educational targets, learning strategies, and learning action plans;

· repeating planning and learning cycles.

Basic Advising Learning Strategy:   Use Problem-based learning protocols in advising learning modules to accomplish the learning outcomes needed to conduct educational planning in a particular curriculum component.

Problem-based Learning Protocols establish questions to guide students in conducting and structuring their learning as they formulate responses.   Basic Problem-Based Learning Questions:

·   What is the problem?   How is a solution to the problem defined?

·   What initial knowledge do we have regarding the Problem?

·   What do we need to know in order to resolve the Problem?

·   What are the learning issues related to gaining the needed knowledge?

·   What is our agenda for addressing the learning issues?

·   What is our action plan to undertake the needed learning and acquire the needed knowledge?

·   What is our assessment and evaluation of the learning outcomes?   Have we gained the knowledge needed to solve the problem?

The ePAAWS Discovery Advising Curriculum Repository (DACR)

The Penn State web-based version of the discovery advising curriculum is to be delivered via the ePAAWS (electronic Personal Academic Advising Work Space) system.   The basic components of the ePAAWS system are contained in a repository (DACR) on the institutional ePAAWS server that will include both the Advising Learning Modules (ALM) and the Advising Learning Tools (ALT).

There are four categories of ePAAWS Advising Learning Modules (See appendix II):

•  The Personal Educational Planning Modules (ALM-EP) to provide learning related to advising questions of the type:  

"How do I conduct my personal educational planning--i.e., what learning is required in order for me to develop my capacities for taking charge of and assume responsibility for my own educational goal setting, action planning, decision-making, and progress evaluation.--i.e., how do I set goals, design action plans, make major choices and course selections, assess progress, and evaluate and revise goals and plans?"

•  The Personal Self-Knowledge Modules (ALM-SK) to provide learning related to advising questions of the type:  

"How well do I understand myself--my basic interests, competencies, skills, and acquired knowledge?--i.e., my personal readiness as a learner, my learning capacities and styles, and the stages of my personal and educational development?"

•  The Personal Institutional Knowledge Modules (ALM-IK) to provide learning related to advising questions of the type:  

"How well do I understand the educational and developmental opportunities, requirements, and expectations embedded in the institution's formal academic curriculum and extra-curricular environment--i.e., the institution's educational goals, opportunities, requirements, and expectations for personal and intellectual growth and development?"  

•  The Personal Meta-Knowledge, Learning, and Cognition Modules (ALM-MLCK) to provide learning related to advising questions of the type:  

"How do I become proficient in knowledge construction in the disciplines and in higher-order learning and cognition--i.e., How do I learn about knowledge structures (meta-knowledge), learn about learning (meta-learning) and learn about thinking (meta-cognition), and develop my own ways of making meaning (own epistemology)?"

Within each category of ePAAWS Advising Learning Modules, there are to be particular modules that address the advising learning needed to respond to more specific advising questions.   (See Appendix II for a tentative listing of modules in each ALM category.   The individual ePAAWS learning modules are to be constructed by professional advisors in their role as educators and academic mentors, following formats and standards developed by the ePAAWS Discovery Advising Currriculum Committee.   The ePAAWS advising learning modules are stored and accessed in the ePAAWS system repository and are available to all advisers and all students in the learning community.   Use of the ePAAWS modules will be managed under the Angel Instructional Management System.

The ePAAWS System includes six Advising Learning Tools (See Appendix III):

•  A personal Search and Help tool to assist the student in searching the Advising Learning Modules (ALM), the Advising Learning Tools (ALT), and the Institution's Educational Data Bases (IDB) for relevant entries and in helping the student maneuver through the ePAAWS system. (See Appendix III.A)

•  A Personal Educational Planning Aggregate Profile and Assessment shell (PEP-AP) as a tool to assist the student in constructing and assessing an aggregate mapping of educational plans covering in the major and General Education areas of the academic curriculum, in community engagement programming areas of the co-curriculum, and in the four areas of the Discovery Advising Curriculum--Educational Planning Knowledge, Self-Knowledge, Institutional Knowledge, and Meta Knowledge. (See Appendix III.B)

•  A Personal Educational Planning--Educational Planning Knowedge Profile and Assessment shell (PEP-EPKP) as a tool to assist the student in gaining knowledge about conducting personal educational planning and assessment in the context of the ePAAWS system. (See Appendix III.C)

•  A Personal Educational Planning--Self-Knowledge Profile and Assessment shell (PEP-SKP) Profile and Assessment shell (PSKP) to assist the student in structuring and assessing self-knowledge to be used in educational planning in the Self-Knowledge component of the Discovery Advising Curriculum. (See Appendix III.D)

•  A Personal Educational Planning--Institutional-Knowledge Profile and Assessment shell (PEP-IKP) to assist the student in structuring and assessing knowledge about the institution's educational environment to be used in educational planning in the Institutional Knowledge component of the Discovery Advising curriculum.    (See Appendix III.E)

•  Personal Meta Learning & Cognition Knowledge Profile and Assessment shell (PEP-MKP) to assist the student in structuring and assessing knowledge about meta learning and meta-cognition to be used in educational planning in the Meta-Knowledge component of the Discovery Advising Curriculum. (See Appendix III.F)

The Student's Constructed Personal Enrollment Planning Profiles

The ePAAWS advising learning tools are used by the student to navigate through the discovery advising curriculum.   The student employs the tools to construct her or his own personal enrollment planning profiles that summarize the student's learning and knowledge states in the various categories of advising questions addressed in the discovery advising curriculum.   The personalized Profiles constructed by the student (PEP-AProfile, PEP-EPKProfile, PEP-PSKProfile, PEP-IKProfile, and PEP-MKProfile) are considered as ePAAWS working documents that are the personal property of the student.   They are stored on the student's own personal ePAAWS web-repository.   The assembly and evaluation of personalized ePAAWS advising learning profiles by the student is conducted under the guidance and mentoring of the adviser and is managed under the Angel Instructional Management System.    

ePAAWS Basic Learning Strategy--Problem-Based Learning

All learning activities in the ePAAWS Discovery Advising Curriculum are introduced by, embedded in, and related to the student's larger, encompassing core educational tasks of learning how to construct knowledge as an autonomous, self-regulated   learner and of developing capacities for formulating and deploying assessments, evaluations,   judgments, justifications, and decisions as an educational planner.    

ePAAWS will employ a problem-based learning structure to promote development of the autonomous learner and independent educational planner.   Problem-based learning uses realistic, complex tasks to challenge students to acquire basic knowledge, while practicing skills in inquiry, critical thinking, and problem-solving.   The problem should have personal relevance to the student and should serve to focus, initiate and motivate the student.   It should activate prior knowledge, provide detail rich, multi-media contexts for learning, promote elaboration through discussion and decisions, and stimulate an intrinsic motivation to learn.  

The ePAAWS problems for the student to address and solve are:   how can I become an autonomous learner and independent educational planner, assessor and evaluator--and what processes can I follow in order to set my own educational goals, identify learning strategies, and make choices and selections in formulating action plans to navigate the institution's educational environment in a way that leads to the successful achievement of personal and institutional learning and developmental goals and objectives?

Using the ePAAWS system:

Under the guidance of the adviser, students will confront their own core advising problems in a form that engages their interest and motivates them to seek a deeper understanding of what it means to be an autonomous learner and an independent educational planner.   

•  Students first attack their basic advising problem of educational planning across the institution's curricula by bringing up their individual Personal Educational Planning Aggregate Profile Shell (PEP-AP) and making initial entries for each step in the Planning process for each curriculum component. These initial entries recorded in their PEP-AP shell become the student's initial Personal Educational Planning Aggregate Profile (PEP-AProfile) that is stored in the student's personal ePAAWS web-repository.   The initial entries in the PEP-Aprofile are based on what the student already knows at the time of entry to the University.

•  The PEP-AProfile is shared and discussed with the adviser, enabling the student and adviser to assess the student's understanding of the institution's educational environment and learning opportunities as well as the student's level of preparation and readiness in terms of educational targets, learning strategies, action plans and assessment protocols. The certainty, completeness, and coherence of the student's initial Educational Planning responses in PEP-AProfile are to be evaluated by the student and the adviser.   Their dialogue should be aimed at identifying the student's educational planning questions in all domains of the institution's curricula. In particular, areas of the student's personal knowledge are to evaluated--i.e., knowledge about how to conduct educational planning; self-knowledge about readiness; knowledge about the institution's educational opportunities, expectations, and requirements; and knowledge about meta-learning and meta-cognition--to determine the desirability for the student to engage components of the Discovery Advising Curriculum.

•  Based on the evaluations of the student's initial educational planning responses recorded in the PEP-AProfile and the identified advising questions, students decide in what areas they need to know more in order to make progress in defining and solving their advising problems.   For those curricula for which there are educational planning issues, the Advising Learning Tools (ALT) are to be used to clarify and guide the needed learning.   The generic Advising Learning Tools are labeled as Personal Educational Planning Profile shells--one for each curriculum component--e.g., PEP-SKP and PEP-IKP for the Self-Knowledge and the Institutional Knowledge curriculum components, respectively. The profile tool shapes the advising learning needed by the student to design, implement, and assess a learning action plan for a particular curriculum that is driven by the student's own educational targets and implemented in the context of the student's own learning strategies. When the student completes entries in the Profile shell for a particular curriculum component, the profile is then labeled as the student's own Profile (e.g., the student's PEP-SKProfile or PEP-IKProfile) and is stored in the student's personal ePAAWS web repository. The Personal Educational Planning Profiles are shared, discussed, and evaluated in collaboration with the adviser and, possibly, with peer advisees.  

•  For each component of the Discovery Advising Curriculum, the student's formulates a learning action plan that references specific Advising Learning Modules selected from ePAAWS repository of learning modules on the basis of the ePAAWS Search and Help Tool.

•  Each module in the Discovery Advising Curriculum includes a syllabus of intended learning outcomes, a prescribed set of learning activities, links to relevant learning resources, and an assessment format that allows the student to personally evaluate how well the learning objectives of the module have been achieved.  

·   The student opens the targeted advising learning modules and engages in the designated learning activities. Upon completion of the learning module, the student assesses her or his own learning gains. The assessed learning gains are then used by the student to modify her or his respective personal educational planning knowledge profiles.   The modified personal knowledge profiles are updated in the student's personal ePAAWS repository.   The modified personal knowledge profiles are jointly evaluated by the student and adviser.    

•  The evaluations of the student's personal educational planning profiles for a particular curriculum lead to modifications of the educational planning components for that curriculum.   These modifications are then recorded in the student's Aggregate Enrollment Planning Profile (PEP-AProfile).

•  Each semester, the learning action plans identified for each curriculum in the Aggregate Educational Planning Profile are implemented.   The learning action plans in effect provide a mapping of curriculum learning experiences that guide the student in navigating each of the components of the institution's aggregate curriculum. At the end of the semester, the learning outcomes gained from implementing the learning action plans are assessed and evaluated jointly by the adviser and the student and another cycle of revision and modification is introduced in the student's educational planning process across all of the curricula identified in the student's Aggregate Educational Planning Profile.   

•  The student's engagement with the Discovery Advising Curriculum and its educational planning modules to formulate learning action plans is guided by the adviser through the support of the Angel Instructional Management System.   The student's ePAAWS personal repository is, in effect, the student's own academic advising portfolio that contains documentation of personal learning and development plans, outcomes, and evaluations.   The student controls her or his own personal repository in terms of what it contains, how it is used, and with whom it may be shared.