The May 2025 Edition
The month of May brings the end of the academic school year for many institutions. As you cross that finish line, we hope that you finish the academic year feeling strong and proud of all that you have accomplished. While you celebrate what you’ve accomplished, you may already be looking forward to the next year and thinking through what you can do differently. Summer provides an opportunity to make a “fresh start” within higher education, and although your responsibilities don’t end the day after graduation, reflection is a natural part of the summer season. These articles were chosen to offer some inspiration as you reflect and plan for the next academic year. Congratulations again for finishing this one out strong!
In this edition:
- Archive and Search: Unsung Heroes of Efficiency
- SUNY Borrows Student Support Models from CUNY
- Practice Makes Perfect for Students
- Ditching Technology within the Classroom?
The month of May brings the end of the academic school year for many institutions. As you cross that finish line, we hope that you finish the academic year feeling strong and proud of all that you have accomplished. While you celebrate what you’ve accomplished, you may already be looking forward to the next year and thinking through what you can do differently. Summer provides an opportunity to make a “fresh start” within higher education, and although your responsibilities don’t end the day after graduation, reflection is a natural part of the summer season. These articles were chosen to offer some inspiration as you reflect and plan for the next academic year. Congratulations again for finishing this one out strong!
In this edition:
Archive and Search: Unsung Heroes of Efficiency
SUNY Borrows Student Support Models from CUNY
Practice Makes Perfect for Students
Ditching Technology within the Classroom?
Archive and Search: Unsung Heroes of Efficiency
As graduation appears on the horizon, we know that the topic of transfers also arises. Whether you’re at a smaller community college or a large university (or anywhere in between), there will always be students who need archival versions of syllabi. Concourse’s automatic archiving reduces stress and saves time by keeping all syllabi in a single, searchable repository. And with our Advanced Search feature, you can filter your syllabus search using over a dozen different criteria to quickly find what you’re looking for. You’ll save yourself (and your registrar) time and frustration by having the syllabi you need right at your fingertips. And when accreditors come calling, you’ll be able to give them exactly what they need, too.
To view these features (and much more), be sure to check out our self-paced demo below.
SUNY Borrows Student Support Models from CUNY
According to Inside Higher Education, "Providing students with wraparound support is one evidence-based practice that has demonstrated impact on student credit accumulation, persistence and graduation rates.” Westchester Community College, part of the SUNY system, seems to agree, after they implemented an initiative modeled on the CUNY approach to student support and saw a substantial increase in graduation and retention rates. You can learn about the CUNY student support model and the research behind it below.
Practice Makes Perfect for Students
Learning the course material from the instructor has its power. However, to fully engage with the content, students must learn how to practice the material being taught. In a recent Chronicle newsletter, Beckie Supiano explores Robert Talbert’s strategies for helping students become “experts at practicing,” especially through the flipped classroom model. He argues that initial student resistance to such approaches is worth overcoming to help students develop a strategy they can use for any type of learning in life.
Ditching Technology within the Classroom?
Ditching Technology within the Classroom?
As you look for new and innovative ways to change up the next academic year, we encourage you to check out this story about a group of professors who are implementing a “low-tech” or tech-free classroom, encouraging students to use pen and paper while in the class. It’s led to a lot of discussion here at Team Concourse and we’d love for you to share your opinion with us!
PS: Concourse provides syllabi that are downloadable as PDFs, making it easy for students to print, which would be perfect for low-tech classrooms!
