Summary of the Major Findings | CU Academic Advising

Detail summary of the six main themes for Academic Advising (Students' Views)

(1) Definitions

Provide guidance on academic issues. It would be better to focus on the students’ condition. Advisors must have relevant teaching skills so that they would know clearly about what the students need specifically.
Provide guidance on career planning. Advisors may also provide students with suggestions regarding future career choices. For example, giving advice to choose branches (practicums) in their major or writing the recommendation letter for job hunting.
Help students when it is reasonable. When students have an inquiry to find a professor but there is no one the students are familiar with, then advisors would be the most suitable one to cater to students’ needs.
Develop a concrete relationship with students. As a minor role, the advisors may develop friendship with students if they are willing to.
Do not involve in students’ personal life. Advisors should only focus on the students’ academic lives or advising on career planning.
Provide general well-being support. Advisors can take care of different aspects of students’ well-being, for example, whether students can adapt to university life, and take care of their mental states.
Give guidance to students’ on-campus life, which includes participates in exchange programmes and extra-curricular activities.

(2) Barriers

Language Barriers: For mainland or Taiwan student (especially freshman), it is hard for them to communicate in English as before they enter the university, they were taught everything in Chinese and there wasn’t any English environment. Besides, for local students who are not familiar with English will have a problem and many advisors do not know how to speak Cantonese.
Since both the students and the teachers will have their schedule, and usually, one advisor will be in charge of several students, it is hard for them to arrange time properly. The meeting might be too short for students to ask questions (e.g. It lasted for less than an hour or 15 minutes only) and it might be hard for students to reach advisors if they were too busy.
Students cannot choose their advisor. Students’ advisor may not solve their problems. Students’ difficulties may not fall within the professional areas of their advisor. For example, some law students have sent an email to the advisor to ask him about course enrollment as they want to be a corporate lawyer and would like to take courses about finance and accounting, but the advisor asked them to find career advisor instead.
No need to find an advisor: If student does not have a particular issue to be discussed with his/her advisor, they will simply not bother to arrange a meeting.
Difficulty in each major. Some students may have already “declared” their major right after admission into the University, but some students (e.g. broad-based admission) are not the same case, it may lead to administrative burden and new advisors will be arranged after they declare major.
Academic advisor is not very familiar with the recent developments in the faculty. For instance, a student is assigned with a more senior staff who has worked in the faculty for a long period of time, he may not be very familiar with what the faculty can offer to current students. Another case is that, a student also wanted to ask questions about exchange, but her advisor does not have enough information regarding what types of programmes the college/ school offer; or what are the necessary registration procedures.
Possible difficulty in meeting in clinical years. For medical students in clinical years, since they will be in different hospitals but not in CUHK for lessons, it might be a difficult for them to come up with a meeting time and place. Alternatives may be talking on the phone or having dinner outside.
Mentor/ Mentee relationship. Some students indicated that the relationship between the academic advisor and themselves could be more like that of a mentor and mentee, which includes career counselling and planning for further studies. General career counselling at CUHK can’t provide sufficient information for specialized majors like Architecture.
Doesn’t receive enough career supports. Most of the professors have involved in certain academic fields for more than 10 years, thus they would be less able to catch up with the updated job market requirements.
Academic advisor does not actively reach students. For instance, some academic advisors have been in a relatively passive position and the dates for advisors to meet students were arranged by the faculty. Some students were just simply absent from assigned sections.
Academic advisor does not actively try to solve students’ difficulties. For instance, a student tried to ask if her Academic advisor could recommend some overseas opportunities for her. The Academic advisor told her he would try to see if there is any opportunity, but he did not provide any at last.
Higher preference for someone whose advisee is familiar with. Some students may prefer asking their senior classmates or friends rather than their advisors as it is more convenient.
Not familiar with the Academic advisor. Some Academic advisors have never arranged an appointment with students, so it is hard for them to build connections and ask questions.

(3) Arrangement

Organize an online meeting. Some academic advisors organized online meeting via zoom during the outbreak.
Organize a lunch meeting. Some academic advisors organized a lunch meeting with a group of 5 students.
Set up a WhatsApp group. For medicine students, their academic advisor will be allocated according to their Orientation camp groups, and they will open a WhatsApp group with the academic advisor and students.
Allow students to book a face to face meeting. Before the outbreak of virus, students were allowed to book the meeting with the advisor if they need help.

(4) Content

Advise on research or assignment: Advisor advises students if both ways are suitable for students' project and they were not sure which one will be better. They also advise on the Final Year Project.
Advise on the study plan. Advisor and students discuss the programme design and the details of choosing the courses. For example, if a translation student is interested in other social science subjects, his academic advisor would advise on which courses he shall take, as well as the study planning since the first semester in Year One. If he wants to go on an exchange programme in Year 3, then he will have to register for the Summer Semester to catch up with his tight academic schedule, to get well-prepared.
Know more about programme policies that might not be discussed in class. For example, how to define pass or fail, how are supplementary exams arranged, and under what circumstances a student would have to defer.
Exchanging ideas or updates on the faculty or faculty staff. Sometimes students also talk about different anecdotes related to the faculty or people that they know, and exchange recent updates.
Invite Academic advisors to write the recommendation letter. Students request their advisors to write recommendation letters for them for registering for an internship or exchange programme.
Provide advice on choices of exchange programmes.
Provide support regarding career development and postgraduate studies. For instance, a student asked if she should skip the master program and directly applied for PhD study, and chose to study in HK or overseas study. Then, her Academic advisor shared her own experience of studying abroad and she learnt a lot from her sharing.
Answer questions about tough lesson content.
Self-improvement. Academic advisors may positively influence students’ academic, personal and career development. For example, a student asked her supervisor how she should improve her academic results. Her Academic advisor advised her to read more scientific papers and send the recommended papers to her. It can help students to learn how to think and work independently, as well as to allocate time efficiently.

(5) Evaluation

Some academic advisors were very helpful:

Encourage students to reach them. Some academic advisors encouraged students to email him/ him anytime when in need and arrange another Zoom meeting to discuss their problems when they felt overwhelmed by academic pressure in the pandemic.
Provide detailed responses. Some academic advisors gave detailed comments regarding students’ questions, such as whether opting for pass or fail option instead of normal grading instead.

However, in some aspects, some Academic advisor was not helpful:

Some Academic advisors were not in close contact with the students. They didn’t receive any updates from students.
Some Academic advisors could not provide practical help to students. The academic advisors could not help students if the living situation does not allow using online learning platforms.

The University is helpful:

Receive the emails and information from I-CARE Centre.
Prompt changes in teaching method. Zoom teaching was adopted to substitute face-to-face teaching, while other universities took it much longer to settle.
Provided information to students regarding the infection control measures taken by the University (especially the allocation of hostel places).

However, in some area, CUHK is not so helpful:

University has no intention to solve student’s problems. For example, many students urged the University to launch the pass/fail and late drop (with no restriction) options, and the University did not show intention of launching these options until the end of the semester.
Intrinsic problems of online learning: students did not have enough resources to learn (e.g. quietness, space, money and space to upgrade software and hardware and privacy).
Unclear/ Late announcement of assessment scheme. There were still many courses which the teaching & learning problems remain unsolved. For example, some courses did not announce the new assessment scheme until April even the University stated that all courses should announce the revised assessment scheme by February. Take courses like ENSC4903/BCHE4903/BIOL4903/CMBI4903/FNSC4903/MBTE4903 as an example, as it was announced from March to April that these FYP courses launched by the School of Life Sciences, which was unreasonable to inform that late. Therefore, students did not have enough time to prepare for the new assessments and some students’ FYPs were terminated as they could not be back to laboratory. It was very difficult for students to late drop after that announcement.
Different departments/courses could not properly address and solve the problems raised by students: e.g. termination of experimental FYP/lab courses/field trips, unreasonable teaching mode (e.g. lab course implemented by online learning), so students could not learn practical skills/techniques by using particular equipment/apparatus.
Unclear online examination arrangements. For example, instructions regarding which platform would the exam be hosted on, or whether the exam would consist of MCQ or SAQ or essay questions. Also, some students needed to take more than one exam per day while more examination timeslot should be provided if necessary regarding the online nature. It is hard for students to prepare for the exam without clear instructions and scope.

(6) Suggestions & Recommendations:

Send emails more frequently. Like I-CARE, as not all the students will carefully check every email in their inbox, so it will arouse students’ awareness, only if emails are sent frequently.
Hold more official activities to strengthen the bond between academic advisor and international students.
Actively reach the students if necessary. Not every student are happy to share their problems unless someone close is asking them to do so.
Allow students to choose or change their Academic advisor if needed. As the strengths or teaching/research focus of each advisor differs, which may not suit students’ interests or career development. In another way, the administrative department should ask students regarding what they would like to inquire about advisors and allocate a suitable advisor for them.
A feedback system: For the faculty to understand whether the current arrangements suit students’ needs.
Guideline for Academic advisors and students about what areas do academic advice cover: Scope of academic advising should be clear to students and advisors, especially whether it should also cover aspects of career counselling and planning for further studies.
Comprehensive training for academic advisors: Academic advisors could receive comprehensive training on how to advise students better. Currently, the training/or guidance professors receive to be an academic advisor may not be comprehensive enough.
The faculty/department should follow up on their Academic advisor more often. The department should urge the student to approach their advisors more actively since not all advisors reach out to their students assigned.
Deal with the problems when the lecturer left CUHK. For instance, one of the lecturers of the department left CUHK for another institute after the end of the first semester. However, as she is one of the Academic advisors in the department, her advisee can only contact her as a former student, rather than an advisee. The department did not allocate another advisor for those students. Some students felt a bit lost when they did not know who to find if they have some enquiries of academy and career plans. The department should follow up on the issue more closely and make the best use out of the existing Academic advisor system.
Resources allocation: Faculty may assign more centralized resources and opportunities for junior year students to participate in attachments or medical fieldwork.
Increase the frequency of meeting. (At least) Twice a semester, one at the beginning and another one at the end of the semester.
Additional support to freshmen: Academic advisors can provide more support to freshmen to enable them to better adapt to the new environment, including providing information on the faculty’s requirements, study strategies and organizing study group sessions.
Provision of research opportunities: Academic advisors can provide research opportunities to students if they show interest in their studying areas.
More information should be provided: Apart from academic knowledge, advisors can help students to set career goals, apply for jobs and even master programmes. For example, student who studies in Food and Nutritional Science, and wants to be a dietician needs to complete a master program. It will be beneficial for students if the advisor can provide related information and job opportunities for a dietician trainee. Besides, they can provide more information regarding internships, scholarships and exchange programmes, so students will not miss any opportunities due to lack of information.