‘We need to stop asking students to fit the intervention and start designing personalised support’

Universities must rethink how they support students in academic recovery. Off-the-shelf strategies to help students improve their performance often work best for learners whose experiences and needs already align with higher education systems. A student’s capacity for learning is rarely the driving force behind academic setbacks. Rather, students’ struggles are complex and require nuanced, individualised interventions.

In our academic coaching practice, we see, for example, students in financial difficulty, students unaware of the academic support resources available at our large institution, and those quietly confronting impostor syndrome. Academic coaching grounded in strategic learning practice supports holistic, sustained academic recovery.

Academic problems demand tailor-made solutions

Today’s college students must navigate a complicated world, job market and higher education landscape. To provide intensive support for those most at risk of not persisting, we reimagined academic coaching services as a responsive retention intervention. We reorganised the programme within Retention and Completion Initiatives.

• How to help students practise digital mindfulness
• A peer-led approach to helping university students with information overload
• The imperative for productive struggle

Traditional academic support infrastructure often matches an academic risk indicator to the intervention. For example, an unsatisfactory midterm progress report in calculus might prompt an invitation to drop-in tutoring for that course. Such interventions can address the immediate academic concern without identifying the underlying gaps in learner skills or navigational capital. Academic coaching, however, helps students develop skills that cross-cut the academic recovery journey. It is grounded in the model of strategic learning (MSL), an approach developed by educational psychologist Claire Ellen Weinstein.

Academic coaching is a highly individualised, non-punitive support practice, designed to help students build skills (knowing what to do and how to do it) and will (believing you can learn and maintaining motivation) as well as self-regulation (proactive goal planning and monitoring one’s own progress). As a dedicated practice focused on process rather than course content or degree requirements, academic coaching helps learners take ownership of their academic progress within a supportive framework.

Transforming self-reported struggles into self-aware action plans for success

MSL is our guiding framework for supporting students’ academic recovery, but the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (Lassi) is our playbook. The Lassi is a statistically valid and reliable tool that helps students assess their behaviours, attitudes and beliefs about learning. Before their first coaching session, students take the Lassi online and receive a percentile score for 10 skills-based scales organised around:

• Skill: information processing, test strategies and selecting main ideas
• Will: attitude, motivation and anxiety
• Self-regulation: concentration, time management, self-testing and using academic resources.

The assessment empowers students to become co-creators of their academic recovery action plan. We no longer rely on students to self-report their challenges; instead, the pre-assessment guides the coaching intake process. Student concerns such as “I just can’t seem to stop procrastinating” or “I think I’m just bad at time management” are validated and contextualised with data-informed, theoretically grounded academic coaching.

Our typical academic coaching process is as follows:

• Students must complete the Lassi pre-assessment before their first appointment.
• With their coach, the student selects two or three scales to focus on to ensure that action plans are manageable and achievable.
• Students typically attend three to four coaching sessions throughout one semester.
• Students must take at least two weeks between coaching sessions to ensure that they have the time and space to put new strategies into action.
• Before a student’s final coaching session of the semester, the post-assessment is administered, and growth metrics are reviewed. Depending on the student’s risk level, they take one of three paths: they create a new action plan for coaching; they are referred to our partner for peer academic coaching (a step-down service); or they graduate from our programme as a fully actualised, self-regulated learner.

If you build it (and they know about it), students will come

Over the past academic year, our academic coaching programme has transformed from an underused operation staffed by part-time contract-based coaches into a respected and vital component of our retention portfolio. We doubled the academic coaching team to two full-time coaches and ensured that all coaches are certified by the University of Central Florida Higher Education Coaching Academy.

In the past, students most in need of the service were the least likely to seek coaching, leaving those in academic probation or readmitted after academic dismissal at risk of missing critical support. However, a robust communication strategy empowered by Navigate360 appointment campaigns resulted in 942 coaching appointments with nearly 500 students between the fall 2025 and spring 2026 semesters.

Beyond the staggering use data, the initial student outcomes are promising for the interventional potential of academic coaching. Even when students focus on only two or three Lassi areas, the post-assessment shows improvement across all 10 scales on average because the scales are interconnected. Furthermore, among students invited to academic coaching because of an academic indicator of concern, 71 per cent who participated improved their academic standing, compared with 59 per cent who did not participate. Additionally, only 18 per cent of coaching participants experienced a decline in academic standing, compared with 29 per cent of non-participants.

The results are clear: when we stop asking students to fit the intervention and start designing personalised support to build their skills, will and self-regulation as learners, academic recovery is not just possible, but probable.

Anna Newsome Holcomb is director of retention and completion initiatives, and Widalys Santiago Sosa is educational outreach manager II (certified coach practitioner), both in the Office of Undergraduate Education and Student Success at Georgia Tech.

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