OSU campus

The overall mission of the Walter E. Dennis Learning Center (DLC) is to support the academic success of students at Ohio State. We address this mission by offering three-major-forms-of outreach:-coursework, workshops and one-on-one academic coaching. With total enrollments approaching 1,200 last year, the three different courses offered through the DLC teach students to develop their motivation, self-regulation, and critical thinking. The DLC also offers short workshops (over 200 sessions reaching more than 7,000 attendees in 2014) designed to both improve students’ self-regulatory knowledge and skills and to reduce self-handicapping behaviors such as procrastination. Finally, we have a team of peer coaches trained to provide one-on-one consultation to Ohio State students of all academic ranks and backgrounds in order to develop academic strengths and diminish potential problems.

To address its core mission, the DLC also is devoted to the advancement of theoretically grounded empirical research that promotes greater understanding of college students’ academic success. Many of our faculty, staff and instructors conduct and disseminate studies that address this mission. In addition, we enthusiastically collaborate with Ohio State faculty, students and research staff to support their well-designed educational research. In its most basic form, this collaboration has included facilitating the recruitment of participants from our courses, workshops or coaching sessions. As well, we have worked closely with researchers to facilitate more integrated studies. Recent projects, for instance, include developing instructional materials for our study skills course and evaluating their impact, analyzing written work students submitted for a course assignment, and testing whether completion of our study skills course is associated with increased achievement or graduation rates.

In short, the DLC strives to play an active role in producing prominent, nationally recognized research that advances theoretical understanding and contributes to the next generation of practical methods that can be used to facilitate the academic success of students at Ohio State. We are open to jointly designing, facilitating recruitment for or otherwise collaborating on any project that might advance these goals.

For any questions about how we might assist with your research, contact Christopher Wolters at wolters.21@osu.edu or Lauren Hensley, Associate Director, at hensley.121@osu.edu.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2015 issue of In Review, the EHE Office of Research Newsletter.

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