This volume Student Support Services: Exploring impact on student engagement, experience and learning, covers a wide and diverse range of higher education contexts to explore the current state and the future of student support services. The central focus for all the chapters is about what, why and how to achieve student success within an intricate and complex web of learning ecologies, often invisible to the naked eye but interconnected within and between each other. This has profound impacts on students, often characterised by an ongoing tension between students as learners and students as consumers. With over 40 chapters, the book is divided into two sections. Part 1 is a conceptual section, which explores a multitude of worldviews about the ways in which student support services have impacted and may impact on student engagement, experience and learning. This includes discussions about the tensions and opportunities that arise from the curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular conceptualisations of students support services. The discussions come from the vantage point of different ecologies within and between universities and student support services’ impacts, both intentional and accidental, on the development of students, their transformation as learners and as contributing members of the workforce. For example, this covers disruptive technologies and online approaches, university mission and purpose, worldviews and paradigms held by student support and services units, motivation, student retention, and sense of belonging. Part 2 is a practice-based section with reflections and case studies, again from a wide variety of different higher education contexts. This section dives into the how – approaches, solutions, processes – deployed by universities to respond to their identified and often contextualised student support and services challenges. This section provides a rich library of possible ideas that readers can reimagine to manage and/or solve their student support and services challenges and problems. In the context of widening participation agendas and an increasingly demand-driven higher education sector, combined with ever-tighter public funding streams and turbulent socio-political environments, the higher education sector has had to step up its game in attracting students and diversify its approaches and strategies. As part of recruitment strategies and marketing campaigns, it has become common to approach potential students as ‘customers’. Transaction as a form of two-way (beneficial) engagement has given way to transaction as an exchange for a service or a good focused on order, structure and risk aversion. This book explores whether this is a productive way of approaching it. At the same time, the impact of COVID-19 has drawn further attention to the challenges of creating a sense of community, sense of belonging, personal identity and engagement within the university environment, especially for those not habitually and constantly on-campus. The difficulty of commuter students more fully engaging with university curricular and co-curricular programs remains, especially as students have to spend more of their time working to meet direct and indirect costs of partaking in university studies. Thus, student identity, in terms of being (or becoming) an integral member of the university community, and co-and extra-curricular engagement that enhances the learning of online students are increasingly important areas for universities to pay attention to, and this book shows different pathways – both worldviews and practices - in that respect. In an increasingly complex higher education environment, student support services find themselves in an interesting, yet often contradictory, position of having to provide a ‘customer service’ while also 'developing students’ throughout their learning journeys within the university, and their future readiness beyond the university, which is increasingly pertinent in a supercomplex world of diversity, contradictions and uncertainties. This volume explores this complexity in a holistic manner, and we are confident that the resulting discussions, implications and suggestions will provide fertile ground for conversations, reflections and explorations of student support services into the future.

The basic premise of neurodiversity is that there is no “normal” baseline for brain processes, but that all individual brains vary and therefore are diverse. The CAST organization estimates that 11% of college students enrolling in post-secondary campuses having a learning disability or learning difference. As neurodiverse students enroll in post-secondary education, the environments within which these students learn, can either support or impede their ability to succeed. Simply put, a neurodiverse campus population means that educators recognize that all students process and learn differently and must adapt our approaches and services in order to reach and support all students enrolled on our campuses. Neurodiverse students are a growing population on today’s college campus. Their growing presence prompts new approaches to support their success and change traditional student services and collegiate experiences. This practical guide: Assists readers in better understanding neurodiverse students and the way campus services can create welcoming environments Explores the role Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Executive Functioning (EF) plays in student success, and Focuses on specific collegiate offices and services that effectively address the needs of neurodiverse learners. Chapters cover tutoring, learning supports, academic coaching, academic advising, career services, residential living, and classroom experiences that impact and assist neurodiverse college students.

The Student Support Services Program provides academic support to eligible students and is designed to improve the retention and graduation rate of low-income, first generation and disabled college students.

Supporting Online Students shows how effective and efficiently delivered support services improve academic success and course retention for online learners. Drawing on a decade's worth of research, Anita Crawley describes the scope of services from admissions and registration to advising and student engagement. The book includes guidelines and standards, planning and implementation, innovative practices, and describes specialized services needed by particular online student groups. "Effective student support is the single most important factor in sustaining high-quality online learning programs. Anita Crawley presents the most effective guide to achieving that success. Her book is a blueprint for building thriving online programs through comprehensive student support." Ray Schroeder, director, Center for Online Learning, Research and Service, University of Illinois Springfield "As distance learning continues to grow, this book addresses the often neglected other side of the coin: online student services. This book provides a great introduction and overview of the research, literature, and innovative practices for planning, implementing, and evaluating support services for online learners." George Steele, director, eStudent Services, OhioLearns "Anita Crawley has crafted a splendid volume on a topic of increasing importance in contemporary higher education. Her book promises to be the foundational piece for those who work with students in an online environment. Her thinking and analysis are superb and undoubtedly will provide the basis upon which to develop online programs and services in the future." John H. Schuh, Distinguished Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Emeritus, Iowa State University "Bringing together extensive examples of innovative practices, summaries of current research, and a wealth of experience in student services, Anita Crawley's comprehensive guide to supporting online students is a rich resource for institutions with existing, growing, or new online programs. Diane J. Goldsmith, former executive director, Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium

The purpose of this guide is to provide school leaders and administrators with key information regarding student assistance services. In this guide, we review aspects of providing student assistance, including connections to existing school, substance use, and mental health initiatives; key components of effective programming; considerations for implementation; and planning for success. Information provided in this guide will assist school leaders in beginning and/or improving student assistance services and provide guidance on more comprehensive resources for this critically important work.