Proposed Framework for Academic Advising System Among College Students in Inner Mongolia

Abstract

Inner Mongolia higher education started earlier, and the number, scale, orientation, characteristics, and subject specialties of Inner Mongolia colleges and universities are typical and exemplary in Chinese general colleges and universities, which is a microcosm of Chinese higher education. Students of Inner Mongolia colleges and universities, like students of other colleges and universities in China, face the challenge of constantly improving their academic level and the quality of education and teaching, exploring how to carry out academic advising, and improving the quality of students’ learning and the quality of talent training is an important and urgent task for colleges and universities at present.

Based on the literature review and research, this paper uses the Outcomes-Based Education concept and Student Developmental Theory to build a framework for academic advising systems in Chinese universities. Regarding the framework for academic advising, the author proposes five dimensions and nine elements. The five dimensions are “what academic advising does, who does academic advising, how to do academic advising, safeguards for academic advising, and evaluation of academic advising.” The nine elements of academic advising are “objectives, responsibilities, content, organization, team, methods, system, funding, and evaluation.”

The author conducted in-depth interviews with university administrators, university teachers, and students and analyzed the academic status of students in Chinese universities. This paper further investigates the current situation and needs of academic advising in ordinary Chinese universities, and builds a more systematic and complete academic advising system according to the framework of academic advising system in ordinary Chinese universities by combining the management mechanism and internal operation mechanism: two objectives and six responsibilities of academic advising are established, three tiers and five levels of organization and two organizational structure models are built, the academic advising team composed of five types of personnel and their quality requirements are clarified, the content of academic advising at different levels is clarified, three methods of academic advising and eight modules of network platform are proposed, two levels of academic advising system are formulated, and two standards for preparing budget and three uses of the fund are proposed, the evaluation system of academic advising and the evaluation indexes are established.

The author not only studies academic advising from the perspective of scholars but also raises problems and formulates countermeasures and suggestions to solve them from the perspective of school administrators, focusing on the scientific, feasible, and operable aspects of academic advising. The combination of theoretical research and school practice is a major feature of this study, i.e., the academic advising system constructed in this study is theoretically supported and easily replicable for use in Chinese universities.