Strategies for Student Success

Course Description

SLS1122 – Strategies for Student Success is a student life skills course designed to improve the odds that a student completes their degree. Daytona State College titles it Managing Your Success. Institutions carry it at anywhere from 1 to 3 credits, and it is frequently required for students entering on academic probation, in specific programs, or as first-time college students.

Courses of this kind have a genuine evidence base, which is worth knowing because students often assume they are filler. Structured first-year experience and student success courses are among the better-supported interventions for retention and completion, particularly for students who are the first in their family to attend college, who work substantial hours, or who arrive underprepared. The reason is not that study tips are profound — it is that college has unwritten rules, and students who know them navigate it far more efficiently than students who reverse-engineer them.

Content covers college systems and navigation — advising, registration, degree audits, financial aid, and where to go for what; goal setting and educational planning; time management and the realities of balancing work, family, and study; learning strategies — what the evidence actually supports; note-taking, reading textbooks, and test preparation; test anxiety and stress management; memory and study spacing; critical thinking; information literacy and library use; academic integrity; technology and the learning management system; financial literacy — student loans, budgeting, and the cost of extra semesters; health and wellness including sleep and mental health resources; career exploration and major selection; and transfer planning.

Offered at approximately 11 Florida institutions.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Navigate institutional systems including advising, registration, and the degree audit.
• Interpret a degree audit and construct a term-by-term educational plan.
• Locate and use campus resources including tutoring, library, disability services, and counseling.
• Set specific, measurable academic and personal goals.
• Construct a realistic weekly schedule accounting for work, family, and study.
• Apply evidence-based study strategies including retrieval practice and spaced study.
• Explain why rereading and highlighting are weak strategies relative to alternatives.
• Take and organize effective notes from lecture and from text.
• Read a college textbook actively and efficiently.
• Prepare for and take examinations using appropriate strategies.
• Apply techniques for managing test anxiety and academic stress.
• Evaluate information sources and use the library effectively.
• Describe academic integrity expectations and avoid plagiarism.
• Use the learning management system and required technology competently.
• Describe student loan obligations and the financial consequences of extra terms.
• Describe wellness practices including sleep, and locate mental health resources.
• Explore career options and relate them to program and major selection.
• Describe transfer pathways and requirements relevant to the student's goal.

Optional Outcomes

• Describe learning differences and the accommodation process.
• Develop a resume and describe job search practice.
• Describe civic engagement and campus involvement.
• Describe communication and conflict resolution skills.
• Describe diversity and working across difference on campus.
• Complete a service or engagement project.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Transition to college — expectations, differences from high school, and self-direction.
• Institutional navigation — advising, registration, drop and withdrawal deadlines, and policies.
• Degree planning — degree audits, program requirements, and sequencing.
• Campus resources — tutoring, writing center, library, disability services, and counseling.
• Goal setting and motivation — specific goals, self-efficacy, and persistence.
• Time management — scheduling, prioritization, and procrastination.
• Learning science — retrieval practice, spacing, interleaving, and elaboration.
• Note-taking — systems, lecture capture, and review.
• Reading strategies — previewing, annotating, and monitoring comprehension.
• Test preparation and test-taking — by question type and course type.
• Test anxiety and stress — recognition and management.
• Critical thinking — argument, evidence, and evaluating claims.
• Information literacy — databases, source evaluation, and citation.
• Academic integrity — plagiarism, collaboration limits, and consequences.
• Financial literacy — aid, loans, budgeting, and the cost of delay.
• Wellness — sleep, physical health, and mental health resources.
• Career and major exploration — interests, requirements, and outlook.
• Transfer planning — articulation, common prerequisites, and timing.

Optional Topics

• Learning differences and accommodations.
• Resume and job search.
• Campus involvement and civic engagement.
• Communication and conflict resolution.
• Diversity and campus community.
• Service learning project.

Resources & Tools

• On Course (Downing), Cengage — among the most widely adopted student success texts.
• Becoming a Master Student (Ellis), Cengage — the long-standing alternative.
• Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Brown, Roediger & McDaniel) — the accessible summary of learning research; increasingly assigned and worth reading regardless.
• OpenStax College Success — free, peer-reviewed, and adopted by a growing number of institutions; worth asking about, since students in this course are often the most cost-sensitive.
• Your institution's degree audit system — the single most useful tool in the course, and one many students never learn to read.
• FloridaShines — the state's portal for transfer planning, degree tracking, and viewing transcripts across Florida public institutions; free and Florida-specific.
• StudentAid.gov — federal loan balances, repayment estimators, and aid information.
• Campus tutoring, writing center, and counseling — free, and the course should require students to actually visit them.

Special Information

⚠ Credits vary from 1 to 3 — and that changes what the course is

Florida institutions differ substantially: the College of Central Florida carries SLS1122 at 1 credit while Daytona State carries it at 3. That is not merely an accounting difference — a 1-credit version is typically a focused study skills seminar, while a 3-credit version covers career exploration, financial literacy, and transfer planning as well. Verify the credit value and the syllabus locally, and note that student success credits may or may not apply toward a particular degree; check the degree audit.

The learning-strategies content contradicts what most students do

This is the most useful and most ignored part of the course. The research is consistent and counterintuitive: rereading and highlighting — the two most common study behaviors — are among the least effective, because they produce fluency that feels like learning without producing durable memory. What works is retrieval practice (testing yourself without looking), spacing (distributing study rather than massing it), and interleaving (mixing problem types). These feel harder and less productive in the moment, which is exactly why students abandon them. A student who genuinely adopts retrieval practice and spacing changes their academic trajectory, and this course is usually the only place anyone tells them.

Florida-specific planning tools and rules students should learn here

Several Florida structures make transfer planning unusually navigable if a student knows them — and unusually costly if they do not:

• FloridaShines lets a student view transcripts across Florida public institutions, track progress, and explore transfer options in one place.
• The A.A. degree guarantees admission to a Florida public university (though not to a specific university or a limited-access program), which makes the A.A. a genuinely strong instrument if the student's coursework is planned around a target major.
• Common prerequisites for university majors are published statewide, and taking them at the state college is far cheaper than repeating them later — but taking the wrong ones wastes terms.
• SCNS guarantees transfer of the same course number, which is why the numbering cautions that appear throughout this repository matter.
• Excess hours — Florida assesses a surcharge on state university students who substantially exceed the credits required for their degree, so accumulating unneeded credits at the university level has a direct cost. Planning early avoids it.

A student who leaves this course able to read a degree audit, use FloridaShines, and name their target major's common prerequisites has gotten more practical value than from most three-credit courses.

Withdrawal and financial aid rules are worth learning before you need them

Deadlines and consequences that students routinely discover too late: the withdrawal deadline and how a W affects satisfactory academic progress; the number of withdrawal attempts permitted; whether a third attempt at a course carries a surcharge; and how dropping below full-time affects aid, scholarships, and — for international students — visa status. Knowing these before a term goes badly is what allows a student to make the right choice while the option is still open.

The course is often required after a bad term, and that framing is worth resisting

Many students take SLS1122 because they were placed on academic probation, and arrive treating it as a penalty. The more accurate framing is that most academic difficulty is situational and procedural — overcommitted schedules, ineffective study methods, unaddressed learning differences, financial pressure, untreated anxiety — rather than evidence of unfitness for college. The course exists because those causes are addressable. Students who engage rather than endure it generally recover.

Use the resources the course requires you to visit

Assignments that send students to tutoring, the writing center, the library, and advising exist because usage predicts completion and because the first visit is the hard one. Disability services deserves a particular mention: students with documented learning differences who never register for accommodations because they did not know how are common, and this course is where that gap gets closed.