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A LEARNING PRACTICE COMPANY
Strengthening how students learn—across the student experience.
At B Optimal, we work with colleges to strengthen learning at every level: students develop practices they can use across contexts, practitioners expand how they support that development, and institutions build greater continuity across the learning experience.
More capable learners. More connected support.
Who We Work With
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Faculty & Teaching Centers
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Academic Advising & Success Coaching
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Tutoring & Learning Centers
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Career Services & Experiential Learning
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First-Year Experience & Student Success
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Academic Affairs & Learning Innovation
THE CHALLENGE
The learning practices that matter most for academic success are often expected, but rarely made visible or explicit.
As students move through the college experience, they're continually interpreting what is expected, deciding how to respond, interacting with others, learning from what happens, and adjusting as they go.
The purposeful, repeatable ways students approach and navigate these moments represent learning practices.
Yet students are often expected to know how to learn without these practices being made explicit. They remain part of higher education’s hidden curriculum: important to student learning, but difficult to see, name, discuss, and intentionally develop.
The effects can be felt across the institution:
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Students may not recognize what is helping them learn, know what to adjust when they encounter difficulty, or carry their learning into new situations and contexts.
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Educators and student support professionals may lack shared language, frameworks, and approaches for helping students develop and direct their learning practices.
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Institutions may provide valuable learning experiences without a consistent way to connect them, reinforce important practices, and make the resulting learning and growth visible, valued, and transferable.
WHAT WE DO
We help colleges make learning practices visible and reinforce them across the student experience.
→ Make learning practices visible
Give students, educators, and practitioners shared language and frameworks to recognize and discuss how students approach learning before, during, and after an experience.
→ Strengthen them through practice
Provide students practical tools to reflect, choose strategies, evaluate what is working, make adjustments, and carry learning forward. Support practitioners to build on their expertise with shared frameworks and adaptable approaches that support this development across contexts.
→ Connect support across experiences
Help colleges develop and reinforce learning practices across roles and learning environments while adapting support to each context.
We design learning practice programs to strengthen what's already working.
B Optimal Learning Practice Programs pair practical tools for students with facilitation resources and implementation support that help practitioners and institutions strengthen everyday learning experiences across the student journey, without replacing or standardizing what already works.
FEATURED PROGRAM
Tell My Story with STARR+™
Students have meaningful learning experiences every day, yet many struggle to recognize what they have learned, explain how they have grown, or communicate their capabilities beyond a single assignment, course, or experience.
Tell My Story With STARR+ empowers learners to make meaning from their experiences and turn that learning into something they can recognize, communicate, and use.
BACK-TO-SCHOOL FEATURE
Turn study strategies into a game students learn from together.
Study Strategy Swap Bingo™ turns learning how to learn into an interactive peer-learning game.
Students recognize strategies they already use, exchange practical ideas with classmates, compare what works, and choose something new to try.
Bring it into orientation, first-year courses, tutoring, academic coaching, gateway courses, and student success programs.
STRENTHENING LEARNING PRACTICE INFRASTRUCTURE
Shared practices. More connected support for learning.
Learning Practice Programs help colleges develop a shared, coordinated approach to strengthening learning across the institution.
At B Optimal, we call this Learning Practice Infrastructure: shared practices, language, and tools that connect how students are supported across classrooms, advising, tutoring, coaching, career development, and other learning environments.
The result is greater continuity across roles, more productive learning conversations, and more consistent support for student learning.
FOSTERTING METACOGNITION IN ACTION
One system. A growing capacity for learning.
Every B Optimal Learning Practice Program is powered by the Metacognitive Moves System™, a shared foundation for helping students become more aware of how they learn, make purposeful choices, evaluate what is working, and carry their learning forward.
Its design principles, learning frameworks, and practical tools connect programs without making them identical. Each program addresses a distinct learning challenge while reinforcing practices students can recognize and use across contexts by making Metacognitive Moves™.
As institutions add programs, students encounter greater continuity in how learning is supported. Practitioners gain shared language and adaptable practices they can use across classrooms, advising, tutoring, coaching, career development, and beyond.
FROM OUR WORK
A Closer Look
Explore recent articles, case studies, professional learning experiences, and tools that illustrate how learning practices become visible, discussable, and actionable.
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