Sharing Responsibility

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• Sharing Responsibility
• for Engaging First-Year Students

George D. Kuh FYHE Conference Brisbane July 4,
2007
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We all want the same thingan undergraduate
experience that results in high levels of
learning and personal development for all
students.
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Overview

• Why engagement matters in the first year
• Lessons from high-performing institutions
• Implications for policy and practice

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Advance Organizers

• To what extent do your students engage in
  productive learning activities, inside and
  outside the classroom?
• How do you know?
• What must you do differently -- or better -- to
  enhance student success?

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Student Success in College

• Academic achievement, engagement in
  educationally purposeful activities,
  satisfaction, acquisition of desired knowledge,
  skills and competencies, persistence, attainment
  of educational objectives, and post-college
  performance

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Pre-college Characteristics Associated with
Student Success

• Academic preparation
• Ability and college-level skills
• Family education and support
• Financial wherewithal

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Early College Indicators of Persistence and
Success

• Goal realization
• Psycho-social fit
• Credit hours completed
• Academic and social support
• Involvement in the right kinds of activities

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What Really Matters in College Student
Engagement

• Because individual effort and involvement are
  the critical determinants of impact,
  institutions should focus on the ways they can
  shape their academic, interpersonal, and
  extracurricular offerings to encourage student
  engagement.

Pascarella Terenzini, How College Affects
Students, 2005, p. 602
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Foundations of Student Engagement

• Time on task (Tyler, 1930s)
• Quality of effort (Pace, 1960-70s)
• Student involvement (Astin, 1984)
• Social, academic integration (Tinto,1987, 1993)
• Good practices in undergraduate education
  (Chickering Gamson, 1987)
• Outcomes (Pascarella, 1985)
• Student engagement (Kuh, 1991, 2005)

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Pascarellas (1985) causal model Effects of
college student development
Student development

• Students
• Aptitude
• Achievement
• Personality
• Aspiration
• Ethnicity

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Pascarellas (1985) causal model

• Institution
• Enrollment
• Faculty-student ratio
• Selectivity
• Residential

Student development

• Students
• Aptitude
• Achievement
• Personality
• Aspiration
• Ethnicity

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Pascarellas (1985) causal model

• Institution
• Enrollment
• Faculty-student ratio
• Selectivity
• Residential

• Interactions with
• faculty
• peers

Student development

• Students
• Aptitude
• Achievement
• Personality
• Aspiration
• Ethnicity

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Pascarellas (1985) causal model

• Institution
• Enrollment
• Faculty-student ratio
• Selectivity
• Residential

• Interactions with
• faculty
• peers

Student development

• Students
• Aptitude
• Achievement
• Personality
• Aspiration
• Ethnicity

Institutional Environment
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Pascarellas (1985) causal model

• Institution
• Enrollment
• Faculty-student ratio
• Selectivity
• Residential

• Interactions with
• faculty
• peers

Student development

• Students
• Aptitude
• Achievement
• Personality
• Aspiration
• Ethnicity

Institutional Environment
Engagement
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Student Engagement Trinity

• What students do -- time and energy devoted to
  educationally purposeful activities
• What institutions do -- using effective
  educational practices to induce students to do
  the right things
• Educationally effective institutions channel
  student energy toward the right activities

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Good Practices in Undergraduate Education
(Chickering Gamson, 1987 Pascarella
Terenzini, 2005)

• Student-faculty contact
• Active learning
• Prompt feedback
• Time on task
• High expectations
• Respect for diverse learning styles
• Cooperation among students

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National Survey of Student Engagement(pronounced
nessie)Community College Survey of Student
Engagement(pronounced cessie)

• College student surveys that assess the extent
  to which students engage in educational practices
  associated with high levels of learning and
  development

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AUSSIE 2007

• Australasian Survey of Student Engagement
  (AUSSE) is being developed by ACER for
  Australasian higher education institutions. It
  will yield generalisable information about
  university education sensitive to institutional
  diversity that will allow institutions to monitor
  and enhance the quality of education.

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NSSE Survey
Student Behaviors
Student Learning Development
Institutional Actions Requirements

Reactions to People Environment
Student Background Information
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Effective Educational Practices
Level of Academic Challenge
Active Collaborative Learning
Student- Faculty Interaction
Supportive Campus Environment
Enriching Educational Experiences
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• Grades, persistence, student satisfaction, and
  engagement go hand in hand

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• Student engagement varies more within than
  between institutions.

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Worth Pondering

• How do we reach our least engaged students?

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Behold the compensatory effects of engagement
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Comparison of Distance Education and
Campus-Based Learners
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Comparison of Distance Education and Campus-Based
Learners
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Faculty Survey of Student Engagement
(pronounced fessie)

• FSSE measures faculty expectations and
  activities related to student engagement in
  effective educational practices

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Faculty Priorities and Student Engagement
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What to Make of This?

• When faculty members emphasize certain
  educational practices, students engage in them to
  a greater extent than their peers elsewhere.
• Good things go together

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What does an educationally effective university
look like?
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Project DEEP

• To discover, document, and describe what high
  performing institutions do to achieve their
  notable level of effectiveness.

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DEEP Schools
Higher-than predicted NSSE scores and
graduation rates

• Doctoral Extensives
• University of Kansas
• University of Michigan
• Doctoral Intensives
• George Mason University
• Miami University (Ohio)
• University of Texas El Paso
• Masters Granting
• Fayetteville State University
• Gonzaga University
• Longwood University

Liberal Arts California State, Monterey Bay
Macalester College Sweet Briar College The
Evergreen State College Sewanee University of
the South Ursinus College Wabash College
Wheaton College (MA) Wofford
College Baccalaureate General Alverno College
University of Maine at Farmington
Winston-Salem State University
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Effective Educational Practices
Level of Academic Challenge
Active Collaborative Learning
Student- Faculty Interaction
Supportive Campus Environment
Enriching Educational Experiences
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Ponder This

• Which of these areas needs attention right now at
  your institution?
• What might you do about it?

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Academic Challenge

• Intentional socialization to academic
  expectations
• Wheaton new students read a common book and
  essays by faculty that respond to the reading.
  Assigned readings, faculty responses, and the
  website combine to introduce incoming students to
  preferred ways to grapple with intellectual
  issues.

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Academic Challenge

• Learning-intensive practices
• George Mason and CSUMB require every student
  to take from 1-3 writing-intensive courses. They
  along with most DEEP schools have strong writing
  centers to emphasize and support the importance
  of good writing.

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Academic Challenge

• Learning-intensive practices
• Sewanees Interdisciplinary Humanities Program
  includes four writing-intensive courses that
  introduce the cultural history of the western
  world. The program is team-taught using a mix of
  lectures and small discussion sections.

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Academic Challenge
Learning-intensive practices Ursinus
Colleges Common Intellectual Experience (CIE) is
a two-semester course for first year students.
Common readings and the Uncommon Hour provides
opportunities for students to have a shared
intellectual experience outside the classroom
that complements class activities.
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Active and Collaborative Learning

• Ample applied learning opportunities
• CSUMB requires all students to complete a lower
  and upper-level service learning experience

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Active and Collaborative Learning

• Ample applied learning opportunities
• University of Maine at Farmingtons Student Work
  Initiative employs students in meaningful work
  in student services, laboratories, and
  field-research. Such experiences provide
  opportunities to apply what they are learning to
  practical, real-life situations.

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Student-Faculty Interaction

• Community celebrations of scholarship
• UMF hosts Spring Symposium a day when no
  classes are held and all students and faculty are
  given the opportunity to present research,
  artistic, intellectual, and other creative
  projects, and learn from others.

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Student-Faculty Interaction

• Undergraduate research opportunities
• Miamis Undergraduate Summer Scholars (USS)
  program enables students to do research or other
  creative activities in the summer under the
  supervision of faculty. In the fall, a Symposium
  provides opportunities to present projects to
  students and faculty. Having a Summer Scholar in
  the classroom enhances the learning of all
  students.

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Student-Faculty Interaction

• Early exposure to faculty
• Winston Salem State, discipline-specific
  orientation activities immediately immerse
  students in the culture of facilitate early bonds
  with faculty. These faculty members eventually
  become one of the most influential adults in
  students academic lives, making sure they are
  successful in all aspects of college life.

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Student-Faculty Interaction

• Insuring opportunities for student-faculty
  contact
• Fayetteville State creates opportunities for
  faculty members to touch students in a
  meaningful way
• Minority Biomedical Research Support (MBRS)
• Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement
  project (RISE)
• Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation
  (LSAMP)
• Departmental student organizations
• Freshman Instructors provide academic, career and
  personal counseling

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Student-Faculty Interaction

• Insuring opportunities for student-faculty
  contact
• Longwood University students have the same
  faculty member as their advisor for all four
  years.
• If you are not in your office with the door
  open, people wonder if something is wrong with
  you

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Enriching Educational Experiences

• Cross-cultural experiences
• Alverno and George Mason intentionally craft
  shorter study abroad experiences that meet the
  needs of their large non-traditional population.
  Similarly, Kansas and UMF arrange class-based
  trips that are more accessible to their first
  generation students

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Enriching Educational Experience

• Out of class learning opportunities
• UTEP conducts a series of funded leadership
  retreats, programs, and institutes that develop
  students capacity to engage in conversations
  about diversity, to develop leadership skills,
  and to enhance their academic skills as they
  become peer leaders in their programs

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Enriching Experiences

• Connecting campus and community
• Macalester Colleges Into the Streets event is
  part of the required first-year seminar, taking
  students into local neighborhoods to do community
  service. Half of all students participate in
  internships 90 do a senior capstone project.

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Enriching Educational Experiences

• Required Enriching Experiences
• All Ursinus students complete an Independent
  Learning Experience (ILE), such as an independent
  research or creative project, internship, study
  abroad, student teaching, or summer fellow
  program or comparable summer research program.

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Supportive Campus Environment

• Intentionally orchestrated, educationally
  purposeful peer interaction
• Longwood values students helping other
  students as a catalyst to promote student
  achievement and learning and to wake up
  students volunteerism and academic pursuits.
  Peer mentors in the Longwood Seminar, residence
  halls leadership roles, and the strong
  co-curricular program makes this possible.

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Supportive Campus Environment

• Multiple interventions woven together
• At CSUMB
• Library Staff assists Capstone students to
  further develop their research questions and
  archive of Capstone projects
• Senior research projects celebrated at Capstone
  Conferences (Dec., May)
• Describe under-served students as vision
  students, underscoring their importance at the
  institution

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Supportive Campus Environment

• Organized learning support
• POSSE (Pathways to Student Success and
  Excellence) students at U of Michigan are
  assigned to a counselor and learn the importance
  of faculty office hours, study tips and how to
  connect to tutoring services.
• POSSE taught me how to survive the University
  of Michigan.

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Supportive Campus Environment

• Tag team for student success
• Wheaton first-year student advising team
  includes faculty, student preceptors, librarians
  and administrative staff.
• At Ursinus, Miami, and Wheaton representatives
  from both academic affairs and student affairs
  serve as academic advisors.

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Part 2

• Select a cluster of effective educational
  practices
• What programs and practices are working well now?
• What improvements can be made?
• What additional efforts are needed for particular
  groups of students?
• What resources are required to implement the most
  important of these?
• What obstacles must be overcome?

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Remember This

• Many roads to an engaging, student-centered
  institution
• No one best model
• Different combinations of complementary,
  interactive, synergistic conditions
• Anything worth doing is worth doing well at scale

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• PPT will be posted to FYHE Web site

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• Questions
• Discussion