What Matters to Student Success in the First Year of University

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What Matters to Student Success in the First
Year of University?
George D. Kuh Pacific Rim First Year in Higher
Education Conference QUT Gardens Point,
Brisbane July 5, 2007
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• Javier
• Sarah
• Nicole

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Overview

• Why engagement matters in the first year
• Lessons from high-performing institutions

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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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Factors That Threaten Persistence and Graduation
from College

• academically underprepared for college-level work
• gap between high school and college
• part-time enrollment
• single parent
• financially independent
• children at home
• 30 hours working per week
• first-generation college student

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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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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 tried out 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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What Are Faculty Telling Us?
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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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Course Emphasis
Lower Division
Upper Division
FACULTY report very much or quite a bit of
emphasis on memorizing
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1st yr. Students
Seniors
STUDENTS report very much or quite a bit of
emphasis on memorizing
65 63
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Prompt Feedback
Lower Division
Upper Division
FACULTY gave prompt feedback often or very often
93 / 93
1st yr. Students
Seniors
STUDENTS received prompt feedback often or very
often
64 / 76
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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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Research Approach

• Case study method
• Team of 24 researchers review institutional
  documents and conduct multiple-day site visits
• Observe individuals, classes, group meetings,
  activities, events
• 2,700 people, 60 classes, 30 events
• Discover and describe effective practices and
  programs, campus culture

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Worth Noting

• Many roads to an engaging 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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Six Shared Conditions

• Living Mission and Lived Educational
  Philosophy
• Unshakeable Focus on Student Learning
• Environments Adapted for Educational Enrichment
• Clearly Marked Pathways to Student Success
• Improvement-Oriented Ethos
• Shared Responsibility for Educational Quality

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Creating Conditions That Matter to Student
Success

• We cant leave
• serendipity to chance

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1. Get the ideas right

• Focus on a real problem
• Persistence
• Fragmented gen ed program
• Poor advising
• Tired pedagogical practices
• Low academic challenge
• Connections to real world
• Under-engaged students

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2. Lay out the path to student success

• Draw a map for student success
• Front load resources to smooth the transition
• Teach newcomers about the campus culture
• Create a sense of specialness
• Emphasize student initiative
• Focus on underengaged students
• If something works, maybe require it?

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Lessons from National Center for Academic
Transformation

• If doing something is important, require it
  (first-year students dont do optional)
• Assign course points to the activity
• Monitor and intervene when necessary
• http//www.thencat.org/Newsletters/Apr06.htm1

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Socialization to academic expectations

• Wofford first-year students read a common
  novel and write a short essay connecting it to
  their own lives. The eight best essays are
  published and distributed to all new students,
  creating the first class celebrities.

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Intentional acculturation
Rituals and traditions connect students to each
other and the institution
KUs Traditions Night. 3,000 students gather
in the football stadium to rehearse the Rock
Chalk Chant, learn Im a Jayhawk, and hear
stories intended to instill students commitment
to graduation
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Primary source of academic advising
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Intrusive advising

• University of Kansas Graduate in Four advising
  notebook
• Distributed at orientation
• Describes to students how to make the most of
  undergraduate study
• Students required to meet with advisor to review
  progress to degree
• Section for each of the four undergraduate years
• Checklist for students to weigh choices and
  monitor if they are making progress.

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Redundant early warning systems Tag Teaming

• 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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Mentoring

• U of Michigan Mentorship Program matches groups
  of four first-year students with an older student
  and a faculty or staff member who share similar
  academic interests. The goal is to provide
  students with mentoring relationships, networking
  opportunities, yearlong guidance and support, and
  in general to help ease the transition to
  college.

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3. Align initiatives with

• Student preparation, ability, interests
• Existing complementary efforts
• Gen ed reform
• Faculty development
• Service learning/community service
• Internationalization and diversity

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Meet students where they are

• Fayetteville State
• Faculty members teach the students they have,
  not those they wish they had
• Center for Teaching and Learning sponsors
  development activities on diverse learning needs
• Cal State Monterey Bay
• Assets philosophy acknowledges students prior
  knowledge

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Something Else That Really Matters in College

• The greatest impact appears to stem from
  students total level of campus engagement,
  particularly when academic, interpersonal, and
  extracurricular involvements are mutually
  reinforcing

Pascarella Terenzini, How College Affects
Students, 2005, p. 647
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It Takes a Whole Campus to Educate a Student
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4. Promote and reward collaboration

• Tighten the philosophical and operational
  linkages between academic and student affairs
• Peer tutoring and mentoring
• First year seminars
• Learning communities
• Harness available expertise
• Make governance a shared responsibility
• Form partnerships with the local community

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Connect campus and community

• California State University, Monterey Bay
  (CSUMB) requires all students to complete both a
  lower and upper-level service learning experience
  as a means to apply knowledge and connect with
  the local community.

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5. Recruit, socialize and reward competent people

• Recruit faculty and staff committed to student
  learning
• Emphasize student centeredness in faculty and
  staff orientation
• Make room for differences
• Reward and support competent staff to insure high
  quality student support services

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Difference Makers

• Student success is the product of thousands of
  small gestures extended on a daily basis by
  caring, supportive educators sprinkled throughout
  the institution who enact a talent development
  philosophy.

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6. Put money where it will make a
difference in student engagement
in professional baseball it still matters less
how much you have than how well you spend it
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6. Put money where it will make a difference in
student engagement

• Align reward system with institutional mission,
  values, and priorities
• Sunset redundant and ineffective programs
• Invest in activities that contribute to student
  success

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Association of American Colleges and Universities
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Most Important Skills Employers Look For In New
Hires
RecentGrads
Teamwork skills Critical thinking/
reasoning Oral/written communication Ability to
assemble/organize information Innovative/thinking
creatively Able to work with numbers/statistics F
oreign language proficiency
Skills/abilities recent graduates think are the
two most important to employers
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Effective Educational Practices

• First-Year Seminars and Experiences 
• Common Intellectual Experiences
• Learning Communities
• Writing-Intensive Courses
• Collaborative Assignments and Projects
• Science as Science Is Done
  Undergraduate Research
• Diversity/Global Learning
• Service Learning, Community-Based Learning
• Internships
• Capstone Courses and Projects

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Common Intellectual Experience

• Ursinus Colleges Common Intellectual Experience
  (CIE) is a two-semester course for first-year
  students. Common readings and Uncommon Hour
  give students a shared intellectual experience
  outside the classroom that complements class
  activities.

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Effects of Learning Communities on Engagement
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Diversity Experiences
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Effective Educational Practices Increase Odds
That Students Will

• Invest time and effort
• Interact with faculty and peers about substantive
  matters
• Experience diversity
• Get more frequent feedback
• Discover relevance of their learning through
  real-world applications

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6. Put money where it will make a difference
in student engagement

• Align reward system with institutional mission,
  values, and priorities
• Sunset redundant and ineffective programs
• Invest in activities that contribute to student
  success
• Document performance through assessment!

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Using AUSSIE Other Data

• How well do our programs work and how do we
  know?
• How many students do our efforts reach in
  meaningful ways and how do we know?
• To what degree are our programs and practices
  complementary and synergistic?
• What are we doing that is not represented
  among the DEEP practices? Should we continue
  to do it?
• What are we not doing that we should?

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Download the series!
DEEP Practice Briefs Available
www.nsse.iub.edu
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7. Focus on culture sooner than later

• Ultimately, its all about the culture
• Identify cultural properties that impede success
• Expand the number of cultural practitioners on
  campus
• Instill an ethic of positive restlessness

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Positive restlessness

• We know who we are and what we aspire to.
• Confident, responsive, but never quite satisfied
  
• Self-correcting orientation
• Continually question, are we performing as well
  as we can?

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8. Put someone in charge

• When everyone is responsible for something, no
  one is accountable for it
• Senior leadership is key
• Some individual or group (high profile think
  force) must coordinate and monitor status of
  initiatives
• Those in charge not solely responsible for
  bringing about change

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9. Stay the course

• The good-to-great-transformations never
  happened in one fell swoop. There was no single
  defining action, no grand program, no one killer
  innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle
  moment. Sustainable transformations follow a
  predictable pattern of buildup and breakthrough
  
• (Collins, 2001, p. 186)

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9. Stay the course

• Scale up effective practices
• If it works, consider requiring it
• Beware the implementation dip

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Last Word

• Institutions cannot change the lineage of their
  students. University cultures do not change
  easily or willingly. But we can do far more to
  shape the way students approach college and what
  they do after they arrive.
• Do we have the will to more consistently use
  promising policies and practices to increase the
  odds that more students get ready, get in,
  and get through?

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• Questions
• Discussion