What Matters to Student Success in the First Year of University?

1. 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

2. Javier Sarah Nicole

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

4. 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?

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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.

12. NSSE Survey Student Behaviors Student Learning & Development Institutional Actions & Requirements Reactions to People & Environment Student Background Information

13. In your experience at your institution during the current school year, about how often have you done each of the following? 1

17. Effective Educational Practices Level of Academic Challenge Active & Collaborative Learning Student- Faculty Interaction Supportive Campus Environment Enriching Educational Experiences

18. Grades, persistence, student satisfaction, and engagement go hand in hand

19. Student engagement varies more within than between institutions.

21. Worth Pondering How do we reach our least engaged students?

22. Behold the compensatory effects of engagement

27. What Are Faculty Telling Us?

28. Faculty Survey of Student Engagement(pronounced “fessie”) FSSE measures faculty expectations and activities related to student engagement in effective educational practices

29. Course Emphasis Lower Division Upper Division FACULTY report very much or quite a bit of emphasis on memorizing 29 | 14% 1st yr. Students Seniors STUDENTS report very much or quite a bit of emphasis on memorizing 65% | 63%

30. 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%

31. AVG STUDENT Acad emic Act ive - Diversity Stu dent - AVG FACULTY c hall enge c ollab e xperiences f ac ulty A c ad emic chall enge ü ü ü emph asis Act ive - collab ü ü ü ü practices Emph asis on diversity ü ü ü experiences Emph asis on h igher ü ü ü order thinking Imp ortance enriching ü ü ü ed uc e xp eriences Faculty Priorities and Student Engagement

32. 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

33. What does an educationally effective university look like?

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

35. *Higher-than predicted NSSE scores and graduation rates DEEP Schools* 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 Doctoral Extensives University of Kansas University of Michigan Doctoral Intensives George Mason University Miami University (Ohio) University of Texas El Paso Master’s Granting Fayetteville State University Gonzaga University Longwood University

36. 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

37. 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

38. 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

39. Creating Conditions That Matter to Student Success We can’t leave serendipity to chance

40. 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

41. 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?

42. Lessons from National Center for Academic Transformation • If doing something is important, require it (first-year students don’t do ‘optional’) • Assign course points to the activity • Monitor and intervene when necessary http://www.thencat.org/Newsletters/Apr06.htm#1

43. 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.

44. Intentional acculturation Rituals and traditions connect students to each other and the institution KU’s “Traditions Night.” 3,000+ students gather in the football stadium to rehearse the Rock Chalk Chant, learn “I’m a Jayhawk”, and hear stories intended to instill students’ commitment to graduation

45. Primary source of academic advising

46. 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.

47. 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.

48. 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.

49. 3. Align initiatives with: • Student preparation, ability, interests • Existing complementary efforts • Gen ed reform • Faculty development • Service learning/community service • Internationalization and diversity

50. “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