findingthewhy: personalizing learningin highereducation making... · scott evenbeck and linda e....

Finding the Why:PersonalizingLearning inHigher Education

margit misangyi wattsEditor

New Directions forTeaching and Learning

Catherine M. WehlburgEditor-in-Chief

Number 145 • Spring 2016Jossey-BassSan Francisco

FINDING THE WHY: PERSONALIZING LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

margit misangyi watts (ed.)New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no. 145Catherine M. Wehlburg, Editor-in-Chief

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CONTENTS

EDITOR’S NOTES 7margit misangyi watts

FOREWORD 13John N. Gardner

1. Personalizing Learning 17margit misangyi wattsThe editor offers a personal account of how she came to embrace the“why” as being important to address, as well as giving an overview ofchanges that have not occurred yet should.

2. Educational Success and Surrounding Culture 25Garrison WaltersHighlighting the need for a change in attitudes toward education,this author finds that students’ perceptions about their ability to learnmatters a lot, and that often this perception is a response to otherinfluences.

3. Integrative Learning: Making Liberal Education Purposeful,Personal, and Practical

33

Ann S. Ferren, Chad B. AndersonThis chapter focuses on learning as a way to construct personal mean-ing. The authors argue for teaching in such a manner that studentsreceive a holistic perspective on their education.

4. Project-Based Learning in Colleges of Business: Is it Enoughto Develop Educated Graduates?

41

Penny Pence Smith, Lindsey A. GibsonThough project-based learning is heralded as an excellent way to en-gage students in learning, this chapter suggests that perhaps new waysmight be better suited to at least some business students.

5. Making Learning Meaningful: Engaging Students in WaysThat Matter to Them

49

George D. KuhIn order to raise our national retention rates, this author is convincedthat students need to connect what they are learning to their lives. Hesuggests focusing on what he calls “goal realization” as a way to helpstudents find their studies to be personally meaningful.

6. Challenging the First Year of College: Old Models and NewImperatives

57

Shala A. Mills, George L. MehaffyThis chapter describes how the AASCU is experimenting with newblended courses in which the content transcends the typical generaleducation courses and invites students to create solutions to globalchallenges.

7. After the Doors Opened: Asking Why at a New CommunityCollege

67

Scott Evenbeck, Linda E. MeriansThese authors detail the founding of Guttman Community College andhow the programs put in place were focused on helping students dis-cover the “why” of their educational pursuits.

8. The Undergraduate Learning Community: A Bridge toUnderstanding Why

77

Stephen J. RomanoffThis chapter describes the Russell Scholars Program and how well it hasaccomplished meaning for students who participate. The foundation ofthe program is clearly personalizing education.

9. Why Higher Education: Lessons Learned in aLearner-Centered College

85

Sandford C. ShugartValencia College is a national leader in showing successful outcomesfor students. This author shares key lessons learned that could extendbeyond the world of community colleges.

10. Concluding Remarks 93margit misangyi watts

INDEX 97

FROM THE SERIES EDITOR

About This Publication

Since 1980, New Directions for Teaching and Learning (NDTL) has broughta unique blend of theory, research, and practice to leaders in postsecondaryeducation. NDTL sourcebooks strive not only for solid substance but alsofor timeliness, compactness, and accessibility.

The series has four goals: to inform readers about current and future di-rections in teaching and learning in postsecondary education, to illuminatethe context that shapes these new directions, to illustrate these new direc-tions through examples from real settings, and to propose ways in whichthese new directions can be incorporated into still other settings.

This publication reflects the view that teaching deserves respect as ahigh form of scholarship. We believe that significant scholarship is con-ducted not only by researchers who report results of empirical investigationsbut also by practitioners who share disciplinary reflections about teaching.Contributors to NDTL approach questions of teaching and learning as seri-ously as they approach substantive questions in their own disciplines, andthey deal not only with pedagogical issues but also with the intellectual andsocial context in which these issues arise. Authors deal on the one hand withtheory and research and on the other with practice, and they translate fromresearch and theory to practice and back again.

About This Volume

Student success is crucial to how we think about teaching and learning inhigher education. In this issue, the authors share both personal and profes-sional ways to think about what this means. Engaging students in a mean-ingful college experience is a large piece of how to better understand theprocess of ensuring that students are successful. There are many differentmethods to gain student engagement and scholarship: curricular reform,relationship building, and helping students to see that they are not alone intheir quest for higher education.

Catherine WehlburgEditor in Chief

CATHERINE M. WEHLBURG is the associate provost for institutional effectivenessat Texas Christian University.

EDITOR’S NOTES

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journeythat no one can take for us or spare us.

—Marcel Proust

Human beings are by their very nature passionate, curious, and intriguedby the world; they seek to connect, find patterns, and make sense of things.Entering college is beginning something new. It is an initiative taken thathopefully enriches one’s experiences. In fact, a passion for learning is notwhat we in higher education should be inspiring in our students; it is whatwe must keep burning. Learning is more effective when new information ismade meaningful and is linked to personal experience or prior knowledge.When students are guided to reflect on their learning and to make associa-tions and connections, they can begin to create knowledge as well as makemeaning of what they learn.

We should not focus on telling students what to think; instead, weshould focus on helping them learn how to think and more importantly,why to think. We should help students understand how they know whatthey know, how and why research is conducted, and how they, the student,can contribute to the creation of knowledge. When they discover their ownability to contribute to scholarship, the answer to “why go to college” be-comes apparent. Learning is a journey and we should support students toparticipate in interesting, meaningful, and significant learning experiences.Education is defined by specific measures to be sure—exams, grades, andstatistics—but it is also the process of developing the mind. Yes, studentsshould acquire a breadth and depth of knowledge, the ability to commu-nicate, think critically, be acquainted with important methods of inquiry,secure lasting intellectual and cultural interests, gain self-knowledge, andlearn how to make informed judgments. In fact, most educators agree that

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING, no. 145, Spring 2016 © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/tl.20168 7

8 FINDING THE WHY: PERSONALIZING LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

the undergraduate experience should lead to a student becoming a morecompetent, complete, and concerned human being.

The higher education literature abounds with reports and studies call-ing for reform in undergraduate education, many of them geared to ad-dressing the personalization of learning for students. This volume addresseshow we might help students find the “why” of their educational endeavors.Many of the authors show connections between major initiatives already inplace and demonstrate how we might restructure undergraduate educationthrough the content of the curriculum, the way we teach, and our curricularlearning experiences. The goal is to maintain and strengthen the context oflearning while enhancing the content of a liberal education, with the focuson inquiry, research, and discovery as a frame of mind. This volume offersnew approaches to the first-year experience, as well as the remainder of astudent’s academic tenure. All of these are meant to engage undergraduatesin research and creative scholarship, and ultimately help them find theirown “why” of being in higher education.

Education is about discovery and in the first chapter, margit misangyiwatts, the editor, addresses the concept of personalizing learning. Shetouches on why there is a need for educational reform, and why she wantedto address the issue of abysmal national retention rates in this volume. Do-ing so, she talks about who today’s students are and what they are seekingin higher education. Looking at first-year programs around the country, shefinds very little has changed and makes a case for why giving students op-portunities for discovery is so important. She states that those in academialove knowledge and states that “we are fed, challenged, amazed, appalled,excited, interested, humored, and confused by knowledge. Those are our‘why.’ It is imperative that we invite students to share in all of this.”

Garrison Walters, in Chapter 2, addresses the big picture of attitudestoward education by both students and the wider community. He finds thatstudent perceptions about their ability to learn matter a lot and much of thatcomes from the environment in which they grew up. Walters is interested inchanging both the culture at a university as well as within the community.He feels both need a new mind-set if we are to be successful in makingeducation meaningful, which should lead to better retention. In order toemphasize his perspective, Walters discusses a study in the United Kingdomand finds the results might have implications for what we do in the UnitedStates. In order to help students develop a positive educational mind-set,he makes a case for focusing on cognitive factors but adds that we have tolook at cultural factors as well.

In Chapter 3, Ann S. Ferren and Chad B. Anderson approach the topicof integrated learning. By highlighting innovative examples from a variety ofliberal arts colleges around the country, these authors find that the entiretyof a student’s education should be an individual creative endeavor. The pro-grams that they describe focus on learning as a way to construct personalmeaning. Ferren and Anderson state, “At the heart of integrative learning

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING • DOI: 10.1002/tl

EDITOR’S NOTES 9

are intentionality, transparency, and complexity.” They discuss these con-cepts in depth and make an excellent case for integrated learning. Thoughmuch of what they address is in the realm of small liberal arts colleges, theymake suggestions for how to scale up these successful practices at largerinstitutions.

The concept of project-based learning is assessed in Chapter 4 as PennyPence Smith and Lindsey A. Gibson illustrate how this kind of learningis proving to be successful with business college students and students inother applied programs. They review the literature and find that numer-ous studies find value in project-based learning and see it at the forefrontof learning models. Project-based learning offers the student a “hands-on”approach to knowledge by working on actual projects with business com-munity organizations. However, Smith and Gibson look at the format fromtheir own experiences and with a longer view. They suggest the need fornew and innovative teaching methods in order to ensure graduates whobecome “educated people” as well as those vocationally trained. These au-thors suggest solutions to balancing theoretical and universal knowledgewith practical application through hybrid teaching formats, and other de-veloping pedagogical methods.

George D. Kuh offers “goal realization” as one key to higher retentionrates. In Chapter 5, Kuh defines goal realization to be “when students findtheir studies personally meaningful.” He thinks students should be able toarticulate what they expect to gain from attending college and that studentsshould strive to connect what they are learning to their lives. Kuh suggeststhat early interventions that address the factors predicting success are criti-cal. He lists five factors and then focuses on goal realization as one that is notoften attended to. Through a couple of student case studies, he illustratesthe kinds of programs and practices that can engage students in purposefulactivities. These would enrich their learning and deepen their knowledge.Ultimately, this would lead to more success for each student and perhapslead to higher retention rates.

In Chapter 6, Shala A. Mills and George L. Mehaffy describe the newblended courses being designed and offered through the American Associa-tion of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU). These courses are blendedin numerous ways. Faculties from different campuses work together to de-velop and deliver these courses, and the content transcends the typical gen-eral core found at most institutions of higher education. They invite stu-dents to analyze and design solutions to global challenges. They are focusedon civic outcomes. The purpose of this kind of blended course is to makelearning more meaningful and to have students recognize that what theylearn is relevant to their own lives as well as the communities in whichthey participate. Mehaffy and Mills are aware that building this new model,which fits a twenty-first-century student, will not be easy. But they arehopeful that these creative and imaginative new approaches will graduallybecome a core part of the intellectual activities of students.



The design and success of Guttman College is the topic of Chapter 7.Scott Evenbeck and Linda E. Merians describe the founding of the newcollege and the educational philosophies, which guided the developmentof their unique curriculum. The authors detail the various components ofthe first year—a mandatory summer bridge program, mandatory full-timeschooling for the first year, learning communities, and place-based learning.They used the principle of appreciative inquiry to guide their discussionsand decision making during the process of creating this new college. Even-beck and Merians also describe the many high-impact activities that engagetheir students. These include small seminars, service learning activities, andthe keeping of an e-portfolio throughout their career at Guttman. Guttmanhas been very successful, and much can be learned from their methods andthe impact of this intense curriculum on their students.

The Russell Scholars Program (RSP) at the University of SouthernMaine is discussed in Chapter 8. Stephen J. Romanoff outlines the vari-ous components of this four-year learning community. Emphasis in thisprogram is on personalizing learning by offering peer mentoring, advising,small classes, and fostering both collaborative teaching and learning. Stu-dents in RSP have had a retention rate of 80 percent and Romanoff suggeststhat the reason for this is the consistent connections offered students byhaving them participate in a one-credit Learning Community Lab through-out their four years in college. This affords them an opportunity to be bothmentors to the younger students, and to stay connected with each other asthey progress through their studies. Romanoff is a strong advocate for thelearning community structure and supports this by the results he has seenin RSP.

Valencia College is an innovative community college and in Chapter 9,Sandford C. Shugart discusses the various lessons learned from his workthere. He finds that there are five lessons that have contributed to this in-stitution’s success. By describing these lessons in detail, Shugart identifieswhat community colleges have to contribute to the national conversationabout student engagement, retention, and success. Fully supportive of per-sonalized learning on many levels, Shugart suggests that students and thecolleges must define the purpose of higher education together. By detail-ing the five lessons learned at Valencia, this author finds that students musthelp define their own destination, and colleges need to build that bridgewith them.

The editor offers concluding remarks in Chapter 10. This short piecehighlights the various ideas that emerge from this volume and suggests thatreaders find ways to incorporate what is useful in their own educationalchanges. She ends these remarks with a short vignette taken from her yearsdirecting first-year programs. It sums up the real purpose of what we all doin our academic worlds.

In all of this volume’s chapters, the authors argue that the studentneeds to be at the center of educational reform. They each bring a unique


EDITOR’S NOTES 11

perspective to how this is accomplished, be it in a learning community, aprescribed curriculum, inquiry-based learning, or a shift in the culture ofcommunities to embrace education in a new manner. What is important tonote is the unflinching belief of each of these contributors that giving stu-dents a voice, a reason, a path that they help create, and more transparencyto the question of “why” college, will lead to higher retention rates and evenmore importantly, deeper learning.

margit misangyi wattsEditor

margit misangyi watts is a professor in the College of Education at the Uni-versity of Hawaii at Manoa. Her expertise over the past 30 years has been increating programs and courses for undergraduate students, the goal of whichwas always engagement and finding the “why.” Most recently she has createdan online course in social media and is finding the personalization of learningin that venue to be powerful.


FOREWORD

It is a pleasure for me to join the 13 authors who have contributed to thisextremely student-centered work. Of this team, I know and have workedwith six beforehand: Scott Evenbeck, Ann Ferren, George Kuh, GeorgeMehaffy, Sandy Shugart, margit watts, and all of them write things hereinthat I haven’t heard them say before! What a treat! And now I want to knowbetter the other seven contributors whom I have not had the privilege ofprior association. I discovered in college that one of the very best ways toget to know anyone is to get to know how and what they think. And thesechapters certainly have introduced me to new thinkers to enhance my un-derstanding of my work, which is now termed by the academy as “studentsuccess.”

Our editor, the University of Hawaii’s Professor margit watts, tells usthat: “This volume addresses how we might help students find the ‘why’of their educational endeavors. Many of the authors show connectionsbetween major initiatives already in place and demonstrate how we mightrestructure undergraduate education through the content of the curricu-lum, the way we teach, and our curricular experiences.”

Yes, our contributors accomplish this vision, but I think they go muchfurther than this. From my perspective, this work is much more than the“why” that students must discover to motivate and guide them through ouracademy as we know it and as it is changing and becoming. This book islargely about the “how” that would enable the students to discover theirown “why.” The book is about what changes we need to effect in our insti-tutions to create the conditions for students to discover their “why.” So frommy point of view, this book is really about student discovery of epiphanyand then transformation. For me, this is the ultimate “how”!

This examination of how prominent academics, who are committedto increasing student success, view the purposes of higher education andunderstand and describe how students encounter, create, and move through



the discovery process of “why” higher education couldn’t come at a bettertime. This is because, as I see it, the dominant public policy discussion about“why” college is taking a very different direction than what our authors layout in this book.

I am referring to the extraordinary contemporary emphasis in studentsuccess work on responding to the so-called “completion agenda.” I havebeen working in the student success/retention vineyards for more than fortyyears and I have never seen the academy under such public policy pres-sure, and therefore financial and political pressure, to increase “completionrates.”

From my vantage point, the discussion is largely about completion forthe sake of completion. It does not usually address: completion for what?If there is attention to the “what,” the language is almost entirely aboutstudent employability and income. I do recognize and believe in the impor-tance of employability and income. I am a realist, a pragmatist. I know thatmost of our students are not going to live on trust funds. But I have manyother aspirations for our students beyond their employability. The comple-tion agenda, as its primary proponents present it, rarely makes any referenceto the idealism and aspirations contained in college and university missionstatements. And it is those statements that are the fundamental, guiding in-tellectual visions for our being—and, pragmatically speaking, accreditation.We are not accredited to accomplish the “completion agenda.” And that iswhy I resonate so positively with these contributors. They are not pursuinga lowest common denominator.

The research, experiences, and views of these thinkers come from awide range of higher education sectors and cultures, including the com-munity college, the private university, the regional comprehensive publicuniversity, the public flagship university, primarily from U.S. society, butinternationally as well. These contributors show that we all agree on thefundamentals of the importance of student learning, regardless of institu-tional type.

I described this work above as “student centered.” This is because myfellow thinkers are focused on how the higher education institution couldand should be centered on student purposes, and that our purposes shouldbe student purposes. This is very refreshing. This is not primarily aboutwhat we want to teach and how we want to teach and how to organize ourinstitutions for our purposes, advancement, and convenience. It is abouthow we might organize for student discovery and transformation throughlearning. In this respect, I am reminded of the same reaction I had to myfirst read of the famous Robert Barr, John Tagg article in Change magazinein 1995 about what organizations would look like if they were organizedaround a learning “paradigm” as opposed to a teaching paradigm.

Striking in this work is the fact that only a few references were madeto vocationalism. I have spent a whole career trying to persuade my fellow


5 Among the better predictors of persistence is goal realization, theability of a student to articulate in their own words why they are incollege and what they intend to do with their education. Thischapter explores the importance of goal realization to studentsuccess and the kinds of policies and practices that when enactedwell can help students make meaning of and appreciate therelevance of their experiences inside and outside the classroom totheir personal circumstances.

Making Learning Meaningful: EngagingStudents in Ways That Matter to Them

George D. Kuh

No topic has received more attention in the higher education literature dur-ing the past half century than the rates at which different groups of studentscomplete their educational objectives and what colleges and institutionsshould do to help more students finish what they start. The most widelyused term to refer to these outcomes is “student retention.” Personally es-chewing the retention term, I advocate using “persistence” to describe whatis required for students to attain their postsecondary educational goals. Butwhatever term is used, the phenomenon it represents is of significant inter-est to every group with a stake in assuring that U.S. colleges and universitiesperform at high levels.

Student engagement is another construct that in recent years hascaught the fancy of the higher education community as well as the pop-ular media, in large part because engagement is positively related to persis-tence, satisfaction, and a host of desired learning and personal developmentoutcomes. Although engagement has multiple meanings and applications, Iuse it here to represent the time and energy undergraduates put forth in ed-ucationally purposeful activities combined with the policies, programs, andpractices that institutions employ to induce students to put forth such effort(Kuh 2003). That is, both student effort and institutional effort are neededto increase the odds that all students will complete their studies and grad-uate with the knowledge and proficiencies they need to survive and thrivein the twenty-first century.



In this chapter, I discuss an aspect of the student experience relatedto both persistence and engagement to which too little attention has beenpaid, a behavioral construct I call goal realization. I discuss why goal realiza-tion is important and illustrate some of the practices that can help studentsdistill meaning from their studies and connect what they are learning fromtheir courses to their lives outside the classroom. In this way, institutionscan increase the likelihood that more students will engage in more mean-ingful ways with their studies and other important aspects of the collegeexperience, which will, in turn, encourage and support them to persist andachieve at higher levels.

First, a few more words about the importance of persistence and en-gagement to helping students acquire the proficiencies they need to maxi-mize the benefits of the postsecondary experience and prepare them to beeconomically self-sufficient and civically responsible after college.

Why Persistence and Engagement Matter

One of the persistent criticisms of U.S. colleges and universities is that de-spite decades of concern they have been unable to move the proverbialcollege completion needle, which is generally understood to be stuck atabout 55 percent of those who initially enroll in college full-time and even-tually finish with a certificate or degree. This low number is typically basedon a combined six-year graduate rate for baccalaureate granting institu-tions and three-year rate for students seeking associate degrees. However,such reports do not take into account studies that follow students for 12 ormore years, including those who leave one state and enroll in institutionsin other states. These longer-term analyses find that completion rates aremuch higher, perhaps as high as 70 percent. Even so, the dominant narra-tive is that postsecondary institutions have done too little to help too fewstudents attain their goals.

While elements of such criticism are warranted, there are many com-plex factors that contribute to college persistence rates. True, not all stu-dents put forth the effort necessary to succeed in college. But who one isborn to is the most important matter, as students from higher socioeco-nomic backgrounds are more likely to attend college right after high schooland graduate. This is due in large part to the quality of their pre-collegeeducational preparation and the cultural, economic, and social capital theirfamilies provide.

But as with most behavioral phenomena, it is more complicated thanthis. The complex patterns of social, cultural, and educational factors thatcontribute to disparities in college-going and completion rates among dif-ferent racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups have been summarizedin various places. The most comprehensive treatment of these factorsof which I am aware is contained in several papers commissioned bythe National Postsecondary Education Cooperative almost a decade ago:


MAKING LEARNING MEANINGFUL 51

http://nces.ed.gov/npec/papers.asp. My contribution (Kuh et al. 2007) tothis largely ignored treasure trove of information about student successidentified eight student characteristics that threaten persistence:

1. Academically underprepared for college-level work2. First-generation college student3. Gap between high school and college4. 30+ hours working per week5. Part-time enrollment6. Single parent7. Financially independent8. Children at home

The greater the number of these background characteristics a matricu-lating student has, the less likely it is that the student will persist and attainhis or her educational goals. Institutions cannot directly affect these fac-tors, but they can help faculty and staff become sensitive to students withthese characteristics; in fact, some colleges and universities have designedprograms and course offerings to ameliorate the obstacles to participationin the educational process (Kuh et al. 2010).

But after a student starts classes, early interventions that directly ad-dress the factors that predict success are critical, especially in the first weeksand months of study. Institutional leaders, faculty, and staff should be cog-nizant of five such early college factors because they loom large in influ-encing whether students will engage in their academic pursuits and otheraspects of undergraduate life at appropriate levels. They are:

1. Psychosocial fit—when students become part of an affinity group andperceive that there are others like them at the institution, these humanconnections contribute to a sense of social acceptance and personalefficacy.

2. Academic and social support—when students sense their campus ismeeting their academic needs through study and academic skills pro-grams and opportunities for social interaction, they are more satisfiedand tend to participate in various educationally purposeful activitiesat higher levels.

3. Involvement in the “right” kinds of activities—when students devotemore time and effort to educationally purposeful activities (a majorcomponent of the engagement construct), they are more likely to per-sist and otherwise benefit from the college experience.

4. Academic trajectory—if students accumulate fewer than 15 hours ofcredit in the first academic year (which is the case for most part-timestudents), they are less likely to graduate.

5. Goal realization—when students find their studies personally mean-ingful, comprehend the relevance of what they are learning, and are


http://nces.ed.gov/npec/papers.asp


able to apply at least some of what they are learning to some aspectsof their lives they consider important, they are more likely to persistand be satisfied with their college experience.

The first three of these early college predictors of student success havereceived a fair amount of attention in the literature. And many if not mostcampuses have enacted policies, programs, and practices to address thistrio of predictors. These interventions include learning communities, ser-vice learning courses, and first-year seminars, which—when implementedwell—are among the 10 high-impact practices that are associated with per-sistence and learning (Kuh 2008); that is, students who participate in theseprograms are more engaged overall in the college experience and gain morefrom their studies (see also Kuh and O’Donnell 2013; Finley and McNair2013). Moreover, while all students derive benefits from participating inhigh-impact practices, they seem to have a compensatory effect for studentswho are less well prepared academically or who are members of historicallyunderserved groups; that is, the performance of such students seems to begreater as a result of the high-impact practice than what might be otherwiseexpected (Finley and McNair 2013).

It is difficult to directly and materially address the academic trajectorychallenge without providing financial support that will enable students toattend college full-time. There are promising experiments underway, suchas the new Guttman College in the CUNY system, where students are re-quired to attend full-time and receive sufficient financial, academic, andsocial support that makes it possible for them to participate in one or morehigh-impact practices. But such programs are rare, in large part because theyare quite expensive.

As noted earlier, far less attention has been given to goal realization,which I consider to be a largely untapped but very promising area for in-terventions, especially those that combine classroom assignments with re-quired out-of-class applications.

Why Goal Realization Matters and What It Looks Like inPractice

As suggested earlier, goal realization is the ability of a student to articulatewhat he or she intends to get out of college and to make connections be-tween what he or she is learning inside and outside of class to priorities andactivities that have value in the present moment. Unfortunately, the major-ity of undergraduates—especially but not only those matriculating imme-diately after high school—are not able to clarify in their mind’s eye, nor arethey able to tell others in their own language what they hope to gain fromcollege. Perhaps more important, they do not see and appreciate the rele-vance of what they are studying to things that matter in their lives. Keepin mind, too, that the vast majority of traditional-age students are in the



dualistic stage of intellectual and cognitive development. That is, they tendto see information as either right or wrong; ambiguity and complexity arebeyond their grasp. Thus, dualistic students tend to overlook or avoid con-cepts and experiences that are very difficult to comprehend; they eschewsuch circumstances and much prefer fairly simple, straightforward expla-nations and activities that have concrete applications to practical problemsor situations.

Now, consider Suzanne who—as with most 18-year-olds—has dual-istic tendencies. In her first academic term, she is taking a world historylecture-oriented course focused on events in the seventeenth century. Sheapprehends nothing in the readings or material discussed in class so far—the emergence of the Scientific Revolution, China losing about 30 percentof its population during the Ming dynasty, and the early decades of theEuropean colonization of North America—that is germane to her declaredelementary education major or how she might apply this information towhat she envisions a third-grade classroom will be like. She does not seehow anything she has heard so far can help her make sense of her rela-tionship with her roommate or applies to her part-time food service job oncampus. For Suzanne, the world history class as well as her philosophy andgeneral science classes—also large lectures—are at best uninteresting andat worst confusing and irrelevant to the pressing priorities in her life. Classquizzes and papers seem to emphasize recall of facts without an underlyingfoundation of why this information does or should matter.

Of course, there are many first-year students who are more advancedthan Suzanne in their cognitive and intellectual development. And for someof them, certain lecture classes stimulate their thinking in ways that beginto spark connections between history, philosophy, and psychology. But thiskind of thinking—a form of metacognition if you will—is beyond Suzanne’sintellectual grasp at the moment. As a result, Suzanne is spending more timewondering if she belongs in college. After all, no one else in her family hasa college degree. Indeed, she’s the first one to even take college courses!Not only is Suzanne unable to find meaning in or use in a practical wayanything she is supposed to be learning, staying in school is expensive andgetting more so. Maybe, she thinks, it is time to accept the fact that she isnot college material; perhaps she should cut her losses, leave school, andfind a job before she takes on even more loan debt.

Kari could be Suzanne’s identical twin, at least so far as her intellectualand cognitive development are concerned. She’s also the first in her low-income family to go to college. It was a scary proposition to take this costlystep. But after a few shaky weeks of uncertainty, Kari is now beginning tobetter understand what is expected of her and what she needs to do to suc-ceed. Equally important, she has found—or more accurately—her small 22-student first-year seminar class has placed her in situations where she hashad to demonstrate and use what she is learning, not only in the classroombut outside of class as well. The seminar is organized around the theme



of sustainability. As with all her other classes this first academic term, thisseminar is part of the required general education component and happensto be taught by a faculty member from the English department. Like mostother first-year seminars at her school, hers is writing intensive, in that fourshort papers are required, and each can be revised based on peer review andfeedback from the instructor and the upper-division peer mentor assignedto the class. After what first appeared to Kari to be a lot of work (she didnot write four papers her entire senior year of high school!), she alreadyhas noticed that her writing has improved and she is only halfway throughthe academic term. Moreover, the writing assignments are intentionally de-signed so that Kari has to apply at least three concepts introduced eitherfrom recent class readings or discussions to some aspect of sustainabilityefforts on campus, either underway or perceived by Kari to be needed inthe near term. This kind of assignment required Kari to apply concepts—some of which are theoretical—to a concrete problem in a setting she iscoming to know fairly well.

Kari also has the additional advantage of working at the welcome deskin the campus union, which is helping her see the relevance of what sheis learning. Already, she has met twice with her supervisor, the associatedirector of the union, along with five other undergraduates, to discuss howthey are applying what they are learning in their union jobs to their classes.And the discussion has already taken an opposite turn, so that she and hercoworkers were asked to think about what she is learning in her classes thatshe can use on the job. At first, Kari was nonplussed. She had never beforethought about the possible relationships between these different aspects ofher life, let alone had to think aloud how her studies were informing whatshe did on her job and vice versa. But as her embarrassment subsided andshe heard other students offer personal stories, Kari too began to see how, forexample, giving feedback on a peer’s first-year seminar paper helped boosther confidence in her information desk role when responding to peopleasking questions about the campus.

Applying some of what she is learning in her first-year seminar is be-ginning to change the way she approaches her other classes, all but one ofwhich are large lecture courses. That is, she now understands that part ofbeing a good learner is figuring out how information can be used in dif-ferent situations. At the same time, Kari is developing a deeper capacity forthinking about her thinking and what she is learning, connecting her learn-ing experiences inside and outside of class, and transferring the meaning ofthese connections to other aspects of her life. And by discussing these ex-periences with her teachers, work supervisors, and peers, Kari is gettingpractice at how to describe her learning and what she can do with it, whichwill be invaluable when interviewing for subsequent jobs on campus andafter college. Moreover, Kari sees value in what she is learning and how itcan help her realize her ambition of being the first in her family to earn acollege degree and become a schoolteacher. She no longer wonders whether



she has the right stuff to be in college. Indeed, Kari is beginning to use hermind in ways that are both rewarding and exciting.

Final Words

To my knowledge, no one has estimated the number of students who leavecollege prematurely because they were unable to find concrete, personallymeaningful ways to apply at least some of what they are studying to theircurrent situation and anticipated post-college lives. But many faculty andstaff in colleges and universities—especially academic advisors—are famil-iar with something akin to Suzanne’s experience. Of course, many studentslike Suzanne summon the fortitude to stay in school. But imagine how manymore students would continue their studies and deepen their learning inmeaningful ways if they had one or more classes in their first college yearand later that were structured like Kari’s.

As Pascarella and Terenzini (2005) pointed out, postsecondary insti-tutions must enact a variety of policies, programs, and practices to engagestudents more fully in educationally purposeful activities in order to helpthem succeed and enrich their learning. A laser-like focus on addressinggoal realization is one of the few promising approaches that do not requireadditional resources to implement. Teaching and learning centers can beginimmediately to include goal realization strategies in course redesign work-shops and other faculty development activities. Student employment of-fices and other campus partners, such as student affairs departments, cando their part by initiating structured supervisor–student worker conversa-tions about the connections between academics and job experiences, sim-ilar to the Guided Reflection on Work initiative at the University of Iowa(http://vp.studentlife.uiowa.edu/initiatives/grow/). Academic advisors alsocan play a key role by encouraging students to take part in high-impactpractices that are often rich with activities that induce students to applywhat they are learning to the kinds of unscripted problems they will surelyface in the future.

When all is said and done, every college graduate today needs todemonstrate the capacity to reflect on experiences in and out of the class-room, to connect what they are learning from different courses, out-of-classexperiences, and life beyond the institution, and to transfer and use whathe or she has learned in different settings that present novel challenges andopportunities. Goal realization is a necessary condition toward these im-portant ends.

References

Finley, A. and T. McNair. 2013. Assessing Underserved Students’ Engagement in High-Impact Practices. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges & Universities.


http://vp.studentlife.uiowa.edu/initiatives/grow/


Kuh, G. D. 2003. “What We’re Learning About Student Engagement from NSSE.” Change35(2): 24–32.

Kuh, G. D. 2008. High-impact educational practices: What they are, who has access to them,and why they matter. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges & Universi-ties.

Kuh, G. D., J. Kinzie, J. A. Buckley, B. K. Bridges, and J. C. Hayek. 2007. “Piecing To-gether the Student Success Puzzle: Research, Propositions, and Recommendations.”ASHE Higher Education Report 32(5). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Kuh, G. D., and K. O’Donnell. 2013. Ensuring Quality and Taking High-Impact Practicesto Scale. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges & Universities.

Kuh, G.D., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J.H., Whitt, E.J., & Associates (2005/2010). Student successin college: Creating conditions that matter. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Pascarella, E. T., and P. T. Terenzini. 2005. How College Affects Students: Vol. 2. A ThirdDecade of Research. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

GEORGE D. KUH directs the National Institute of Learning Outcomes Assessment(NILOA) colocated at the University of Illinois and Indiana University. Found-ing director of the National Survey of Student Engagement, George has writtenand consulted extensively about learning outcomes assessment, institutionalimprovement, and student engagement.


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