• Welcome
    • Curriculum Vitae
    • About Me
  • Publications
    • Work in Progress
  • Blog
  • Provocations

Share |

Improving Student Learning: Ten Easy (and Not So Expensive) Steps

I keep about things that work, that is, practices that seem to improve student learning and engagement. While some of them can be complicated or expensive, many appear to me straightforward and do-able, even on a tight budget. This means that colleges and universities don't have to wait for a global economic recovery or the next capital campaign to try them out; they can be done now. Here are the practices, organized as a ten-step list of what I think can work.

But first, a couple of notes:

Where possible, I have included a couple of suggested resources that might be helpful in thinking about and implementing the steps. I hope readers will give me your suggestions.

The following two publications are not specific to any one step, but are in general quite helpful:

  • Derek Bok, Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They should be Learning More
  • The Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, Beyond the Rankings: Measuring Learning in Higher Education

To improve student learning, it sometimes helps to have an outside perspective. The Teagle Assessment Scholars are a group of faculty, administrators, and researchers who work with colleges and universities on a consultant basis and help them use evidence change teaching practice and strengthen learning.

Lastly, before taking on any—or all!—of these steps, it makes sense to get a baseline showing where student learning stands on your campus right at this moment. That needn't be complicated. Most institutions already have survey results and other data that make it possible to draw such a baseline, but this evidence is only sometimes used by individual faculty members or curriculum committees. It can be very helpful as time goes on in determining what really works in your setting and what doesn't. Does the baseline have to provide comparability with peer institutions? Not necessarily, but such comparisons, readily derived from surveys such as the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), can help identify areas of special strength or weakness, thereby helping focus efforts and resources.

Now, the ten steps:

1. Set clear, robust learning goals at whatever level you can—institutional, departmental, course.

Resources:
  • The Association of American Colleges & Universities, Our Students' Best Work
  • Jack Meacham and Ross Miller, Assessment of Liberal Education Outcomes: Findings from Interviews with Faculty, Administrators, and Students

2. Communicate those goals clearly and repeatedly, explaining why they are important to students (e.g. through your website and printed literature, through advising, during orientation week; provide them with data about their progress toward these goals), parents, alumni, governing boards, and new faculty as they come on board.

3. Align practice (individual assignment, course, program, departmental major requirements) with these goals; make explicitly how each relates to your overall institutional learning goals.

Resources:
  • Liberal Education, special issue on "Liberal Education and the Disciplines"

4. "High-impact educational practices" really produce results. George Kuh's recent publication, High Impact Educational Practices (see below) names ten:
  • First-Year Seminars and Experiences
  • Common Intellectual Experiences
  • Learning Communities
  • Writing-Intensive Courses
  • Collaborative Assignments and Projects
  • Undergraduate Research
  • Diversity/Global Learning
  • Service Learning, Community-Based Learning
  • Internships
  • Capstone Courses and Projects

5. Encourage all students to participate in most or all of these practices. (Most campuses already have such programs, but participation rates are low. See Kuh, page 3. Poor advising is sometimes the impediment to wider use of these practices.)

Resources:
  • George Kuh, High Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter
  • Association of American Colleges and Universities, Faculty Roles in High-Impact Practices (meeting) 

6. Encourage all faculty to put to use the practical results of new learning in cognitive science.

Resources:
  • Columbia Collegium on Student Learning, Findings
  • Jill Jeffery, Cognition and Brain Development in Students of Traditional College-Going Age: An Annotated Bibliography
  • James Zull, The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching the Practice of Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning
  • Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan, The Science of Learning: An Annotated Bibliography

7. Make sure course evaluations ask students to reflect on their progress toward course, departmental, and institutional learning goals.

Resources:
  • The IDEA Center, The IDEA Student Ratings of Instruction System
  • Robert J. Thompson and Matt Serra, "Use of Course Evaluations to Assess the Contributions of Curricular and Pedagogical Initiatives to Undergraduate General Educational Learning Objectives," Education 125, no. 4 (2005): 693-703. 8. 

8. Determine what is really working and where further improvements are most needed and most likely to be made. A baseline established at the outset should be helpful in this effort, but additional evidence may be needed.

Resources:
  • ACT, Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency (CAAP)
  • The Association of American Colleges & Universities, Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE)
  • Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University, National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)
  • Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College, Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education
  • Council for Aid to Education, Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA)
  • Council for Aid to Education, CLA in the Classroom
  • Educational Testing Service, Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress (MAPP)
  • Higher Education Research Institute, CIRP Freshmen Survey

9. Systematically allocate resources and efforts to achieve iterative improvement in student progress toward institutional goals.

10. Report on what has been learned at regional and national meetings, campus publications, and on websites.

Meetings:
  • Association for the Study of Higher Education
  • Association of American Colleges & Universities Meetings and Institutes
  • International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
  • IUPUI Assessment Institute
  • Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching

Publications:
  • Change
  • The Chronicle Review
  • InsideHigherEd
  • Liberal Education
  • Peer Review

Blogs:
  • The Teagle Liblog

These ten steps won't do everything that needs to be done, but my hunch is that they may be synergistic, that is, that success on one front will make it easier to make progress on others. Do tell you what you think about them by emailing me at wrconnor@teaglefoundation.org. Have you tried some of the steps and found whether they work on your campus? Are there other steps you think are more important and effective? Are there resources other should know about?

Revised March 11, 2010.


Share |