In this third in a thematic
series of Nutshells, we provide more options for actions we can take and skills
we can develop to help students succeed. Swail (2006) noted that retention was helped by institutional attention to five areas: (1)
social and academic integration, (2) academic preparedness, (3) campus climate
characterized by diversity in the student population, faculty, staff, and
curriculum (4) commitment to educational goals and the institution and (5)
financial aid. At first, some of Swail’s points may seem outside the control of
a classroom instructor, but none are completely beyond our influence.
In NNv14n5 we noted
that students need understanding of the distinction between surface learning
and education. This touched on Swail’s points #2 and 4. Without the basic
awareness of what constitutes the signature of a quality education, students
are unprepared to take advantage of any kind of learning opportunity that goes
beyond their presumption that good teaching is simply about conveying facts.
They may even resist unfamiliar opportunities in ways that prove career
threatening, in unsupportive departments or institutions, to those teachers who
try to provide them (Thorn, 2003).
In NNv14n6, we
emphasized the need to convey expectations for responsibility and active
engagement by students, starting with the first day. This emphasis touches on
Swail’s points #1, 3 and 5. The institutions that had the signature of student
success (detailed by Kuh and others, 2005, in Project DEEP —Documenting Effective Educational
Practices), without exception, know their own identity well enough to convey a
consistent set of expectations to students from all levels of the campus. From
top to bottom, these institutions take pride in and identify with high
expectations.
The institutional attributes
that professors and students now enjoy at DEEP institutions are attainable
here. For now, we already have power to enact better support in our classrooms.
First, we can improve the social and academic environment of our classes by
creating communities of learning within them. Use of simple cooperative
learning structures within our classrooms, a topic of several of our Nutshells, helps
students to better know and support one another. This will be increasingly
important to retain new students if ISU starts to attain a more diverse student
body through recruitment outside the nearby five county area, because these
students won’t be bringing their support groups of parents or high school
friends with them. A way to build extended support networks for our students
involves creating a class directory with groups (NNv1n3). Through
creating base support groups of at least four students with shared phone numbers
and the same zip codes, we can actually reduce both their distress and our own.
When one of the group needs to miss a class, they can contact other members to
obtain notes and pick up handouts. When difficulty occurs, and it will, the
group members gain encouragement through overt permission to call one another
for support, discussion, and companionship in study. Students can meet more
rigorous learning challenges with one another’s help than alone. Working alone,
without welcoming interaction with new colleagues, is an ineffective way to
advance learning by either students or research professors.
The best way we can promote
success in our classrooms is to design learning activities that enable students
to resolve a challenge by acting in class rather than just listening. Note,
however, the key word, design. We need to design experiences that lead students
to perceive the need for individual preparation in order to get the benefit
that group synergy offers. Consider
a design that begins with an assignment at home that must produce a product,
followed by a second designed phase that causes students to interact during
class in ways that advance the individuals’ initial product through group
participation. Finally, a comparison of results in the class as a whole helps
to develop students’ awareness of achievement as a process. There is a myth
that one cannot engage as much content through interaction as through lecture.
Those involved in New Faculty Orientation saw us reduce eight hours of talking
head deliveries into 2.5 hours of interaction that provided both better
learning and a warmer welcoming. The key was design of a suitable structure.
Lack of academic preparation
is probably the most evident challenge we face in our classrooms. Today, open
admissions institutions must educate students who simply would never have
gained admittance to college a couple of decades ago. We must college-educate
larger percentages of the populace because the kinds of blue-collar
opportunities that carried security, benefits and reasonable pay, once
available to high school graduates, are vanishing from the American economy.
Although many professors say “If you want better retention, get us better
students,” this ignores the harsher social reality of about 40 percent of all
entering freshman, nationally, being academically unprepared for college. That
percentage may be higher still here at ISU. The implications to face follow.
(1) If we simply write off 40% of our youth from succeeding in college, are they going to be able to support
themselves? If not, who is going to support them? (2) An education can neither be conferred by a graduation
ritual nor bought and sold like a service or product. If we merely process
students rather than educate them, much of our populace will end up with a
college degree, a large debt of student loans, and an intellectual capability
far below that of a legitimate college graduate. Thus, we must not simply retain the academically unprepared;
we must actually educate them. So, what else can we do, just within our
classes, to deliver a college degree with an honest college education, when we
must teach college material to unprepared students?
First, maintain high
standards and convey these as expectations. A good way to clarify standards is
to give an ungraded quiz or a simulated test as early as possible in the
semester, so that students get practice in comparing what they believe is good
preparation for performance against your actual expectations for their
performance. Clarifying misunderstandings early can reduce students'
discovering this through disastrous performance on a test that will count very
heavily for a grade. Second, realize that ISU has an incredibly effective
support network that new students do not seem to know about, even though their
fees support this network in the Center for Teaching and Learning (CeTL).
DIRECT STUDENTS TO THE CENTER FOR HELP. Tell them to come to the Center in
Museum Building Suite 434, to look on the home page at http://www.isu.edu/ctl/ and open the Student
Services link. I personally manned the CeTL booth for a while at the “White
Tent Expo” last month. I asked every student who approached the table: “We are
the Center for Teaching and Learning; do you know what we do?” By my count,
eighty percent of my small sampling did not know that they had already paid a
fee that insured their tutoring support is free. None knew that tutoring is the
most effective known teaching method (NNv10n6), and
most did now know that we have both College Learning Strategies and First Year Seminar courses that can help
them succeed.
Most students enter college
with substandard writing skills. This arises mainly because these students have
neither had to read nor write much. Put an end to their expectation that they
will have to do neither as early in the course as possible. Assign reading
along with writing. Consider, in lower division courses, having students write
one test question per paragraph in their text readings. In upper division
classes, cut off the abstract from a professional journal article and have
students write and submit the abstract for the article from their reading of
it.
Research shows that our
writing of extensive corrections of mechanics and grammar on students’ papers
does little good in improving their writing. Having an individual conference
with the student does generate improvement. For those of us with small classes,
we should have at least one conference with each of our students. One way is to
schedule an appointment for each student to come once to your office to get their graded paper, so you can have
that needed conference with them. For those of us with large classes and
insufficient time, let a Writing Center tutor in CeTL have the conference. When
marking students’ work, use two colors of pencil. Mark content errors in one
color. Mark writing errors with another. Do not waste your time writing in the
corrections. Send students to the Writing Center to learn with a tutor to
discover and perform the needed corrections for the writing errors you
designated. Have them come to you or to your graduate assistants regarding
content errors.
Always create rubrics for
the scoring of written assignments (NNv12n6 and NNv12n7). This
saves you immense amounts of time in grading essay tests and assignments and
provides scaffolding for students. Don’t be surprised if under-prepared
students cannot at first follow a rubric. This stems from their inadequate
preparation in reading and comprehension. Send the student to the Writing
Center for a conference with a tutor in meeting the criteria of a rubric. Send
copies of your rubrics to the Center so that the tutors will give their
consultations in accord with your intentions.
We are in the business of
teaching, not flunking. When students make errors, grade rigorously, but give
students the incentive to learn by gaining points back when they address their errors in
writing by explaining why they made the error, how their understanding has
changed and when they hit a similar challenge, how they are going to better
prepare themselves to handle that kind of challenge (NNv13n4).
References
Kuh, G. D., and others,
2005, Student Success in College—Creating Conditions that Matter: San Francisco, Wiley, 370 p.
Swail, W. S., March, 2006,
Student Success, Educational
Policy Institute, <http://www.studentretention.org/20063/feature.html>,
in Barriers to Student Retention
and Success on College Campuses.
Thorn, P.M., 2003, Bridging
the Gap Between What is Praised and What is Practiced: Supporting the Work of
Change as Anatomy & Physiology Instructors Introduce Active Learning into
their Undergraduate Classrooms: PhD Dissertation, Austin, TX, University of
Texas, 384 p.
New Feature on Center for Teaching and
Learning Home Page!
Go to http://www.isu.edu/ctl/and
click on TOOLBOX
