What Matters to Student Success? Lessons for ANAC Institutions

1. What Matters to Student Success? Lessons for ANAC Institutions • George D. Kuh • Elon University • June 13, 2007

2. We all want the same thing—an undergraduate experience that results in high levels of learning and personal development for all students.

3. Overview • Essential learning outcomes • Why engagement matters • 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. Association of American Colleges and Universities

7. Narrow Learning is Not Enough—The Essential Learning Outcomes • Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical & Natural World • Intellectual and Practical Skills • Personal and Social Responsibility • Integrative Learning

8. 38% 37% 37% 10% 21% 4% 6% 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 Foreign language proficiency * Skills/abilities recent graduates think are the two most important to employers

9. 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

10. Foundations of Student Engagement Time on task (Tyler, 1930s) Quality of effort (Pace, 1960-70s) Student involvement (Astin, 1984) Social, academic integration (Tinto,1987, 1993) Good practices in undergraduate education (Chickering & Gamson, 1987) Outcomes (Pascarella, 1985) Student engagement (Kuh, 1991, 2005)

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. NSSE Project Scope • One million+ students from 1,200 different schools • 80% of 4-yr U.S. undergraduate FTE • 50 states, Puerto Rico • 35 Canadian universities • 100+ consortia

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

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

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

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

22. Does institutional size matter to engagement? Yes, size matters. Smaller isgenerally better.

23. Benchmark Scores for All Students by Undergraduate Enrollment

24. Academic Challenge, Active Learning, Student-Faculty Interaction by Enrollment

25. Student engagement varies more within than between institutions.

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

29. Behold the compensatory effects of engagement

34. What Are Faculty Telling Us?

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

36. 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

37. Figure 1. Average Weekly Research Hours by Institutional Type

38. Faculty Time on Research with Undergraduates and Probability of Student Participation in Research 0.50 0.38 Probability of Undergraduate Research 0.25 0.13 0 0.91 2.17 3.42 4.68 5.93 Faculty Research with Undergraduates (hours)

39. Faculty View of Importance of Doing Research with Students and Probability of Students Doing Research 0.50 0.38 Probability of Undergraduate Research 0.25 0.13 0 1.87 2.25 2.62 2.99 3.37 Importance of Undergraduate Research

40. 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 • Teacher-scholars matter

41. What does an educationally effective university look like?

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

43. DEEP Selection Criteria • Controlling for student and institutional characteristics (i.e., selectivity, diversity, institutional type), DEEP schools have: • Higher-than-predicted graduation rates • Higher-than-predicted NSSE scores • Region, institutional type, special mission

44. Project 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

45. 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

46. 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

47. 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

48. DEEP Lessons: First things first… Organizations that improve… create and nurture agreement on what is worth achieving, and they set in motion the internal processes by which people progressively learn how to do what they need to do in order to achieve what is worthwhile. (Elmore in Fullan, 2001, p. 125)

49. 1. Get the ideas right Focus on a real problem • Persistence • Fragmented gen ed program • Tired pedagogical practices • Poor first-year experience • Low academic challenge • Connections to real world • Capstone experiences • Under-engaged students

50. 2. Lay out the path to student success