Increasing Student Engagement

Notes from The International Conference on College Teaching and Learning in Jacksonville, Florida, April 13-17, 2009, by Joanne Chesley, Ed.D., CETL.

I attended several sessions related to student engagement/ student retention. Here is a summary of what I learned from the studies presented (which I will cite/detail upon request):

• Student satisfaction impacts retention, even if it does not impact grades.
• Students need deep integrative learning that they can apply to many situations. They need learning that helps them see the world differently.
• To get a good picture of what high student engagement should look like, we should study 'educationally effective institutions' to discern the 7 best practices; 1) student faculty interaction 2) active learning 3)immediate feedback 4) time on task 5) high expectations 6) respect for diversity 7)enforced cooperation (can be achieved via team based /problem based learning).
• The university should participate in one of the major satisfaction survey processes such as NSSE, National Survey of Student Engagement. These will let you know how engaged your students are in the academic life of the university as well as the social life. Only 13% of college students report participation in extracurricular activities. The more engaged, the better the student's grades. The more satisfied generally, the more they stay to graduation.
• Students persist to graduation when they have: 1) excellent 1st year experience courses 2) common intellectual experiences 3)learning communities 4) writing intensive courses and 5) effective relationships with faculty/mentors. These are called high impact practices. These practices force interaction with peers and faculty, ensure more feedback from professors, encourage appreciation for diversity, encourage cooperation, and ensure the opportunity to have concrete experiences (vs. theoretical, nebulous, extraneous). These practices have an even greater effect on students who are considered to have high risk factors (for dropout).
• At many universities, 10-15% of the enrolled students drop between registration and census date (10days into the semester). We should try to find out what this is all about. This may indicate something about the environment or the red tape they have been through, or the fear they are beginning to feel. Some of these same feelings will remain among those who choose to stay, but may continue to impact them negatively. Focus groups held with students who did quit prematurely report that relationships /rapport is the biggest factor missing in their early experiences on campus.
• Successful completion (C or better) of well-structured developmental courses contributes to greater college success than that experienced by those who did not even take developmental courses.
• Universities must experiment with a wide range of initiatives based on varying retention factors, in an effort to find what works. Some say that anything else equals malpractice. Refusing to change our teaching habits, curriculum assessments, and resources should not be an option.
• The teaching practice most connected to student persistence is immediate and meaningful feedback to student work.

I also attended sessions on Team Based Learning, Client Based Learning, the Pedagogy to Androgogy continuum, and Using I-clickers for engagement, feedback and assessment.
I have tape recordings of most of these sessions, and will loan them at your request. I also have the compendium of selected conference papers that you may borrow as well.