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 Powerful Partnerships: A Shared Responsibility for Learning

A Joint Report:
American Association for Higher Education
American College Personnel Association
NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education

June 2, 1998

Despite American higher education's success at providing collegiate education for an unprecedented number of people, the vision of equipping all our students with learning deep enough to meet the challenges of the post-industrial age provides us with a powerful incentive to do our work better. People collaborate when the job they face is too big, is too urgent, or requires too much knowledge for one person or group to do alone. Marshalling what we know about learning and applying it to the education of our students is just such a job. This report makes the case that only when everyone on campus -- particularly academic affairs and student affairs staff--shares the responsibility for student learning will we be able to make significant progress in improving it.

Collectively, we know a lot about learning. A host of faculty, staff, and institutional initiatives undertaken since the mid-80s and supported by colleges and universities, foundations, government, and other funding sources have resulted in a stream of improvement efforts related to teaching, curriculum, assessment, and learning environments. The best practices from those innovations and reforms mirror what scholars from a variety of disciplines, from neurobiology to psychology, tell us about the nature of learning. Exemplary practices are also shaped by the participants' particular experiences as learners and educators, which is why a program cannot simply be adopted but must be adapted to a new environment.

Despite these examples, most colleges and universities do not use our collective wisdom as well as they should. To do so requires a commitment to and support for action that goes beyond the individual faculty or staff member. Distracted by other responsibilities and isolated from others from whom they could learn about learning and who would support them, most people on campus contribute less effectively to the development of students' understanding than they might. It is only by acting cooperatively in the context of common goals, as the most innovative institutions have done, that our accumulated understanding about learning is put to best use.

There is another reason to work collaboratively to deepen student learning. Learning is a social activity, and modeling is one of the most powerful learning tools. As participants in organizations dedicated to learning, we have a responsibility to model for students how to work together on behalf of our shared mission and to learn from each other.

On behalf of such collaboration, we, the undersigned members of this Joint Task Force on Student Learning, offer the following report. It begins with a statement of the insights gained through the scholarly study of learning and their implications for pedagogy, curricula, learning environments, and assessment. Each principle is illustrated by a set of exemplary cooperative practices that bring together academic and student affairs professionals to make a difference in the quality of student learning, a difference that has been assessed and documented. The report ends with a call to all involved in higher education to reflect upon these findings and examples in conjunction with their own and their colleagues' experience and to draw on all these sources of knowledge as the basis for actions to promote higher student achievement.

--Joint Task Force on Student Learning

The following ten principles about learning and how to strengthen it are drawn from research and practice and provide grounds for deliberation and action. All those who participate in the educational mission of institutions of higher education -- students, faculty, and staff -- share responsibility for pursuing learning improvements. Collaborations between academic and student affairs personnel and organizations have been especially effective in achieving this better learning for students. We advocate these partnerships as the best way to realize fully the benefits of the findings.

Learning Principles and Collaborative Action

1. Learning is fundamentally about making and maintaining connections: biologically through neural networks; mentally among concepts, ideas, and meaning; and experientially through interaction between the mind and environment, self and other, generality and context, deliberation and action.

   Rich learning experiences and environments require and enable students to make connections:

   • through learning materials that stimulate comparisons and associations, explore relationships, evaluate alternative perspectives and solutions, and challenge students to draw conclusions from evidence;
   • through opportunities to relate their own experience and knowledge to materials being learned;
   • through pedagogies emphasizing critical analysis of conflicting views and demanding that students make defensible judgments about and demonstrate linkages among bodies of knowledge;
   • through curricula integrating ideas and themes within and across fields of knowledge and establishing coherence among learning experiences within and beyond the classroom; and
   • through classroom experiences integrated with purposeful activities outside of class.

   To make and maintain connections, faculty and staff collaborators design learning experiences that:

   • expose students to alternative world views and culturally diverse perspectives;
   • give students responsibility for solving problems and resolving conflicts;
   • make explicit the relationships among parts of the curriculum and between the curriculum and other aspects of the collegiate experience; and
   • deliberately personalize interventions appropriate to individual students' circumstances and needs.

   University of Maryland, College Park offers the College Park Scholars program, a two-year living/learning opportunity for freshmen and sophomores. Students reside and attend most of their classes within residence hall communities. Residence life staff, faculty, and other program staff offices are in the halls. Student scholars live on floors corresponding to thematically linked academic programs. For participating commuting students, access is provided to common areas in host residence halls. The thematic programs deliberately connect what the students learn in the classroom to the larger world through weekly colloquia, discussion groups, and field trips dealing with related issues.

   The scholars program has improved recruitment and retention of talented undergraduates and has provided an enriched learning experience and a more personalized and human scale to campus life. Faculty offices and classrooms within the residence halls lead to enhanced interaction with faculty.

   At University of Missouri, Kansas City, Supplemental Instruction and Video-Based Supplemental Instruction help students make connections. Supplemental Instruction uses peer-assisted study sessions to increase student academic performance and student retention in historically difficult academic courses. In the sessions, students learn how to integrate course content and develop reasoning and study strategies, facilitated by student leaders who have previously succeeded in these courses and who are trained in study strategies and peer collaborative learning techniques. The video-based program offers an alternative course delivery system. Faculty offer courses on videotape and students enroll in a video section. A facilitator guides review of the video lectures, stopping the tapes in mid-lecture to engage in class discussions, integration, and practice of learning strategies.

   More than three hundred studies nationally have documented the impact of supplemental instruction, demonstrating its special impact on students with weak academic preparation. The U.S. Department of Education designated supplemental instruction as an Exemplary Education Program in 1982, noting its ability to increase academic achievement and college graduation rates among students. Program staff at UMKC have further investigated the effects of this instruction through the study of neurological processes. Using a Quantitative Electroencephalography instrument, they have found evidence of improved brain electrical activity in students who participate in the programs.

2. Learning is enhanced by taking place in the context of a compelling situation that balances challenge and opportunity, stimulating and utilizing the brain's ability to conceptualize quickly and its capacity and need for contemplation and reflection upon experiences. Presenting students with compelling situations amplifies the learning process. Students learn more when they are:
   • asked to tackle complex and compelling problems that invite them to develop an array of workable and innovative solutions;
   • asked to produce work that will be shared with multiple audiences;
   • offered opportunities for active application of skills and abilities and time for contemplation; and
   • placed in settings where they can draw upon past knowledge and competencies while adapting to new circumstances.

   To create compelling situations, faculty and staff collaborators:

   • articulate and enforce high standards of student behavior inside and outside the classroom;
   • give students increasing responsibility for leadership;
   • create environments and schedules that encourage intensive activity as well as opportunities for quiet deliberation; and
   • establish internships, externships, service-learning, study abroad, and workplace-based learning experiences.

   The First-Year Experience at the College of New Jersey is a collaboration between General Education and Student Life. Students live in residence hall communities with a volunteer non-resident faculty fellow for each floor. Faculty fellows, student life staff, and students plan residence hall activities. Students also take an interdisciplinary core course, Athens to New York, taught by full-time faculty and selected student life staff in residence hall classrooms, and incorporating service-learning. Four questions drive the mission of the First-Year Experience: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be a member of a community? What does it mean to be moral, ethical, and just? and How do communities respond to differences? Service-learning provides a compelling situation in which students can confront complex social issues, apply their talents to marginalized communities, interact and work with diverse populations, and enhance their career preparation.

   Student service-learning journals show a clear understanding of the work of the course and its objectives and core questions. Community agency staff provide feedback and guidance to students, and the staffs' evaluations offer evidence that students learn about and contribute to their communities. Students express high levels of satisfaction with the residence hall, the classroom experience, workshops, field trips, and enrichment lectures associated with the core course.

   Community College of Rhode Island's 2+4 Service on Common Ground Program is part of the college's extensive service-learning activities. Supported by funds from the Campus Compact National Center for Community Colleges and the Corporation for National Service to develop service-learning partnerships between community colleges and four-year institutions, the college cooperates with Brown University's Center for Public Service. One joint project connects the community college's nursing faculty and students with the university's medical school faculty and students. Students work in many challenging situations to meet community needs and discuss and write in journals observations and experiences that relate the activity to their course of study and to social issues.

   Student affairs staff began the program with a core team of five faculty. Now the collaborative effort includes some fifty faculty who employ service-learning in more than a dozen academic disciplines.

3. Learning is an active search for meaning by the learner -- constructing knowledge rather than passively receiving it, shaping as well as being shaped by experiences.

   Active participation by the learner is essential for productive learning, dictating that:

   • instructional methods involve students directly in the discovery of knowledge;
   • learning materials challenge students to transform prior knowledge and experience into new and deeper understandings;
   • students be expected to take responsibility for their own learning; students be encouraged to seek meaning in the context of ethical values and commitments; and
   • learning be assessed based on students' ability to demonstrate competencies and use knowledge.

   To stimulate an active search for meaning, faculty and staff collaborators:

   • expect and demand student participation in activities in and beyond the classroom;
   • design projects and endeavors through which students apply their knowledge and skills; and
   • build programs that feature extended and increasingly challenging opportunities for growth and development.

   Bloomfield College (New Jersey) offers the Student Advancement Initiative, curricular and co-curricular experiences that develop student competencies in aesthetic appreciation, communication, citizenship, cultural awareness, problem solving and critical thinking, science and technology, and other professional skills. The program emphasizes computer-aided self-appraisal for students and a student development transcript. The objectives are to involve students actively in the assessment process, to provide continuous feedback to students on their progress toward the competencies, and to strengthen programs based on aggregate information about student achievement of the competencies.

   Faculty and student affairs joint task forces have defined the competencies and linked them to the general education program. Faculty draw upon student affairs staff expertise in designing course assignments. Student portfolios and assessment information direct students toward self-analysis and synthesis of theoretical and practical knowledge gained through the curriculum and through developmental activities. Faculty and staff participate together in "reflective practice" sessions to improve programming and administration.

   DePaul University (Illinois) offers two writing-intensive interdisciplinary and experiential programs for new students to ease the transition to the university. All first-year students enroll in either Focal Point or Discover Chicago. Focal Point highlights an important event, person, place, or issue and is taught using a multidisciplinary format. Students also enroll in a "common hour" course where student affairs professionals help students evaluate their contributions to shared learning, develop their study and decision-making skills, create a learning plan, and reflect upon the nature of diversity at the university and in the city. Academic and student affairs personnel are involved in curriculum development, the design of classroom experiences, and student learning outside the classroom. Discover Chicago brings new students together a week before the first term for a course team-taught by a faculty member, a professional staff member, and a student mentor. The course investigates a particular topic using the city as a learning site. The work of the course involves readings and discussions, visits to city locations, and a community service project.

   Assessments of the programs are designed to determine their impact on student retention and include qualitative and quantitative pre- and post-test surveys, a standardized test (the College Student Inventory) that is a predictor of student retention, syllabi review, and focus groups. Results provide information about retention and staff-faculty partnering, student expectations about the university and coursework, and the nature of assignments and forms of evaluation in each program.

4. Learning is developmental, a cumulative process involving the whole person, relating past and present, integrating the new with the old, starting from but transcending personal concerns and interests. The developmental nature of learning implies both a holistic and a temporal perspective on the learning process. This suggests that:
   • any single learning experience or instructional method has a lesser impact than the overall educational experience;
   • curricula should be additive and cumulative, building upon prior understandings and knowledge toward greater richness and complexity;
   • intellectual growth is gradual, with periods of rapid advancement followed by time for consolidation, an extended and episodic process of mutually reinforcing experiences;
   • the goals of undergraduate education should include students' development of an integrated sense of identity, characterized by high self-esteem and personal integrity that extends beyond the individual to the larger community and world; and
   • assessment of learning should encompass all aspects of the educational experience.

   To create a developmental process integrating all aspects of students' lives, faculty and staff collaborators:

   • design educational programs to build progressively on each experience;
   • track student development through portfolios that document levels of competence achieved and intentional activities leading to personal development;
   • establish arenas for student-faculty interaction in social and community settings; and
   • present opportunities for discussion and reflection on the meaning of all collegiate experiences.

   Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University attends to the overall health of students through its Wellness Environment for Living and Learning. Students who participate make a commitment to a substance-free lifestyle and residence environment. Faculty and student affairs professionals co-teach a wellness forum, a one-credit course in the residence halls in which undergraduate resident advisors also assist. Additional programming emphasizes social, physical, intellectual, career, emotional, and spiritual purpose and philosophy. A student-run community board enables students to develop programs and to take responsibility for managing the housing experience. Campus speakers share personal experiences with substance abuse and wellness issues, and faculty and student affairs staff relate their life experiences in class discussions. The residential community, hall programs, and course curriculum encourage students to reflect on past behaviors and to determine how new knowledge can assist them in college and in developing holistic approaches to a healthy life.

   Participation in the program has increased dramatically in two years, with a significant rate of returning students and requests for additional residents. The first group of students had a significantly higher grade-point average than a control group in the beginning semester of the program.

   University of Richmond (Virginia) provides a four-year experience at its women's residential college, the Women Involved in Living and Learning Program. Participants enroll in an interdisciplinary women's studies minor and in required gender-related educational programs. Goals include increasing self-awareness, self-confidence, independence, and leadership through structured educational experiences; stimulating critical thinking and analysis about gender roles and relationships; nurturing and promoting student potential and talent; fostering awareness and acceptance of difference; and providing students with curricular and co-curricular opportunities to inform and enhance academic, career, and life choices. The professional program coordinator works closely with the women's studies faculty to plan course offerings, serves on its advisory board, and teaches courses. Students complete a supervised internship and attend monthly membership meetings of a student-run organization and sponsored events that complement program goals. Events form the basis for discussion and reflection in the courses and informally in the residence halls.

   Wellesley College's Center for Research on Women recently completed an assessment of this program using course effectiveness instruments, an annual survey to determine the overall impact, a self-esteem measure, an alumnae survey to evaluate the long-term program impact, and student focus groups. Results confirm the cumulative and developmental effects on participants. The study found the greatest effect on those who completed all four years of the program. Students and alumnae of the program speak of the transformational aspects of their involvement, the ways they learned to think critically that benefit them in diverse situations, their ability to question their own world views, and their tolerance of different viewpoints. Alumnae of the program express greater satisfaction with their undergraduate experience than non-program alumnae.

5. Learning is done by individuals who are intrinsically tied to others as social beings, interacting as competitors or collaborators, constraining or supporting the learning process, and able to enhance learning through cooperation and sharing.

   The individual and social nature of learning has the potential for creating powerful learning environments that:

   • take into account students' personal histories and common cultures; feature opportunities for cooperative learning, study, and shared research;
   • cultivate a climate in which students see themselves as part of an inclusive community;
   • use the residential experience as a resource for collaborative learning and for integrating social and academic life;
   • use school, work, home, and community as resources for collaborative learning and for integrating social and academic life; and
   • give students a chance to fathom and appreciate human differences.

   To relate individuals to others as social beings, faculty and staff collaborators:

   • strive to develop a campus culture where students learn to help each other;
   • establish peer tutoring and student and faculty mentorship programs;
   • sponsor residence hall and commuting student programs that cultivate student and faculty interaction for social and educational purposes; and
   • support activities that enable students from different cultural backgrounds to experience each other's traditions.

   The Program on Intergroup Relation, Conflict, and Community at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor offers undergraduate coursework and co-curricular programming in several departments, emphasizing intergroup relations and using a variety of pedagogical approaches. Beginning as a faculty initiative, the program is managed and funded by the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and the Division of Student Affairs.

   Program features include:

   • first-year departmental course seminars, linked through a faculty seminar and taught by faculty seminar and taught by faculty and student affairs teams and incorporating out-of-classroom experiences designed to build communities of students beyond the individual seminars;
   • Intergroup Dialogues, two-credit courses bringing together students from social identity groups for intensive peer-facilitated dialogues based on integrated readings, discussions, and experiential exercises;
   • facilitator training and practicum courses for Intergroup Dialogue leaders;
   • advanced courses in intergroup relations in sociology and psychology;
   • consultation and workshops by program staff working with university departments and offices, training programs for staff and organizations, and special campus events;
   • a resource center on intergroup relations equipped with books, articles, and videos on related topics.

   A current study of the program assessed a course that included required Intergroup Dialogues. The study found that the course increased students' structured thinking about racial and ethnic inequality, enabled them to apply this thinking more generally to social phenomena not explicitly covered in the course, and affected the kinds of actions students advocated in intergroup conflicts.

   Portland State University (Oregon) faculty developed their general education program using research on student learning and retention and working with student affairs professionals with expertise in student learning, group dynamics, peer facilitation, and the development of community and feelings of inclusion. The program emphasizes the integration of both affective and cognitive modes of learning into all aspects of its classes. It strives to overcome the limited opportunity for informal learning and casual interaction characteristic of urban, commuter campuses. Features of the program include:

   • CityQuest, an orientation program designed as an activity in a freshman general education course;
   • a "leadership cluster" of multidisciplinary upper-division courses on leadership fulfilling general education requirements;
   • student affairs fellows who teach in the "freshman inquiry" and "senior capstone" courses;
   • Metro Initiative, cooperative agreements with regional community colleges that connect academic support services and general education coursework across all institutions;
   • Capstone, a collaboration to facilitate service-learning within the general education curriculum; and
   • Student Snapshot, a student affairs newsletter with information about students to help faculty understand students' lives.

   Since implementation of the program, student retention between the first and second year has increased, the institution has developed a better sense of who its students are, and it has information on which aspects of students' learning experiences are more or less effective. Faculty are now more likely to request assistance with students from student affairs staff and to involve the staff in teaching program courses.

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