This week, educators write about the importance of accessibility and how to work towards closing gaps in higher education.

Self-Assessment Leads to Rigor/Self-Regulation
John Warner writes about the importance of helping students see beyond the grade they receive on an assignment to considering what they learned about themselves by posing self-reflective questions such as “What do you know now that you didn’t before?” (Just Visiting)

Now is the Time to Think About Accessibility
Teaching itself is an accommodation, David Gooblar writes. He urges instructors to make learning accessible to all students in their classrooms, no matter what their various needs and learning styles are. (Pedagogy Unbound)

How Teacher-Scholars Prepare Students for an Evolving World
Arguing against the idea that academia is an elitist world that doesn’t prepare students for careers, Michael Gettings suggests that professors’ academic work models good scholarship for students and offers them opportunities to connect the skills developed in these endeavors to post-college work. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Recruiting an Adult or First-Generation College Student
While many colleges are looking to bring nontraditional students to their campuses, they should be mindful that these students do not necessarily share the same profile and, therefore, may need different approaches to be successful. (University Business)

Barriers to Success and Upward Mobility and How to Fix the Problem
First-generation students face challenges that can be thought of as three distinct gaps: the opportunity gap, the awareness gap, and the achievement gap. Troy Markowitz shares how colleges can help first-generation students succeed by understanding and addressing these gaps. (Forbes)

Partner News

California State University: Community college transfer degrees speed graduation at CSU (The Sacramento Bee)

Northern Arizona University: Arizona community colleges help universities increase state graduation rate (Arizona Daily Sun)

A Chronicle of Higher Education special report highlights programs that help new and future faculty become better instructors, and an education professor describes the benefits of a college degree that extend beyond job preparation.

Teaching Ph.D.s How to Teach
In this special report, The Chronicle of Higher Education looks at an array of new doctoral training programs designed to ensure future faculty are prepared as effective instructors. (The Chronicle of Higher Education – Paywall)

The Unexpected Value of the Liberal Arts
Old stereotypes about a liberal arts education are starting to crumble, with students across the socioeconomic spectrum pursuing their liberal arts degrees and finding fulfilling careers. (The Atlantic)

Imperatives to Enhance Transferability and Access
Vistasp Karbhari encourages two-year college faculty to help students transfer to four-year schools by keeping the goal of serving students in mind while embracing diversity, improving communication, and aligning curricula, among other strategies. (The EvoLLLution)

Math Geek Mom: Two Roles
A math professor describes how being a mother has informed and influenced her role as an authority in the classroom and vice versa. (Mama PhD)

What Is College Good For? (Hint: More Than Just a Job)
Charles Dorn discusses the benefits received from a college education that go beyond occupational goals to include such things as expanding students’ horizons and aspirations and encouraging them to serve the public good. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Practical Tips for Semester Preparation
Advice for new instructors includes determining measurable objectives for the course and aligning assignments and assessments to course outcomes so that students understand the purpose of the work. (Practical Professors)

The President as Mentor for Tackling Hard Questions
Ronald Crutcher describes how he meets with groups of students to discuss their diverse experiences and viewpoints and suggests that these types of meetings can model civil discourse around difficult topics on other campuses as well. (Inside Higher Ed)

Partner News

Naugatuck Valley Community College: Community colleges move the people and can move the state (CT Viewpoints)

Kauffman Foundation: KC Scholars August 1 Celebration (YouTube)

Southern Connecticut State University: SCSU and Chapel Haven collaboration expands possibilities for varied-ability adults (NH Register)

See how some educators are using new ways to engage students—from texting to gameplay to graphic novel-inspired syllabi.

Texting to New Perspectives
In a small-scale study, Missy Watson and Madhuri Karak found that texting can be a useful communication tool in education, requiring students to think critically and consider their language before composing responses to professors. (Inside Higher Ed)

Your Syllabus Doesn’t Have to Look Like a Contract
Simplicity, clarity, and visual appeal are key to an effective syllabus, according to David Gooblar, who describes how one professor redesigned his syllabus to look like a comic book and saw a noticeable increase in how students engaged with the document. (Pedagogy Unbound)

Games in the Higher Ed Classroom
In this podcast, Stacy Jacob explains how building gameplay and game creation into her syllabus helps her students understand course material in real-world contexts. (Teaching in Higher Ed)

How Generation Z Is Shaping the Change in Education
A Barnes & Noble College study finds that members of Generation Z who are now in college seek to be fully engaged in and part of the learning process, are self-reliant and career-driven, and prefer collaborative, interactive environments where digital tools play a key role. (Forbes)

Chancellor: College Education Benefits the Public Good
Bernie Patterson, chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, cites a UWSP study that found people with college degrees are more likely to be healthy, happy, and civically engaged. They also tend to have more meaningful careers and earn higher wages than those without college educations. (Stevens Point Journal)

Partner News

Southern Connecticut State University: Experiences on Campus Are Key Predictor of Academic Success (Campus Technology)

University of Southern Mississippi: USM Honored as School of Distinction for Online Degree Programs (Southern Miss Now)

This week, suggestions for promoting lifetime learning and preparing students for their future careers.

Being Part of the Solution
Higher education leaders discussed strategies to drive student success at AASCU’s 2017 Academic Affairs Summer Meeting in Baltimore. (The Q Blog)

Former Top Official in Education Dept. Is Named President of ACE
Ted Mitchell, the undersecretary of education during the Obama administration, has been named the next president of the American Council on Education. He describes reinforcing the value of a college degree as one of his top priorities. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

‘Precision Education’ Hopes to Lift Diverse Student Groups
Many institutions are investing in “precision education,” a new teaching approach in which instructors use a range of materials to approach a topic from multiple angles, allowing students to take different pathways to master concepts. (EdSurge)

Lifetime Learning Is the New Model for Higher Education
After years of research and interviews with employers and educators, Jeff Selingo concludes that higher education should emphasize skills that better prepare students for the workforce, such as teamwork, communication, problem-solving, and organization. (EdTech)

Who Is Responsible for Preparing Students for College and Career?
Data shows that many high school graduates are not prepared to undertake college courses, so Ann Myers and Jill Berkowicz advise colleges and high schools to partner up to make the transition from high school to college more successful for students. (Education Week – Paywall)

Sar-Chasm in the Classroom
After a student called him out for a snarky retort, Bob Blaisdell realized that using sarcasm in the classroom can be difficult for students to interpret and doesn’t belong in his teaching persona. (Vitae)

Partner News

Kauffman Foundation: Kauffman Foundation Offers Aid Through KC Scholars (The Kansas City Star)

In Baltimore Friday, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) kicked off its 2017 Academic Affairs Summer Meeting with a challenge. “Do you intend to be part of the problem or part of the solution?” Dr. George Mehaffy, AASCU Vice President for Academic Leadership and Change, asked in his conference welcome.

Mehaffy enjoined AASCU members—college presidents, vice presidents, provosts, deans, professors, and others—to consider three aspects of inequality he sees confronting today’s higher education leaders: economic disparities between the rich and poor, educational disparities between the rich and poor, and nationwide political divisions. Of these, the issue of educational disparities particularly resonated with the conference theme, Curricular Coherence: Finding Meaning and Purpose. If improving graduation rates is not properly addressed by 2020, Mehaffy said, some five million jobs requiring college degrees will be left unfilled. Therefore, he told attendees, one of the top priorities for institutions must be preparing students for the workforce.

So how can colleges and universities be part of the solution? By focusing on student success rates, said Mehaffy, and taking “a hard look at our policies, programs, and practices to identify where we might make changes . . . . This is an enormous challenge [necessitating] multiple, simultaneous innovations across the campus.”

Mehaffy called on conference attendees to be drivers of student success at their respective institutions, saying, “Radical transformation . . . takes leadership and courage at many different levels, and this is where you can play a significant role.”

Dr. Bonnie Veysey and Dr. Penny MacCormack at ACUE’s session, Coherence Starts in the Classroom: The Critical Role of Faculty in Helping Students Find Meaning

In their session, “Coherence Starts in the Classroom: The Critical Role of Faculty in Helping Students Find Meaning,” Dr. Bonnie Veysey, professor and vice chancellor for planning and implementation at Rutgers University-Newark (RU-N), and Dr. Penny MacCormack, chief academic officer of ACUE, reinforced the importance of Mehaffy’s challenge. They explained how evidence-based instruction is essential to improving students’ experiences and, ultimately, their success.

Dr. Veysey discussed how RU-N is advancing effective instruction using ACUE’s Course in Effective Teaching Practices as a cornerstone of its new P3 Collaboratory for Pedagogy, Professional Development, and Publicly-engaged Scholarship of which Dr. Veysey is the inaugural director. She shared preliminary data that demonstrates significant gains in faculty learning and student experiences by ACUE-credentialed faculty. During the session, Dr. MacCormack gave attendees an overview of ACUE’s program and led attendees through a module on transparent design.

“Transparent design—clarifying for students how and why course content is relevant to them and clearly outlining course assignments along with the criteria for success—is one of many instructor practices research tells us will support student success,” said Dr. MacCormack after the presentation. “If an instructor shares with students the purpose of the coursework, including how the skills gained may be useful in their future career, that action will make each student’s experience in class more meaningful. But how powerful it would be if every one of that student’s instructors explained the relevance of the work and set clear objectives and expectations. The research shows us this would make each student’s overall college experience much more meaningful.”

Seen and Heard at AASCU’s 2017 Academic Affairs Summer Meeting

The conference included approximately 75 plenaries and sessions, as well as opportunities for attendees, more than 400 AASCU members, to connect. Here are some highlights.

RFY Workshop

Among the leaders in student success initiatives is the Re-imagining the First Year of College (RFY) initiative, whose goal is to dramatically improve the quality of the student experience and learning opportunities in the first year, resulting in improved retention rates. RFY focuses on those students who historically have been underserved by higher education: low income, first generation, and students of color. Prior to the start of the Summer Meeting, members of the coalition—44 institutions and their sponsors—convened for a preconference workshop.

Sweet Incentive

ACUE hit the sweet spot by decorating its AASCU exhibit table with chocolate bar swag. Turns out candy is a great conversation starter!

Last Word

“Learning how to learn is probably the most important component of learning in today’s society.” — Heather Hiles, Deputy Director of Solutions, Postsecondary Success, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in her plenary session, “Best Practices for Aligning Student Success with Institutional Success”

Editor’s note: This post by Penny MacCormack, EdD, ACUE Chief Academic Officer, is a response to a recent study by anthropologist Lauren Herckis.

What instructor hasn’t felt the need to control the classroom? The pressure on new educators to appear poised and in charge weighs on them. The thought of ceding any of that control to students feels somehow wrong even though extensive research demonstrates that student achievement is significantly greater in interactive environments than in lecture-based courses.

A study by Carnegie Mellon anthropologist Lauren Herckis has shed light on the failure of evidence-based teaching strategies to find their way into classrooms. She cites multiple explanations, among them fear of poor evaluations, fear of looking stupid, and fear of trying something new. Fear, it turns out, is at the heart of the problem. Instructors are afraid of adopting new approaches and failing.

Herckis’s findings are not at all surprising. Fear of making mistakes is human; why should academics be any different from the rest of humanity? Also human is the instinct to stick with what you know. How many young teaching professionals have imitated the techniques and styles of their own professors, embracing classroom practices likely borrowed from their professors?

Instructors are experts in their discipline or field, but graduate school, research, and publishing alone do not prepare instructors for the classroom. Many veteran faculty have picked up a patchwork of teaching practices at conferences and workshops. Let’s use Herckis’s study as a teaching moment and support new faculty as they learn how to teach.

In her work, renowned Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck discovered two types of learners: those with fixed mindsets, who believe their intelligence is set and no amount of effort will make them smarter; and those with growth mindsets, who possess the confidence to believe in their ability to boost intelligence through persistence and varying strategies. At ACUE, we believe in the remarkable power of the growth mindset to foster significant academic achievement. In our teaching module “Helping Students Persist in Their Studies,” our expert instructors discuss techniques for cultivating student motivation even as the work increases in difficulty. They also demonstrate the connection between increased effort and improved performance. Methods for promoting active learning permeate our program, supporting the growth mindset not only among students but among educators as well.

It takes courage to enter unfamiliar territory, particularly with 20, 40, 60 or more sets of eyes on you. Growth by definition involves embracing trial and error. Let’s take the pressure off of instructors and provide them with tools that foster growth. Let’s replace the urge to control the classroom with an openness to sharing the space and encouraging teacher-student collaboration. It is my strong belief—and the research backs me up—that this is the better way.