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Designing Purposeful Pathways for Student Achievement through Transparency and Problem-Centered Learning
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What are your learning outcomes for all of your students?" "Do your students know that these are your expectations?" "Do students understand the relationship between their demonstrated achievement of your learning outcomes and their preparation for future success in life and work?" Answering these common questions are essential to the design of more purposeful curricular pathways leading to student success. However, too many educators answer these questions with "I am not sure" or "no." AAC&U's recent national survey of chief academic officers, found that "85% of AAC&U member institutions report that they have a common set of intended learning outcomes for all undergraduate students ... [but] fewer than one in 10 (9%) indicate that almost all students understand those intended learning outcomes, and [only] 36% think that a majority of students understand them" (Hart Research Associates 2016, 3, 5). Is this lack of transparency and understanding of learning outcomes at the institutional level hindering student success efforts? How transparent are faculty about their intended learning outcomes at the classroom level?
As detailed in Assessing Underserved Students' Engagement in High-Impact Practices (2013), my colleague Ashley Finley and I found that students want to understand better why their participation in a particular high-impact experience is relevant to their overall success or development. Specifically, students who participated in focus groups we conducted suggested that those responsible for designing high-impact educational experiences (e.g. faculty, student affairs professionals, and administrators) should intentionally help students "connect-the-dots" and explain exactly why engagement in these experiences should matter to their success, both in the short- and long-term. Students are more motivated to learn when they understand the end goals of their learning experience. Most importantly, they want to know how these experiences are preparing them for lifelong success. Designing purposeful and intentional pathways for student achievement requires educators...