We Really Can Help All Students Learn and Succeed in College

Sometimes there’s a huge disconnect between research and application—what works in the lab either doesn’t work in the real world or isn’t even tried.

I’m happy to report on a recently published report showing that individual faculty members and universities can effectively implement insights from social psychological, and pedagogical research.

The report is called Increasing Equity in College Student Experience: Findings from a National Collaborative. It was produced by the Student Experience Project (SEP), a collaboration among six universities (including my place of employment!) who partner with a bunch of other organizations.

They begin their report by citing the empirical basis for their project: Thirty-five years of research demonstrates that the environment in which students find themselves is important to their success.

The findings are clear: when students’ learning environments help them feel competent, valued, respected, connected …, and supported …, students are more likely to engage in behaviors that support academic achievement … and this, in turn, supports greater retention in college and degree attainment.

The SEP project applied this body of research by implementing, measuring, and continuously improving practical strategies that faculty members can use in their classrooms and that universities can implement on a broader scale. They’re not finished yet, but they’ve learned enough to issue their initial report.

And the period they studied—the 2020-21 academic year—was tumultuous and presented more challenges than usual for students and faculty.

Almost 300 faculty across six universities, and approximately 10,000 students, participated in the project. The elements of students’ experience of their courses came largely from the social psychological research literature (see Walton & Crum, 2021, for the latest reviews) and include a sense of belonging, a growth mindset (Dweck, 2006), identity safety (Lowe, 2020), a sense of trust and fairness, and self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977).

Who were the students? SEP didn’t take the easy way out! They focused on STEM (science-technology-engineering-math) students who have traditionally fared the worst: “Women, Black, Latinx, and Native American students, and students experiencing basic needs (e.g., food or housing) insecurity.”

They wanted to improve the college experience for all students and to help reduce the disparities in outcomes among groups of students. Students completed surveys about their experiences every three to four weeks.

What did the results show? I will present the five basic findings outlined in the report, with an example or two of each.

Finding 1: Faculty can improve students’ experiences and success. For example, in the first two terms, the number of students reporting positive experiences increased by an average of 10 percent. That number was 25 percent for Black, Latina, and Native American women experiencing financial stress. Part of this feeling was “perceptions that their instructor believes in all students’ ability to grow and supports students’ learning.”

Finding 2: These student experiences are related to outcomes. Check out the report for the specifics, but in general, more students earned A’s or B’s, and fewer students earned D’s and F’s. The more positive students rated their experience, the higher their grades at the end of the term. Faculty reported that students were more likely to reach out to them by such behaviors as dropping into office hours and participating more in class discussions.

Finding 3: “Student experience has important implications for educational equity.” In English, this means that disparities in educational achievement can be reduced. For example, this project found, consistent with lots of previous research, that the improvements were greater for “structurally disadvantaged, educationally underserved, or numerically underrepresented students (e.g., low-income students; Black, Latinx, and Native American students; women in STEM fields).” Here’s what one faculty member said:

The data have shown me that marginalized communities truly do experience belonging differently in my course. It is not theoretical to me anymore. This makes my responsibility toward real change feel more imperative and personal.

Finding 4: Faculty members benefitted. Being involved in the project increased faculty motivation and engagement. They attended workshops, revised their syllabi, collaborated with fellow teachers, implemented a range of strategies, and then spread the word about what was effective.

They reported feeling supported by their university and their colleagues. They appreciated learning and applying evidence-based strategies, the continuous feedback (via the student surveys) of how students were experiencing their classrooms, and being able to use that feedback to tweak their courses in real-time.

What were the universities doing during this time? They did things like this:

• They created or improved “early alerts” to identify students with trouble.
• They “normalized academic difficulty,” which means that instead of telling students, “come to the math lab when you don’t do well on the first test,” the message might be more like, “come to the math tutoring center and see how we can help you become an excellent student,” “emphasizing that setbacks are a normal part of the college experience.”
• They trained their academic advisors on how to convey a sense of belonging.
• They partnered with students on projects like a “student-led #WeBelongInCollege social media campaign.”

What teaching strategies are we talking about? Many of these strategies have been known for a long time (e.g., Tanner, 2013). SEP has put their entire “Resource Hub” online. A few strategies they mention in the report are exam wrappers, sharing instructors’ academic struggles, using wise feedback, connecting concepts to important issues of the day, and scaffolding assignments.

The three major messages I took away from this report are that (a) my behavior makes a difference; (b) I can implement strategies that complement efforts my university is making; and (c) the more I feel a sense of belonging and self-efficacy, the more my students can succeed.