Tricia A. Seifert

How Effective Are the NSSE Benchmarks in Predicting Important Educational Outcomes

Ernest T. Pascarella is a professor and the Mary Louise Petersen Chair in Higher Education at the University of Iowa, where he also co-directs the Center for Research on Undergraduate Education. His work focuses on the impact of college on students. Tricia A. Seifert is an assistant professor in the higher education group at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include identifying postsecondary educational experiences and contexts that foster student success. Charles Blaich is the director of the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College. He taught at Eastern Illinois University from 1987–1991 and moved to Wabash College in 1991, becoming director of the center in 2002. This research was supported by a generous grant from the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College to the Center for Research on Undergraduate Education at the University of Iowa. How Effective are the NSSE Benchmarks

Impacts of Good Practices on Cognitive Development, Learning Orientations, and Graduate Degree Plans During the First Year of College

This study estimated separately the unique effects of three dimensions of good practice and the global effects of a composite measure of good practices on the cognitive development, orientations to learning, and educational aspirations of students during their first year of college. Analyses of longitudinal data from a representative sample of colleges and universities were conducted, and net of a battery of confounding influences, measures of good practices were positively related to a number of first-year outcomes. The magnitude of the effects of these good practices differed by the pre-college characteristics of the students and by the type of institution attended.

Why Do More Women than Men Want to Earn a Four-Year Degree?: Exploring the Effects of Gender, Social Origin, and Social Capital on Educational Expectations

We test the assumption that peer and/or familial influences are partially responsible fore the expectation gender gap, and examine the differences in this gap by race/ethnicity. We find that the effects of social capital differ by gender but that the gender gap in expectations does not differ by race.

College Student Binge Drinking and Academic Achievement: A Longitudinal Replication and Extension

excessive alcohol consumption by college students is a ubiquitous problem with potentially negative consequences, both academic and otherwise, for many students. National samples of college students demonstrate that two thirds of all students report consuming alcohol within the past month (o’Malley & Johnston, 2002). of these students, more than half report heavy or binge drinking within the prior 2 weeks (o’Malley & Johnston). binge drinking is often defined as consuming five or more drinks in one setting for males and four or more drinks for females (Wechsler & isaac, 1992), although this may be somewhat arbitrary. According to harvard’s College Alcohol study (CAs), half of the students who binge drink, do so more than once a week (Wechsler, Nelson, & Weitzman, 2000). the evidence concerning the amount of binge drinking behavior that occurs based on year in college is inconclusive. in one study, 13.9% of first-year students reported having only one binge drinking episode in a 2-week period, whereas 14.8% of seniors reported the same behavior (presley, Meilman, Cashin, & lyerla, 1996). on the other end of the continuum, 3.8% of both first-year students and seniors reported having between six and nine binge drinking episodes in a 2-week period (presley et al.). engs, hanson, and diebold (1996) found, however, fewer binge drinkers among seniors than among first-year students. Although the studies with regard to the amount of binge drinking occurring during college are not conclusive, research is consistent on the negative results of this behavior. educational difficulties, psychosocial problems, physical harm including overdoses, sexual high-risk behaviors, and alcohol-impaired driving are some of the negative consequences of student drinking (Columbia University, the National Center on Addiction and substance Abuse [NCAsA], 1994; perkins, 2002; Wechsler et al., 2002). these consequences impact between 10% and one third of the college population (perkins), affecting both men and women and students across all class years (e.g., engs et al., 1996; presley et al., 1996).

Liberal Arts Colleges and Good Practices in Undergraduate Education: Additional Evidence

Liberal arts colleges have prided themselves on providing students with a quality undergraduate education among a scholarly community who are interested in their holistic development. Past research has found students who attended liberal arts colleges more frequently experienced Chickering and Gamson’s (1987, 1991) good practices in undergraduate education than their peers. This study examined if this experience differed based on students’ background or precollege characteristics. Overall, we found students at liberal arts colleges who enter college with lower levels of parental education, tested precollege academic preparation, academic motivation, and high school involvement experienced these good practices at levels greater than their peers.

Can College Students Accurately Assess What Affects Their Learning and Development

Informal (and sometimes formal) assessments in higher education often ask students how their skills or attitudes have changed as the result of engaging in a particular course or program; however, it is unclear to what extent these self-reports are accurate. Using a longitudinal sample of over 3,000 college students, we found that students were fairly inaccurate when reporting how their experiences with faculty and peers affected their own cognitive and personal development. These findings call into question the use of perceived influence measures, and they add to a growing literature on the validity of self-reported measures of learning and development.

The Effects of Honors Program Participation on Experiences of Good Practices and Learning Outcomes

Using multi-institution data and a longitudinal, pretest-posttest design, this study investigated the impact of honors programs on student experiences of good practices in undergraduate education as well as cognitive development in the first year of college. We found students in honors programs advantaged in terms of the good practice measures related to the in-class college experience. Additionally, we found significant positive effects of honors programs on critical thinking, mathematics, and composite cognitive development. We also found conditional effects in which honors programs participation seemed to have a greater impact for men and students of color on some learning outcomes.

A Multi-Institutional Assessment of Moral Reasoning Development among First-Year Students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the co-curricular experiences, course-taking behaviors, and educational practices that influence the moral reasoning development of 1,469 first-year students at 19 American colleges and universities. Results showed that contexts and practices that encourage students to engage divergent perspectives when approaching a problem or issue are those most conducive to moral reasoning growth. Implications for researchers in higher education and moral psychology are discussed.

Deeply Affecting First-Year Students' Thinking: Deep Approaches to Learning and Three Dimensions of Cognitive Development

This study estimates the effects of a deep approaches to learning scale and its subscales on measures of students’ critical thinking, need for cognition, and positive attitudes toward literacy, controlling for pre-college scores for the outcomes and other covariates. Results suggest reflection is critical to making gains across the outcomes.

Using Mixed Methods to Study First-Year College Impact on Liberal Arts Learning Outcomes.

This study details the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data from a national multi-institutional longitudinal mixed methods study of college impact and student development of liberal arts outcomes. The authors found three sets of practices in the quantitative data that corroborated with the themes that emerged from the qualitative data: academic challenge, diversity experiences, and supportive relationships aided the transition in the first year. The authors discuss these relationships and their mechanisms for fostering student learning in the first year of college.