Issue 1 , Volume 4
Student Voices in the Campus Conversations
by: Kris Bulcroft, Carmen Werder, and Glenn Gilliam
Introduction
Western Washington University, a public regional comprehensive university in the state of Washington, continues to engage in dialogue fostered by the American Association of Higher Education's Campus Conversations Project. This discussion has proven instrumental in significant change initiatives across campus and has expanded our collective understandings about the correlation between the scholarship of teaching and student learning outcomes. Central to our campus conversations has been the student voice in providing a rich source of data regarding this relationship.
Evidence suggests that students who are actively involved in designing their own learning experiences, coupled with opportunities to reflect on those experiences, achieve much deeper learning (Light, 2001). At the same time, higher education literature points to the need for shifting to a learning-centered paradigm, and increasingly institutions are seeking ways to become more student-centered in their mission and programs (Barr and Tagg, 1995).
The inclusion of the student voice in the Campus Conversation at Western Washington University has provided a distinctive opportunity for learners to become active agents in designing new organizational approaches that more clearly focus on student learning. Ensuring that students have an integral and ongoing voice in this dialogue has resulted in our identifying ways to support teaching to achieve the learning outcomes identified by the students themselves.
Campus Conversation at Western Washington University (Parts I & II)
When Western Washington University first embarked on the Campus Conversation in fall 1998, a small, but dedicated, group of twenty-five faculty from across the colleges explored the meanings, barriers, and incentives associated with the scholarship of teaching and learning. Entering this national exchange sponsored by the American Association of Higher Education (AAHE) and the Carnegie and Pew Foundations, Western began discussing ways to elevate the status of teaching and learning without a patent understanding of the implications of the conversation. During this initial phase, we primarily worked to explore similarities and differences between "good" teaching and "scholarly teaching."
In addition, considerable attention was given to organizational barriers to the scholarship of teaching such as reward structures and opportunities for faculty development. Part I of the Campus Conversation was completed in the spring of 1999. Faculty who participated in this first phase seemed eager to continue the conversation, so Western extended the dialogue by signing-on for Part II. Up to this point, no students had been involved in the conversation, and no one had identified a need to include them in the next phase.
Part II took on very different dimensions. First of all, the President boosted the efforts by providing a special summer grant called the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Fellowship. This SoTL Fellow developed the goals and agenda for Part II of the project. Through financial support from the Provost, forty-four faculty members from across the university college structure were invited to participate in a year-long program which included biweekly meetings. As a result of Part I's success, coupled with the fact that the Provost was newly hired and personally invited faculty to participate in the project, every invited faculty member accepted. The agenda also called for expanding the dialogue by including an opportunity for the whole campus to join the faculty core group conversation in a Breakfast Seminar Series with guest speakers.
Coordinated by the Special Assistant to the Provost and the Director of Interdisciplinary Programs (who had also served as the SoTL Fellow), the 1999-2000 program used the "3-Rs" as its theme: "Recognizing, Reflecting on, and Rewarding the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning." This theme and the schedule of events for Part II was unveiled at the beginning of fall term, 1999, and the President featured the program in her fall faculty luncheon speech.
Where are the Students?
In the first bi-weekly session of the faculty core group in Part II, the project took a surprising turn when an adjunct professor in the College of Education asked why students were not part of the group. Posed as a query regarding the intent of the Carnegie programmatic goals, the question brought the conversation to a halt. The group dynamics that followed clearly reflected a collective epiphany. Subsequent sessions led to in-depth discussion about the need for student perspectives in order to understand what constitutes "good" teaching, as well as to develop a scholarly approach toward the assessment of student learning.
The education professor's query prompted a sincere desire on the part of all faculty member participants to seek a means of incorporating student voices in the "3Rs" conversation. In November of 1999, as the concept of scholarly teaching was being explored in an open forum led by PEW scholars from the University of Washington (Drs. John Webster and Debbie Weigand), a faculty member suggested the creation of an undergraduate seminar dedicated to working with the Carnegie core faculty.
Organizing a course on such short notice could not have been accomplished had it not been for the partnership that emerged between Academic and Student Affairs. A new seminar, focusing on leadership training, had already been scheduled by Student Affairs professionals during winter term 2000. Based on the work of Astin and Astin (1996), the seminar was designed to foster leadership in academic settings.
Undergraduates who showed potential for leadership positions within and beyond Western Washington University had been nominated by Student Affairs units across the campus community. Offered as a 2-credit elective, the focus for the course (as originally designed) was to examine the organizational structure of Western Washington University and to develop a case study for organizational change.
The Special Assistant to the Provost approached the Vice President of Student Affairs prior to enrollment in the seminar and suggested that the Campus Conversation might serve as an excellent foundation for building a case study of change. Thus, students would not only study the dynamics of organizational change, but they would also be participants in that process.
This unique focus meant that rather than reviewing a previous change initiative and analyzing the change dynamics, they would be involved in actively designing the organizational processes that would facilitate the scholarship of teaching and learning at their own university. Rather than using a case study approach in analyzing organizational change, the students would participate in an ongoing change process that focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Leadership Inside Out
A partnership between Academic and Student Affairs formed around this concept, and the seminar was offered winter and spring terms, co-facilitated by the Special Assistant to the Provost and the Director of New Student Programs. The seminar was titled Adult Higher Education 417: Leadership Inside Out. Carnegie Conversations Faculty also nominated students for the course, and a total of fifty students enrolled in the seminars during the two terms offered.
Leadership students attended some of the core faculty bi-weekly sessions. Some of the conversation, however, took place in outside interviews between CCC faculty and the seminar students. Based on these interviews, key ideas emerged and were then explored more fully in biweekly group discussions between the students and faculty. In addition, the seminar sponsored a threaded electronic discussion, and students discussed several themes relating to the scholarship of teaching and learning.
These data were used to form a collaborative action plan composed by faculty and students identifying strategic ways for moving ahead to achieve the scholarship of teaching and learning in new ways. This action plan was presented to the Provost at the final Breakfast Seminar at the end of spring term, 2000, and he endorsed all of its points and pledged his continued support.
The combination of the leadership course and the Carnegie Conversations provided students with a valuable perspective not typically available to students. Guest conversationalist included the University President, the Provost, the Vice President for Student Affairs, President of the Faculty, President of the Associated Students, and many other key leaders of the campus community. One student remarked:
I was amazed at what I was seeing. Here was the university president, who I didn't know had feelings, sitting across from me telling me that there were times when she felt alone and sad regarding the pressures she faced. At that moment my perspective of the universities (sic) leadership entirely changed. Few students get that opportunity.
The Provost supported the travel costs of two seminar students to attend the Carnegie Campus Conversations Colloquium at the annual AAHE conference held in Anaheim, CA in March 2000, where they presented a session on the ways in which the student voice was being heard at Western. As a result of the effort to include a student voice in the conversation, Western Washington University was recognized with one of the first Going Public grants provided by AAHE and the Carnegie Foundation.
The AAHE Summer Academy
With the money received from the Going Public award, a Western team traveled to Snowbird, Utah to participate in the July, 2000 Summer Academy with an agenda that focused on effecting transformative change. The team included the Director of Interdisciplinary Programs, another faculty member from the Campus Conversations, and two leadership seminar students.
Of the thirty-seven schools participating, Western Washington University and Elon College, which had been a joint recipient of the Going Public grant, were the only two schools focusing on integrating the student voice into the scholarship of teaching and learning.
The primary project goal of the Western team was to draft a case study describing the student and faculty experience in the 1999-2000 Conversations Program, analyzing the results, and suggesting implications for future institutional change. A second goal was to further the alliance with Elon College in their common commitment to sustaining the student voice in campus change initiatives.
The Western team examined relevant artifacts from the Leadership class, including transcripts from online web board discussions and journals, as well as student and faculty surveys gathered in the Carnegie Conversations. While the team studied both student and faculty data, the goal of the case study was to foreground the student experience.
A Web of Connections
Student comments indicated that they overwhelmingly endorsed the effort to engage their perspectives in the campus change project. They sometimes expressed surprise that their ideas seemed to matter so much to faculty, and they frequently expressed appreciation for the chance to be heard.
Participation in the Carnegie Conversations was worthwhile to me because I was able to explain my opinions about education and how I would like to see it improved. I may only be a freshman and don't know very much about the university structure, but I am grateful that I could help create changes to help me learn better in my next three years here.
Participation in the Carnegie conversations has been a worthwhile experience. I finally feel like my voice as a student has not only been heard, but that it makes a difference.
Some students reported that they had learned much about themselves and about their connection to the structure and function of the university. Their comments revealed a heightened appreciation for the challenges facing an institution of higher education that is inviting students to help shape its culture in authentic and sustained ways. Students seemed much more understanding of the university as a community of learners.
To facilitate change anywhere about anything, an individual needs to understand her own role in her community. I have learned that my community involves all those around me, including those I don't have direct contact with. I also learned that what is happening in the community affects my life in ways I may not understand. Essentially, my community consists of a web of connections…. Understanding my role in my university community helped me realize that I am not only a student, but also part of a whole learning culture.
A preliminary qualitative analysis of the spring quarter 2000 student web board discussion data also revealed several recurring topics of ongoing student concern: community, diversity, communication, and access. The online exchanges pointed to a yearning for deeper and more meaningful interactions with their peers and with faculty in addressing these areas of concern.
The Teaching and Learning Academy
Faculty reported on closing surveys that they most appreciated the chance to talk with students and colleagues, especially outside their own departments. One faculty captured this sentiment in saying:
The Carnegie Program has provided the best professional development experience I have had in the fifteen years that I've been at Western…. The resulting dialogue was informing and inspiring. And the chance to interact with students as part of these conversations was important in "reminding" us about what matters to real students.
After working separately to draft individual case studies of their Carnegie programs, the Elon and WWU teams met together to discuss possible future directions and to formulate tentative principles for integrating the student voice into the scholarship of teaching and learning. In that discussion, they noted how their two projects represented complementary strategies for engaging the student voice.
While the Elon initiative centered on the course as its unit of study, the Western initiative focused on the campus-wide Conversations program (Sullivan and Werder, 2000). An emergent principle, then, was the belief that combining both the course and the institutional approaches would best serve any effort to integrate student perspectives into the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Based on this dialogue, Western's team composed a recommendation to implement a new course for students to reflect on their own learning at the same time that they participated as members of the Carnegie Conversations core group, which had by now transformed into a new entity called the Teaching and Learning Academy (TLA).
After returning from the Summer Academy and receiving the Provost's endorsement, the Snowbird team, along with the Special Assistant to the Provost, drafted a curriculum for this new 2-credit course which they titled "Organizing for Learning." They built the course on Peter Ewell's (1997) premise that "to get systemic improvement, we must make use of what is already known about learning itself, about promoting learning, and about institutional change" (3).
Co-facilitated by the Summer Academy team of students and faculty, the course was designed to focus on the teaching and learning dynamics, particularly on analyzing the relationship between effective teaching and successful learning. Students would explore the forces that influence the effectiveness of this teaching-learning nexus at the course and institutional levels, reflect on their own learning, and participate in a university-wide learning enhancement program as part of Western's new Teaching and Learning Academy (TLA).
A New Course on Learning
Meeting with TLA faculty and administrators bi-weekly throughout the term, students worked in action groups focused on strengthening undergraduate learning. The course had three learning objectives:
Open to students from across the disciplines, first- through senior year, the class was offered all three quarters of the 2000-2001 academic year with a different learning-related topic each term: "Organizing for Learning" in the fall, "Inquiry" in the winter, and "Self-Assessment" in the spring.
By first considering their own learning in response to web board discussion prompts as well as in written reflections, students studied the factors that contribute to effective learning, factors that inhibit learning, and strategies for dealing with learning situations that are less than optimal. This reflective writing also led to the creation of learning portfolios, and the majority of course participants also conducted special projects on learning-related topics such as general education reform.
Since the course was offered with various topics, students were able to enroll in the class for more than one quarter. Eleven of the total (70) students enrolled for multiple quarters, 6 students for all three terms. As a result of their inquiry, several of the University 397 students also co-presented with TLA faculty at two prominent educational conferences: the Washington Center for the Improvement of Higher Education (February 2001) and the Carnegie Colloquium of the American Association of Higher Education Conference (March 2001).
After completing a full year of this new course, co-facilitators were delighted with student engagement, so the course has been offered a second year and has enrolled approximately 80 more students from across levels and departments. Once again, upper class students and faculty work as a facilitation team, including designing course curriculum together. With a new title to reflect its scholarship of learning base — "Learning Reconsidered" — the course has addressed topics such as ways of knowing, learning styles, metaphors for teaching and learning, and accommodating institutional challenges. During fall quarter, students in the course also participated in dialogue groups sponsored by the Teaching and Learning Academy with faculty, administrators, and student affairs staff as part of a general education reform initiative. In these dialogue groups, students helped compose white papers that were forwarded to the General Education Task Force and have served to inform proposed changes. Uniformly, students express their appreciation for the learning course, and many have voiced their recommendation that such a reflective seminar be part of a general education requirement for all students.
I don't think students are given enough opportunities [like this course] to look at themselves and how their learning connects with the whole university.
I really enjoyed the faculty-student interaction. It helps a lot in establishing trust within our tiny "space" within the university.
Student responses have given testimony to the importance of developing this sense of "trust" and to expanding the space that learners believe they have in their own learning culture. They have indicated that this course, as part of Western's Teaching and Learning Academy, has helped further the commitment made to honoring the student voice. And they have served to echo what Lee Shulman (2000) has termed a spirit of "fidelity" both to student learning and to the institutional community.
Diffuse Leadership
The continuing dialogue of students and faculty within the TLA has continued to form a powerful community of change at Western. During winter quarter 2001, the TLA conducted discussion groups consisting of two TLA faculty and two learning seminar students. The students contacted their assigned interviewer and arranged for appointments.
The interview protocol included questions exploring the nature of their lower division experiences at Western and inviting recommendations about how to enhance it. These interviews created quite a bit of excitement within the TLA, with both students and faculty enjoying the opportunity to talk about educational reform.
Students learned more about the faculty as well and gained a greater sense that instructors sincerely did care about their experiences and valued their perspectives. Faculty enjoyed the opportunity to talk with students in a personal setting and acknowledged that students were far more engaged than they had expected.
Together, faculty, students, and staff have learned to candidly share their perspectives for effecting change. According to the Astins (1996), "...leadership is a process that is ultimately concerned with fostering change…directed toward some future end or condition that is desired or valued" (p.8). Increasingly, the Western community represents an example of diffuse leadership in which "…every member of the academic community is a potential leader (i.e., change agent)." In this way, our university is maximizing "the number of faculty, students, administrators, and staff who become committed and effective agents of positive social change" (p.10).
Several themes emerged during the Winter 2001 TLA discussions. Some of these included the desire to share the Academy's work with the campus community as a whole and the need for further reflection via the student voice concerning the undergraduate experience.
The idea for a public rally for learning was introduced in response to these themes. The goals for the rally event included celebrating the TLA efforts to enhance the quality of teaching and learning at Western and expanding the data collected from undergraduate students regarding their university experiences. Understanding the potential of such an event, the TLA members eagerly drafted questions for a fixed-response questionnaire as well as qualitative face-to-face interviews. These questions outlined many of the themes discussed throughout the history of the campus discussions, primarily the reflection on scholarly teaching and learning and the current condition of our campus curriculum and culture.
A Public Rally for Learning
The rally was held on June 8, 2001 in a celebratory atmosphere of balloons, popcorn, and conversation. Over the course of four hours, approximately 45 student representatives from the TLA, student government, and campus residence halls along with 30 TLA faculty and colleagues, helped administer the questionnaires and inform students about the purpose of the rally. The rally took place in the central square of the campus, thus providing high visibility for the event and calling attention to the goals of the rally.
Students who walked through the rally area were informed about the purpose of the rally and asked if they would complete a survey. The survey took about 10-15 minutes to complete. This convenience sample of students resulted in slightly more than 5 per cent of the entire population of Western undergraduates completing the survey. The vast majority of students that day were willing to complete the survey once they were informed about its purpose, and many stayed to complete the face-to-face portion of the process.
At the completion of the rally, nearly six hundred students had completed the survey at the rally or had participated in the online form made available for those unable to attend the event. It was evident from the levels of participation that students were grateful for the chance to share their perspectives about their learning experiences.
Lessons Learned from the Students
In conclusion, the insights and perceptions of students provided in Part II of the Carnegie Campus Conversation Project and in the subsequent Teaching and Learning Academy agenda have been invaluable in the organizational change process at Western Washington University.
The data collected at the rally are currently being analyzed and will be used to help forge a new general education curriculum within two to three years. A task force on general education reform consisting of faculty, students, student affairs professionals, and community stakeholders will study the survey results as the new curricular architecture is developed. Thus, the student voice will have a powerful impact on designing learning opportunities that lead to the outcomes identified by the students themselves.
Some of the most critical lessons learned from the students include an understanding that any curricular reforms that attempt to enhance learning in the majors or within general education must provide opportunities for reflection about learning itself.
Second, students seek learning environments that foster connections across complex ideas and build upon communities of learners. Third, students become more engaged in their own learning when they understand the institutional mission and organizational structure. Fourth, the scholarship of teaching requires that the outcomes for learning be articulated and measured, and these outcomes are greatly enhanced when the learners themselves are involved in the process. And lastly, all students are potential leaders for change and when given the opportunity to work for institutional goals that seek to optimize learning, they are an engaged and influential part of the change process.
References
Astin, Alexander and Astin, Helen (1996) A Social Change Model of Leadership Development: A Guidebook; Higher Education Research Institute, University of California: Los Angeles.
Barr, R. B. and Tagg, J. (1995, Nov/Dec). From teaching to learning: A new paradigm for higher education, Change 27 (6): 13-27.
Ewell, Peter T. (1997, Dec). Organizing for learning: a new imperative. AAHE Bulletin: 3-7.
Light, Richard (2001) Making the Most of College: Students Speak Their Minds, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.
Shulman, Lee S. (2000). Inventing the future. Opening Lines, Carnegie Publications, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Menlo Park, CA.
Sullivan, John and Werder, Carmen. (2000, Nov). Going public: Elon College and Western Washington University, AAHE Bulletin 53 (3): 13-14.