Overcoming impediments to academic success
In a recent survey conducted by Inside HigherEd, students indicated what were the most significant barriers to their academic success.
A majority of those surveyed reported their #1 impediment was the teaching style of their instructors, be they faculty, staff, or graduate assistants. Despite the abundance of evidence indicating several instructional strategies perform significantly better than lecture, the traditional lecture remains the preferred and dominant style among those who teach in higher education.
Additionally, students reported the following also served as impediments:
Overly difficult materials and exams
Unclear grading and performance expectations
Coping mentally and emotionally
Balancing life and school
Interestingly enough, these are the same complaints I hear from high school students as well.
Fortunately, there are things students can do now to help mitigate these impediments in the future:
First, students can develop an inner locus of control and take responsibility for choosing learning strategies that benefit their academic success instead of impede it. This includes using strategies that are engaging, elaborative, and integrative in nature.
Finding something interesting in the content or relating it to something the student does find interesting to create a bit of an emotional hook.
Taking thoughtful and attentive notes and elaborating on them after class
Using Concept Maps to relate and integrate information, within the subject area as well as other disciplines and courses.
Mixing up their study content (interleaving), so that they aren’t studying everything in one course then moving straight to another. Interleaving creates more difficulty in terms of recall in the short-term, but it improves long-term retention and integration tremendously.
Test themselves (using interleaving here, too!) frequently and in varied ways. Research clearly indicates that testing is the most effective learning strategy in terms of retention and subsequent academic performance. Students who test themselves at least weekly do much better in their courses, even those with difficult teachers, overly hard materials, etc., than students who simply re-read materials and notes.
Second, students can intentionally take on challenges - difficult challenges - to improve coping skills and resilience. Most students today delay taking on significant adult responsibilities and face few challenges until after college; however, it’s precisely those adult challenges that help mature the pre-frontal cortex of our brains that is critical to student success (attention regulation, impulse control, goal-setting, emotional and behavioral regulation, and long-term planning). Here are some things students can do now to help later.
Go to instructors’ office hours frequently to clarify expectations, advocate for yourself, and go deeper into the course content.
Set an ambitious goal and fail with the intention to learn and improve
Intentionally seek and engage resources, such as mentors, counselors, tutorials, etc. to improve coping skills, time management, etc. Additionally, students can thoughtfully evaluate the strengths and effectiveness of those resources so they can make better choices in the future.
It’s doubtful that higher education is going to change the teaching culture in its institutions anytime soon, thus it’s increasingly important for students to develop more effective academic skills and behaviors before they get to college so they have a greater chance to graduate, and in a reasonable amount of time, as well as incur less debt.