Learning Resources

Abstract: Middle skills education, personalized curriculum, and student-directed training are playing an increasingly integral role in higher education. A new generation of students is already likely to hold different educational expectations and desires than their predecessors. Accommodating those trends means planners, architects, and higher education administrators will need to think differently about how they train skilled workers for the most needed professions.

Abstract: As we recognize the importance of informal learning spaces, there are still unanswered questions. How should informal learning spaces impact students? How can we understand the potential of informal spaces? How can design optimize this potential? This session will bring insights from multi-year multidisciplinary research in a large university system regarding planning and designing informal learning spaces on multiple college campuses. Come learn how to apply research methods to enhance understanding and support of design goals on your campus.

Abstract: After a campus tragedy, the first steps for the community toward settling into the new normal often entail working through the gravity of recent events. This work includes a need for internal reflection, external processing, and collective healing. Campus communities engaged in this process often find a way to memorialize the events that have shaken them and to honor the lives of any community members lost to tragedy. This research project focuses on physical memorials that are the result of a tragic moment in institutional history.

Abstract: This study examines new student orientation (NSO) programs of 65 four-year U.S. colleges, with a focus on a subset of 39 colleges offering NSOs with available program schedules. The 39 programs were analyzed in detail for content and key elements such as formats, topics, underlying learning theories, and high-impact practice-related activities. Data are drawn from both online orientation schedules for each program and survey responses received from educators at each of the associated institutions. NSOs offered by community colleges and those offered by the four-year colleges studied were also compared. The study results are intended to benefit college administrators and faculty responsible for developing freshman orientations.

Abstract: Educators in teacher preparation programs use a range of pedagogies to assist teacher candidates in developing the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to become reflective instructors. Participating in co-curricular service-learning (CSL) provides an opportunity for candidates to show initiative and step out of their comfort zones, developing cultural understanding by working directly with community members and their children (Bates 2009; Coffey & Lavery 2015; Harrison 2013). In this article, the authors explore the impact of a CSL initiative on the teacher candidates from Nipissing University and the Indigenous community they service. Using a case study design, data, in the form of anticipatory and post-CSL reflections and individual semi-structured interviews, were collected over three years.

Abstract: Due to the rising price of tuition, the prevailing narrative regarding higher education is that the cost of delivering a college degree is increasing substantially. However, the cost of delivering an education is not definitively linked to the price in tuition paid to attend. Prior studies confirmed small increases in instructional expenditures per full-time-equivalent student from the 1980s to 2000; however, more recent trends in instructional costs are relatively unknown. The purpose of this study was to track instructional expenditures from 2004 to 2015 at U.S. public two-year and four-year institutions, and to calculate those expenditures as a proportion of U.S. Gross Domestic Product.