Creating Active Pathways
to Student Learning
A
SEPCHE Learning to Learn Project
Exploring New Ways of Advancing
Student Learning in the Arts and Sciences
Project Summary
A grant from the Teagle Foundation will enable the eight Consortium colleges and universities to examine the applications of recent research on the human brain and its development in order to improve student mastery of disciplinary content during the early years of college. Beginning in Fall 2008, SEPCHE will convene a Collegium of 16 faculty (2 from each SEPCHE institution) who teach core courses in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Participating faculty will work together to develop metacognitive approaches to instruction in their discipline. They will implement and assess how “learning to learn” strategies affect student success in their core courses, and results will be disseminated to all SEPCHE faculty. The Collegium will be led by two faculty conveners, an external consultant with expertise in the applications of brain research to student learning, and a specialist in faculty development.
Ongoing developmental brain research indicates that the regions of the brain associated with cognitive control are the latest to mature and that the process of maturation continues well into young adulthood. At the same time, research on cognition at the college level draws attention to the importance of the development of higher order cognitive abilities as a major factor underlying students’ academic success. In order to be able to take full advantage of the intellectual opportunities their postsecondary studies offer, students, therefore, need more assistance in developing the metacognitive capacities that characterize cognitive control—ability to set goals, develop strategies to achieve them, monitor their own progress, and make accommodations as needed—than was previously understood.
The SEPCHE Consortium will address this issue by exploring whether shifting instruction in a sample of core courses to a “learning how to learn” approach will help students develop cognitive skills that will enable them to master more disciplinary content in the targeted courses. The project will design a collaborative faculty development program focused on the application of current research in cognitive science to learning strategies and performance-based learning in the core curriculum. The plan is centered around the creation of a Collegium that will convene a group of sixteen faculty members who teach core courses, led by a leadership team of two conveners, a research consultant and a faculty development specialist.
Collegium faculty will engage in an intensive two-week workshop to incorporate metacognitive learning strategies into their core courses. Identifying core principles of their discipline, together with discipline-related thinking processes within the course they are adapting, they will modify their courses so that students can acquire content and conceptual framework, alongside the process skills that encourage cognitive synthesis and integration. The adapted courses will be taught in fall 2009 and spring 2010. The plan includes two Consortium-wide faculty conferences to bring the Collegium’s work to a larger faculty group. The findings of the Collegium will be published electronically or in print form or both.
The proposed project will help SEPCHE faculty become more aware of the importance
of teaching process along with teaching content, and of structuring assessment
that allows students to demonstrate mastery of both kinds of learning, especially
during the early years of college and will enhance significantly the quality
of student learning through the incorporation of performance-based metacognitive
learning strategies.
