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Engaging Today's Students with the Liberal Arts |
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The Sophomore-Year Experience Project Knox and Monmouth Colleges |
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Introduction Apocryphal tales of "sophomore slump" abound in the academy; most teachers have at least one to tell about a favorite, or ill-favored, student. Though most campuses make special academic and student-life accommodations for their new first-year students, few colleges and universities have in place programs to help their sophomores make the transition from the "newness" of coming to college to the "settled" state of full investment in a major. Unlike first-year students, sophomores have not been systematically addressed as a student population until relatively recently. Primarily this has been due to a lack of useful data; anecdote can only take us so far in preparing academic and student-life professionals for the particular challenges which face sophomores, especially at a liberal arts college where the social is often as valued as the academic. Our project was undertaken, then, to generate data about students' experience of their second year in college. By gathering statistical data via an on-line survey as well as narrative data via focus groups, we hoped to provide students with ample opportunity to quantify and qualify that experience. The project was undertaken as a joint effort on two ACM member campuses because we hoped that the combination of student bodies would allow our conclusions to be generalized beyond the particular strengths and limitations of a given student population. Although both Knox and Monmouth are private, generally rural, Midwestern liberal arts colleges with approximately 1200 students, they traditionally recruit from differing student pools, one national and one primarily local (that is, Illinois-based). Moreover, the student populations at each school tend to view the intellectual, social, and historical aspects of the students at the other school as very different from their own. By conducting our research on both campuses, our hope was to see if these perceptions carried over to sophomore-year data specifically or, whether, as we hypothesized, sophomores at both campuses are more alike than different. Method The Co-Directors assembled a Working Group comprised of faculty, administration, and student-life personnel from both campuses. Initially, this group worked to focus on particular goals we wanted to achieve, and particular data points we wished to address. Specifically, we focused upon seven areas of student perception: major choice; interaction with advisors; interactions with faculty, staff, and students across campus (both inside and outside of class); satisfaction; time usage; intellectual development; perceptions of the college. Then, in concert with a specialist in survey-generation and remaining conscious to echo concerns raised by the National Survey of Student Engagement, the Co-Directors drafted an on-line instrument consisting of thirty-six multi-part questions; after vetting and revising with the Working Group, the survey went live in its first iteration on March, 2004. Three cohorts of students were eventually asked to take the survey. In the spring of 2004 and 2005 sophomores participated; in the fall of 2004 a cohort of returning juniors were asked to take it, in case they did not the previous spring and to ask them to reflect on any perceptions that might have changed over the summer. In addition, student Fellows on both campuses conducted a number of focus groups. Initially, students were randomly selected from the subject cohorts and asked to come in groups of ten to discuss their sophomore years with the Fellow. Unfortunately, despite repeated attempts at this method and after repeated failures to gather students, the Co-Directors and Fellows had to shape focus groups. A joint Knox-Monmouth faculty focus group was conducted by the Co-Directors to survey faculty perceptions of sophomores, and both campuses conducted similar conversations with their student-life personnel. Transcripts of these focus groups were subsequently content-analyzed. Preliminary Interpretations Because of the breadth of the data we have gathered, we will be making a complete report at the end of the year, to be filed with the ACM office. Before presenting our conclusions, however, a note of caution regarding our findings. Since our survey was a matter of student self-reporting, our data are an indirect measure of assessment and can be colored by any number of factors. For instance, students may not understand a question, they may lie, they might purposefully misanswer a question to skew overall response. Moreover, since just over half of the possible student population responded to the survey, results may be skewed toward those students already most engaged; those who did not participate may well have answered more negatively on survey questions, documenting the overall lack of engagement which their non-participation reflects. That said, if students reliably report similar responses across iterations and populations, those perceptions bear consideration and it is from those responses that we draw the following preliminary conclusions (all percentages are averages across all three survey iterations, unless otherwise noted): 1. "Sophomore
Slump" as an Indication of Developmental, Not Simply Academic, Crisis.
When asked to address their second years regarding whether they "questioned [their] moral, ethical, and/or religious values" (Q25), an average of 27% reported that they did so "less" than in their first years.; this may be compared to 47% answering "more." Likewise, when asked whether they "questioned [their] political values" more in their second year, 26% answered they did so "less" than in their first year, as opposed to 53% saying "more." The numbers were even more telling when asked about questioning their "future goals and plans": 17% answered "less" or "much less" compared to 83% answering "more" or "much more." On one measure, then, our data reflects the sophomore year as a particular high point of crisis questioning. This finding was borne out in responses to our 29th question, "My 2nd year experiences have contributed to my overall growth in the following areas," where the following responses were given:
These figures seem to indicate that our respondents are successfully navigating crisis moments in order to arrive at positive outlooks on the above topics. At that moment of their academic careers (again, end of sophomore year or part-way through their junior year), signs of sophomore slump were a bit less evident as a developmental problem than the literature might have suggested. Our focus group data, however, indicate precisely the sorts of developmental crises which psychological studies of students have indicated. As students were given the chance to narrativize their second-year experiences, they charted a crisis-to-understanding pattern unreflected in the survey results (which we believe document a post-crisis instant). A few excerpts from the transcripts are symptomatic in this regard: I think that sophomore year is just a really big struggle to find your place. You struggle in groups and friends, plus finding your major. Everything is all about that. It is really hard to find your place, but when you find it, you are okay. By junior year, you have found it and freshman year, you have too much going on to think about it. I began taking on more responsibilities my second year. I learned to trust my instincts and to enjoy what little free time I had. I lost some nervousness and self-consciousness. Personal growth? I think that sophomore year, I learned to accept responsibilities for my actions more. My freshman year, I tried the same things and it never worked. So, I leaned that you have to accept that you make it or you don't. No one can take responsibility but you if you screw up. I think I have grown intellectually. I've grown up a lot. Last year I was a wide-eyed freshman, now after a year, I think I've grown. I've become more mature and intellectual. I've learned how to express how I feel a lot more--intellectually, emotionally--on all levels. 2. Disjunction
Between Student Perceptions of Self and Professors Demands Upon
Self. 3. Campus
Cultures Evened By Sophomore Year. 4. Sophomore
Satisfaction Is Directly Correlated to Interpersonal Affiliation.
Again, this data is supplemented and supported by qualitative data from our focus groups: It is a really awkward year until you get really involved, so the faculty should really try to know them during this time. Also, they should really get to know all the students in the department. I think they need more time with the advisors during this year. Freshmen are so overwhelmed so it wouldn't help. But by sophomore year, you need help building in other places besides knowing your way around college. I would encourage faculty to develop stronger relationships with sophomores rather than waiting until they are juniors or seniors. I think that it is a lot more beneficial for them personally as well as academically if they could get closer to the faculty they will be working with. I find myself getting along just fine. I'm making friends quite a bit now. I've become a lot more social when there's a chance to be social. I have better relationships with people that I didn't think I could have a relationship with. I've always been outgoing, but being with other adults, it's not like high school. It's not everyone being the same way, so I've opened up to other people. Conclusion The Knox-Monmouth Sophomore-Year Experience Project has generated far more data than we have had time to analyze and draw conclusions from here. Indeed, our sense is that what survey iterations and focus groups transcripts we have will prove rich ground for further exploration, raising as many questions as they provide answers. Both questions and answers ought now to be engaged in issues of curricular and co-curricular programming, to which we will turn in our larger report, (submitted by the end of the year). What we are beginning to see in this current examination, however, is a quantitative and qualitative record which shows ACM second-year populations more alike than anything else, despite their perceptions of themselves as different from each other. Such data might be helpful insofar as it allows college professionals to anticipate common roadblocks and provide common answers to sophomore problems. Moreover, the data show that our schools are providing experiences - diverse socially, challenging academically - which allow our sophomores a number of ways to measure their satisfaction with their own lives and their lives at their institution. Finally, as indicated by the 77% "good" or "very good" response to their overall satisfaction with their school compared to their first year, we are providing experiences which allow the majority of sophomores to persist and thrive at our colleges. Diana
Beck, Chair of Educational Studies, Knox College |
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