Strategic Academic Research and Development

Dear Colleagues,

The global pandemic that took hold in early 2020 required higher education institutions to adjust quickly, adopting and adapting information and communication technologies to continue operations. The pandemic also clarified the prevalence of social inequities and injustices within virtually all established systems across the US higher education landscape. Academic scholars affiliated with colleges and universities are generally at the forefront of rhetoric and research regarding the identification and elimination of systemic injustices within communities and institutions. However, as many critics have noted, HEIs are not necessarily at the forefront of eliminating those injustices within their own educational and employment practices. 

This Special Issue of Education Sciences explores methods via which HEIs can improve the impact and equity of their academic programs and support services. The approach that will be described in the first article of this Special Issue was the basis of an institutional transformation initiative at one, large, public multi-campus university. 

We have invited several colleagues who we know are involved with similar work to submit case examples of efforts that use such integrative, evidence-informed, and action-oriented strategies to make HEIs more inclusive and educationally effective.

The examples we have so far solicited focus on initiatives that emphasize student success. However, we invite cases that apply to other HEI mission functions (research and outreach/service) and originate from countries other than the United States. 

The cases we have identified have in common the following characteristics that are the core tenets of the construct, i.e., Strategic Academic Research and Development 

• Focusing on strategically selected priority institutional objectives that have significant impact on institutional effectiveness;
• Harnessing the expertise of the academic and professional staff at the institution, using advanced concepts and methods from education, psychology, social sciences, informatics, and other relevant disciplines;
• Including the diverse “voices” of constituents (e.g., academic and non-academic staff, students, research partners, funders, relevant members of various communities outside the institution);
• Employing evidence-informed methods for selecting, implementing, monitoring, and improving interventions targeted toward the objectives;
• Involving significant cross-sections of the staff involved in the day-to-day operations and management of the processes and structures that are involved in effecting change;
• Having the support and backing of university leadership.

We welcome other contributions related to these efforts such collaborative, comprehensive, and evidence-based transformation initiatives at global higher education institutions. 

Prof. Dr. Victor Borden
Prof. Dr. Rebecca Torstrick
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• institutional research
• assessment
• higher education
• student success

Title: Educational Technologies to Support Success: Learning from Trial and Error

Abstract: The global covid pandemic accelerated the adoption of new educational technologies at many institutions of higher education as they were forced to move quickly online. Anyone who has attended a recent national professional conference can attest to the plethora of vendors ready to solve every possible student success issue with their tool. Institutions must be able to differentiate and determine when they can best meet technology needs internally versus turning to an external vendor to achieve better and deeper student learning. This chapter focuses on how we tried to align our technology with both support services and teaching enhancements to promote better student outcomes through two different paths. The first used internal university resources to assess supports available and then fill information gaps with tracking and alert dashboards. The second involved a systematic effort to assess the value of a third-party tool—a collaborative student studying platform. We describe and discuss the strategies we used in each case and provide lessons learned.

Title: Learning as a Skill to be Learned: A Campus-Wide Framework to Support Student Learning and Success

Abstract: A primary expectation of college is that students in all majors and disciplines will learn content, skills, and knowledge that support individual growth, job placement, or continued academic endeavors. In short, being a student implies an expectation to learn. Effective learning directly impacts student academic success, and this success has downstream effects on student retention and graduation rates. However, the process of learning is often taken for granted, and, too often, student learning is not successful because students have not received any guidance on the methods of effective learning. When 472 UCLA students were asked “Do you study the way that you do because someone taught you to study that way?,” 80% replied ‘no’ (Kornell & Bjork, 2007), which remains a typical response from college students (see Morehead et al., 2016). Across higher education, students are often left on their own to learn about learning, and their improvised methods frequently involve ineffective techniques such as cramming for exams or re-reading assigned materials without deeper engagement. To counter such observations, the University of Iowa is implementing a campus-wide learning framework, Learning at Iowa. The framework is grounded in empirically validated practices from the cognitive and learning sciences, which have been organized around the Three Ms: mindset, metacognition, and memory. This article briefly reviews the relevant literatures supporting each of the Three Ms and then discusses the implementation of the framework with students, student-facing staff, and instructors, and how the framework supports equitable educational practices.

Title: Using Ethnographic Methods to Center Students’ Experiences in Course Transformation, DFW Reduction, and Student Success

Abstract: Large-enrollment courses in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses tend to have high Drop, Fail, and Withdraw (DFW) rates at the introductory level (see, for example, Malcom & Feder, 2016). As a result, these courses often create obstacles to students’ entry into related majors in sciences, healthcare, technology, and business and too often “weed out” promising students. In addition, gateway course DFW rates are disproportionally higher for historically minoritized and underserved students, such as students of color, low income, first-generation, and gender status. Furthermore, all students can benefit from gateway courses that offer clear aids and avenues for advancement through higher education’s complex curricular landscape. While postsecondary institutions have recently focused much of their investment on big data and learning analytics to drive their institutional student success efforts, well-known blindspots remain. This chapter documents a novel, evidence-based approach at Indiana University that enriches robust data infrastructure with qualitative ethnographic methods that center the student experience. It develops qualitative methods that bring the day-to-day learning realities of marginalization and disparate opportunities to light (Gillborn, 2010; Teranishi, 2007), engaging with questions of whether quantitative approaches (often thought of as underpowered and costly) can bring about changes that effectively support diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) (Davis & Saunders, 2022). This case study describes our ethnographic approach; how it has already prompted changes in STEM courses; our future directions with this work; and how other institutions can apply a similar mindset to promote efficacy, attainment, and equity in gateway STEM courses. With applied ethnographic methods, we can disrupt classroom experiences that lead students to believe that these courses are “designed to make your life miserable,” as one student told us, and instead construct learning environments committed to student success.

Title: Founded on the Practice of Research-Driven Continuous Improvement: How Guttman Community College Embedded Self-Study from the Outset

Abstract: Guttman Community College—originally named The New Community College—was born from the work of scholars and higher education practitioners who offered guidance on the integration of practices and principles found to be effective in the academic performance of underserved students. The first students were admitted just over a decade ago and benefited from the sound foundation put in place to serve them. Rather than focusing on the characteristics of the students, the college focused on the context in which students would learn. Perhaps most significantly, the college established a set of self-assessment practices aimed at continuous improvement. We describe the foundational principles of self-assessment that were built into Guttman Community College and identify the skills and resources needed to ensure an institution studies itself, engages cutting edge scholarship, and commits to continuous growth. Principles derived from the college experience highlight the important of having everyone on campus engaged in the work, having outside review and recommendations on implementation, maintaining a commitment to fidelity to the foundation while making changes to enhance student success, providing contexts for faculty and staff to work together with actual students, articulating and valuing the metrics while striving to have a deeper understanding of student outcomes, and giving faculty, staff, and students contexts for reporting on and getting feedback on their work. In addition to underscoring these lessons, we also argue that this work requires highly skilled administrators who have a practitioner-researcher mindset and the skills to study their own work and advance data-driven change.