Students as Partners: What Students Tell Us About Learning
Ilir Miteza

This year our campus adopted some ambitious goals. Chief among them was raising our 6-year graduation rate from 54% to 70%. Let that sink in: less than 300 four-year colleges and universities out of more than 3000 nationwide are able to pull that off! In other words, we are striving to be in the top 10% of higher education institutions nationwide.

All of us at UM-Dearborn - faculty or staff - understand what’s at stake: lost time and investment, unpaid loans, dashed dreams and injured self-confidence for our students who don’t cross the finish line. Nationally, the students who can least afford a fresh start are more likely to drop out. As other universities, we spend much time and resources with those who end up dropping out, and much more to recruit and support their replacements.

Much work is done daily by the faculty, advisors, and others involved with academic success systems, to ensure our students succeed. The campus is leveraging technology, redesigning gateway courses, removing barriers, and brainstorming healthy practices in instruction and learning. Although literature and best practices can guide us, we should also listen to our students!

A student panel during Digital Education Day in March 2019 shared some insightful ideas about teaching in online courses, which I think apply equally well to most traditional courses. What did they have to say? To begin with, a long list of what they would like to see more in our classes. We heard suggestions for better ways of learning, and ideas for better course management practices.

They told us they want more avenues to learn on their own, such as team projects, essays on topics they care about, ways to engage with a variety of content, including audio-visual. Thoughtfully, they added that they see great value in active faculty guiding them, even in autonomous work.

Ideas for better course management practices included predictable weekly routines (applies more to online courses), study guides and outlines, re-doable practice assignments, and challenging homework assignments helpful for exam preparation and learning. 

What about ... um ... their pet peeves? Brace for impact! There was no lost love for “legwork” or “busywork” assignments devoid of meaning or value, focused on rote memorization, or regurgitation. There were no fans of multiple choice quizzes in the panel, either. The same goes for lessons or assignments that are too open-ended or vague. We heard “please be concrete, specific, transparent!” They did like group work, but not the kind that does not engage anyone or that is not framed with good shared accountability practices and rules.

Furthermore, the student panelists made a plea to some faculty who assign an uneven course load throughout the term. The rest of life is on set schedules: classes, work, meals, sleep, and so on. Uneven coursework distribution throws off their rhythm and makes it hard to plan and keep up. Unsurprisingly, they tipped their hat to faculty who are timely in responding to emails and calls, with a constant and engaged presence in their courses. 

I left the room thinking that much of what I had heard was quite consistent with what we see in the student success literature.  We want students to work with a variety of learning methods, including quantitative, logical, historical, analytic, all the way to creative. The meaningful assignments they are clamoring for can take them beyond the questions with known answers. They want to explore, be able to journey all the way to the unknown and unknowable. Our students know there are limits to a front-loaded knowledge model of learning; they want to know how and when to leverage facts and theories, and how to make contextual sense of them. They want to build readiness and confidence for a “messy” real world.

If we are to design better learning experiences and graduate more students on time, is listening to them enough? What do you think is possible with students as partners?