“Is This Class Hard?” Defining and Analyzing Academic Rigor from a Learner’s Perspective

Abstract

Despite its value in higher education, academic rigor is a challenging construct to define for instructor and students alike. How do students perceive academic rigor in their biology course work? Using qualitative surveys, we asked students to identify “easy” or “hard” courses and define which aspects of these learning experiences contributed to their perceptions of academic rigor. The 100-level students defined hard courses primarily in affective terms, responding to stressors such as fast pacing, high workload, unclear relevance to their life or careers, and low faculty support. In contrast, 300-level students identified cognitive complexity as a contributor to course rigor, but course design elements—alignment between instruction and assessments, faculty support, active pedagogy—contributed to the ease of the learning process. Overwhelmingly, all students identified high faculty support, learner-centered course design, adequate prior knowledge, and active, well-scaffolded pedagogy as significant contributors to a course feeling easy. Active-learning courses in this study were identified as both easy and hard for the very reasons they are effective: they simultaneously challenge and support student learning. Implications for the design and instruction of rigorous active-learning college biology experiences are discussed.

The Phenomenon of Moving to Online/Distance Delivery as a Result of COVID-19: Exploring Initial Perceptions of Higher Education Faculty at a Rural Midwestern University

“…Many faculty responses communicated a clear plan to maintain strategies aimed at creating rigor in face-to-face courses or to alter assignments slightly to involve more writing. These responses closely align with the idea that rigor relates to a focus on cognitive demand rather than on increasing the workload for students (Wyse and Soneral, 2018). On the other hand, some responses indicated that maintaining rigor was no longer a priority concern and that asking a question about rigor may actually be insensitive at such a time.…”

“…It is likely that differing responses from these faculty participants were related to a difference in their underlying thoughts on what rigor involves. Perhaps, this subset of faculty defines rigor more similarly to introductory students in that it relates most closely to the amount of workload within a course (Wyse and Soneral, 2018).…”

“…Graham and Essex (2001) found that the same methods faculty used to ensure academic rigor in on-campus courses applied to online courses, with the caveat that clearer expectations and directions were required for the online course. Wyse and Soneral (2018) noted differences in student perceptions of rigor based on their academic classification: introductory students defined rigor based on workload, whereas upper class students defined rigor based on cognitive demand.…”

Knowing is half the battle: Assessments of both student perception and performance are necessary to successfully evaluate curricular transformation

“…In addition to helping students during normal class meeting times, PMs created and employed oral quizzes to help students achieve the intended learning outcomes for the course. In other studies, students have indicated that alignment between learning activities and assessments and learning support structures (such as PMs) are important elements in promoting learning [26], and it appears that these elements in the IBIS program also help improve student buy-in (S2 File).…”

How prior knowledge, learning, teaching and assessment affect students’ achievements in Mathematics

“…Karagiannopoulou and Christodoulides (2005) found that the learning is a stronger predictor of academic achievement, and Jenkins (2017) indicated that problem-based learning impacts positively the students' proficient level in mathematics. Wyse and Soneral (2018) revealed that the cognitive complexity is a contributor of the learning process, and Gilstrap (2019) reports a strong correlation between the standards for learners and the approaches to learning. Crawford and Wang (2015) revealed an increasingly significant performance by prior academic performance, and Johnson, Johnson, and Johnson (2017) found that comprehensive learning impact student achievements.…”