The Anatomy of Academic Rigor: The Story of One Institutional Journey

Draeger, John; Hill, Pixita del Prado; Hunter, L.; Mahler, Ronnie

doi:10.1007/s10755-012-9246-8

Cited by 32 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Drawing on a campus-wide survey, focus groups, and interviews with students, we found that students explained academic rigor in terms of workload, grading standards, level of difficulty, level of interest, and perceived relevance to future goals. These findings contrast with our previous research about the faculty conception of academic rigor (Draeger et al 2013) based on active learning, meaningful content, higher-order thinking, and appropriate expectations. Our new research offers the prospect of increasing the level of academic challenge in ways that resonate with student concerns.…”

contrasting

confidence: 99%

“…Based on findings from faculty focus groups, a campus-wide survey of the faculty, and faculty workshops, we developed a multidimensional model of academic rigor based on faculty perceptions (Draeger et al, 2013). We concluded that the faculty perceived learning to be most rigorous when students are actively learning meaningful content with higher-order thinking at the appropriate level of expectation within a given context.…”

Section: Background and Existing Conceptions Of Rigormentioning

confidence: 99%

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Developing a Student Conception of Academic Rigor

2014

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In this article we describe models of academic rigor from the student point of view. Drawing on a campus-wide survey, focus groups, and interviews with students, we found that students explained academic rigor in terms of workload, grading standards, level of difficulty, level of interest, and perceived relevance to future goals. These findings contrast with our previous research about the faculty conception of academic rigor (Draeger et al. 2013) based on active learning, meaningful content, higher-order thinking, and appropriate expectations. Our new research offers the prospect of increasing the level of academic challenge in ways that resonate with student concerns.

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confidence: 99%

Section: Background and Existing Conceptions Of Rigormentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing a Student Conception of Academic Rigor

2014

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“…This ideal role includes effective self-regulation, significant effort, commitment and motivation. Empirical studies (Draeger et al, 2013) have indicated that teachers and lecturers would concur with the model presented above, however, studies with students paint a contrasting picture, with differing conceptions depicted (Draeger, del Prado Hill & Mahler, 2014;Mahler et al, 2014). Lecturers were mostly concerned with how quality learning could be attained while students' overriding concern was how hard it would be to get good grades.…”

Section: A Conceptual Framework For Understanding the Term 'Academic mentioning

confidence: 94%

“…While there are many variations of the definition, no decisive consensus regarding a definition has yet emerged (Gray, 2008;Lincoln, 2010;Blackburn, 2013;Draeger et al, 2013;Reich, Turner & Volkan, 2013). Despite this, there is not much debate about the definition; it tends to be defined and used to suit the context within which it is applied.…”

Section: A Conceptual Framework For Understanding the Term 'Academic mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Achieving these expectations involves presenting meaningful, challenging and relevant content with high cognitive value that focusses on core concepts and the "big ideas" of the discipline (ibid: 10) as well as being aligned with the official curriculum as mandated by policy. It also involves interactive teaching and active learning focusing on higher order thinking (Lincoln, 2010;Blackburn, 2013;Draeger et al, 2013). To achieve this, methods and activities should be appropriately selected from a repertoire containing multiple possibilities (DeLuca et al, 2010) to suit the content.…”

Section: A Conceptual Framework For Understanding the Term 'Academic mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The struggle for academic rigour in assessment education

Steinberg¹,

Waspe²

2016

PiE

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IntroductionA 2010 study of the experiences of the University of the Witwatersrand's (Wits) first year B.Ed. students negotiating their academic learning arrived at the claim that only students who achieved marks above 70% were able to adapt to the "new semiotic domain" of the university, where, compared to school, there is "less external locus of control and where knowledge is regarded as more than performance" (Shalem et al., : 1093. The students who were in the mark range of 40-60% (i.e. just below or above failure) were caught in a struggle for "epistemological access" and remained unsure of "how to differentiate between the words they need to select to explain a specialised idea. Furthermore, they are unable to identify the web of concepts within which their thinking is nested and how to select the textual evidence needed to explain their views and the examples required to demonstrate their point of view" (ibid: 1093). The form and criteria of academic discourse were so foreign to them that it prevented students from accessing the content that is offered by university courses. For them, at the time, writing in ways that could be considered as academically rigorous was still out of reach.It so happened that when we taught and evaluated the 4 th year assessment course in 2014, we were working with the same group of students. Looking at the final course marks, only 52 out of 371 (14%) students achieved a mark of 70% and above, while 264 (71%) were in the 50-69% range. That made our pass marks look acceptable enough but was it any indicator of the course having been, and enabled the students to become more, academically rigorous?This article tells the story of an assessment education (AE) course in which the staff intended to offer epistemological access to a course that was academically rigorous, which, at the time, we understood to mean high quality teaching and learning. We saw it as our responsibility to offer clear, explanatory lectures on key assessment concepts and debates, appropriate readings, challenging and relevant tasks, useful feedback, and explicit guidance for student self-regulation of their work, so that students could acquire key assessment concepts and the accompanying professional skills. From our perspective, the students' responsibility was to engage with the lectures and ask questions, read the provided texts with understanding, put effort into writing the set tasks and generally enjoy the learning. This intention requires effort all round, which we conscientiously put in. Yet, to our dismay, we found that many students did minimum work and some evaluated the course as being 'boring', 'irrelevant' and 'useless'. Rather than losing faith in ourselves and our students, we decided to embark on the road of academic rigour by engaging in "collegial conversations that encourage deep and critical reflection for teacher educators" (Selkrig & Keamy, 2015: 1) The question that drove this conversation was: What are students' perspectives about what and how they learned from the assessmen...

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The case for flexibility in online science courses: Strategies and caveats

Nunes

Laliberté

Rawle

2022

Biochem Molecular Bio Educ

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The COVID‐19 pandemic created an unpredictable and stressful situation for both students and instructors. With current instruction largely occurring in an online environment, we propose that increased flexibility in course structure will best support student learning. Flexible course structure offers a trauma‐aware approach to teaching, is in line with the Universal Design for Learning, and increases student motivation and meaningful learning. It can also provide more authentic experiences akin to science‐based careers. We provide several specific suggestions for incorporating flexibility in one's class, as well as outline considerations and caveats. Our hope is that flexibility necessitated by the COVID‐19 pandemic will continue to inspire change in future course design and educational paradigms.

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The Anatomy of Academic Rigor: The Story of One Institutional Journey

Cited by 32 publications

References 22 publications

Developing a Student Conception of Academic Rigor

Developing a Student Conception of Academic Rigor

The struggle for academic rigour in assessment education

The case for flexibility in online science courses: Strategies and caveats

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