Using the GoodWork™ Model to Introduce First-Year Students to the Expectations of Academia

Abstract

In this article, we present a GoodWork™-inspired Summer Reading Assignment and Freshman Orientation program to introduce first-year students to the culture of higher education. We believed that the GoodWork™ model would be a useful tool for helping students to understand our university’s expectations for excellence, ethics, and engagement in their academic work. Assessment data showed students’ ability to apply the concept of GoodWork™ as well as their high level of satisfaction with the program and the value that they found in learning about GoodWork™ as they embarked on their first year of undergraduate study.

Sharing College Knowledge

“…When asked to define the three E's in Questions 4,5,and 6, 36% appropriately defined excellence, 28% defined ethics, and 23% defined engaged. Participants' inability to appropriately define good work and the three E's was somewhat surprising given they were introduced to the concepts in a Summer Assignment and Freshman Orientation (Johnson & Duncan, 2013). However, the results echo Program 1 findings that most participants did not appropriately define good work even after six 50 min sessions.…”

“…We developed two programs and embedded them into first-year seminars. Our program was based on the concept of Good Work (Gardner et al, 2001), a model we previously used to introduce first-year students to college knowledge through Summer Assignments (Duncan & Johnson, 2014;Johnson & Duncan, 2013;Johnson, Duncan, & Schoener, 2015). Gardner and colleagues (2001) defined professional good work as excellent (superior quality), ethical (socially responsible), and engaged (fulfilling).…”

BU Good Work Initiative

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In this paper, we describe the development, implementation, and assessment of a Summer Assignment and series of Freshman Orientation workshops based on the GoodWork™ model (Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi, & Damon, 2001). Informed by previous programming (Johnson & Duncan, 2013) and in collaboration with the Offices of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs, we expanded this first-year experience to include discussions about what it means to do good not only as students but also as persons and citizens. First-year undergraduates completed a Summer Assignment requiring them to reflect on their roles as students, persons, and citizens.

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“…The Bloomsburg University (BU) GoodWork Initiative launched in the fall of 2011 with the mission of strengthening undergraduates' understanding of the concept of good work, catalyzing their pursuit of good work, and providing resources to help sustain their commitment to doing good work over the course of their academic and professional development. During the first embedding of GoodWork-inspired programming into freshman orientation (Johnson & Duncan, 2013), we focused on what it means to do academic good work in the culture of higher education. Feedback from incoming first-year undergraduates suggested that they found value in learning about the three Es of academic good work, reflecting upon the academic expectations of higher education, being motivated to take on their first year of undergraduate study, and becoming more aware of campus-based academic resources.…”

Factors That Motivate and Challenge Psychology Majors’ Pursuit of Academic Good Work

“…Committed to the belief that the purpose of higher education is to nurture the development of good workers, we established a good work initiative at our university in the spring 2011 (goodwork.bloomu.edu). Our mission is to strengthen the culture of good work at our university and in our department (psychology) by promoting an understanding of what it means to do academic good work, showcasing exemplars of good work, highlighting campus-based resources that support the pursuit of good work, and providing opportunities for the members of our academic community to reflect on the quality of their own work (Duncan & Johnson, 2014; Johnson & Duncan, 2013; Johnson, Duncan, & Schoener, 2015). To teach undergraduate students about the value of pursuing good work in their prospective professions as well as in their current academic pursuits, we translated our understanding of Gardner et al’s (2001) three E’s (i.e., excellent, ethical, engaged) of professional good work into the concept of academic good work .…”