The Bumpy Road Workshop: Journeying with a Novice College Learner

This session covered the differences in the high school and college expectations on both the students and the faculty. In high school, students can get by (and actually do pretty well) by just rote memorization. Schoolwork isn't always a high priority in their lives, and they find a way to manage to get good grades. These students expect these good grades to continue into college and are smacked in the face with reality when they discover that what they did in high school is not going to get them "A's" in college. For example, students can spend hours studying for an exam and still barely pass. This could be that they were studying terms (like they might have done in high school) instead of careful, analytical thought that we would like our students to know how to do. They need to learn to apply what they have learned in ways that are foreign to them. We, as educators in higher learning, also need to challenge our thinking about institutional and individual expectations for and our assumptions about student learning.