Practice-oriented Approach to Development of Leadership Competencies of Honors Students: the Project «The Territory of Intellectual and Liberal Inventions»

This article presents the results of the study dedicated to the development of leadership competencies of the students with high academic achievements based on the practice-oriented approach. The authors of the paper reveal the features of the development of leadership competencies of Honors College students based on a practice-oriented approach, present the theoretical justification and description of the project «The Territory of Intellectual and Liberal Inventions», develop the specific character of gamification of the process of development leadership competencies among students of the Honors College. The main methods of this study were a review of theoretical works devoted to leadership and leadership competencies, circumstances of the educational environment of the Honors College, and theory and practice of gamification; a survey of Siberian Federal University Honors students; substantiation, description and creating of the project «The Territory of Intellectual and Liberal Inventions»; a design of a gamification model of student leadership competencies’ development process; a pilot experiment of this model, an analysis of the experiment results. The results of the conducted research reveal that the development of leadership competencies among gifted students based on a practice-oriented approach is actually and widely discussed by the educational community. The use of gamification allows intensifying the passing of the studied process. The materials of this article may be essential and beneficial for the researchers of development of leadership competencies, as well as for comparative studies in the field of teaching gifted students

Vignette--Pivoting from Laboratory to Remote Research Using the Online Game Foldit

Honors College students at Purdue University are required to complete a capstone project as part of the curriculum. Many students experienced a disruption to their research plans in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, faculty launched a place-based research initiative to recruit students to be onsite researchers from wherever they were. A Foldit research group was created for students from biology-related majors.

Honors College Students' Adjustment Factors and Academic Success: Advising Implications

We examined first-semester adjustment among students in and out of an honors college because honors college participants receive relatively little attention in the advising literature. As expected, honors college students earned relatively high grades and were associated with high retention rates. Two noncognitive factors predicted these differences: self-confidence and external influences on college choice. In an interesting finding, honors students expressed less self-confidence and placed greater importance on external college-choice factors than their high-achieving peers outside the honors college. Implications for the support of honors students and their peers are discussed.

Psychological Heterogeneity Among Honors College Students

Greater knowledge of the psychology of honors college students will help to inform program administrators, counselors, residence life assistants, and faculty about how they may provide support to those with the greatest need. Via an online survey, personality, perfectionism, and suicidal ideation data were collected from honors college students ( N = 410, 73% female). Using latent profile analysis, students were classified by their responses to the Big Five Inventory personality measure into five profiles. Risk factors of high perfectionism and suicidal ideation scores were found in two of the profiles, suggesting students with these personality characteristics may need enhanced psychological support. The largest profile (35% of students) had extraversion scores above the norm, but all other profiles had introverted scores below the norm. Neuroticism scores were also higher than the norm in the introverted profiles, which represented a majority of the honors college students.

Trends Among Honors College Students: An Analysis by Year in School

This study sought to determine whether honors college students differed with regards to academic achievement, academic self-concept, general self-concept, educational aspirations, and career aspirations as a function of their class standing. Participants included 298 honors college students from a large, Midwestern university. A demographic questionnaire, the general academic subscale and the general-self subscale of the Self-Description Questionnaire III (Marsh & O'Neill, 1984), and the Leadership and Achievement Aspirations subscale of the Career Aspirations Scale (O'Brien, 1992) were used. Results indicate significant differences between juniors and seniors with regards to academic self-concept, educational aspirations, and career aspirations. Implications for honors faculty and administrators are discussed.

The Incidence of Perfectionism in Honors and Regular College Students

Using the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (Frost, Martin, Lahart, & Rosenblate, 1990) measures of perfectionism in a group of 90 Honors College students and 95 more typical peers were compared. Honors College students received significantly higher scores with a moderate effect size on the subscales of Concern Over Mistakes, Personal Standards, Parental Expectations, and the total score of overall perfectionism. This result is in contrast to recent findings of no difference in perfectionism scores between gifted and typical younger students. It is unclear if the finding of elevated perfectionism among Honors College students is indicative of predisposition to maladjustment or is a healthy component of the pursuit of academic excellence among the highly able.

Leadership Profiles as Determined by the 16 PF Scores of Honors College Students

79 students enrolled in an Honors College curriculum were administered the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire to determine their leadership potential scores. Significant differences were found between individuals who actually held leadership positions and those who did not. Other studies using larger samples need to be undertaken to replicate this study.