Current Insights

This installment of Current Insights highlights three studies that 1) take an interdisciplinary approach to characterizing active learning, 2) explore why faculty–student interactions may not be universally beneficial, and 3) characterize the help-seeking behaviors of first-generation college students.

Are office hours obsolete?

Office hours are a higher-education tradition. Unchanged for past-decades, the upheaval due to the COVID pandemic, transitioned office hours in many institutions from face-to-face to virtual and other formats. Historically office hours are a resource underused by students. Faculty-student interactions are considered a high-impact activity aimed at promoting student success. One purpose of office hours is to increase student access to faculty. It is time to revitalize and revamp this tradition. Increasing student engagement, clarifying course requirements, and role modeling professional behavior are potential goals for office hours and student-faculty interactions. To meet these goals, faculty will need to undertake activities that are much more active than the typical passive activity of office hours.

Open Science at Liberal Arts Colleges

Adopting and sustaining open science practices is accompanied by particular opportunities and challenges for faculty at small liberal arts colleges (SLACs). Their predominantly undergraduate student body, small size, limited resources, substantial teaching responsibilities, and focus on intensive faculty-student interactions make it difficult to normalize open science at SLACs. However, given the unique synergy between teaching and research at SLACs, many of these practices are well-suited for work with undergraduate psychology students. In addition, the opportunities for collaboration afforded by the open science community may be especially attractive for those doing research at SLACs. In this paper, we offer suggestions for how open science can further grow and flourish among faculty who work closely with undergraduates, both in classrooms and in labs. We also discuss how to encourage professional development and transform institutional culture around open science practices. Most importantly, this paper serves as an invitation to SLAC psychology faculty to participate in the open science community.

Fostering a Sense of Belonging Using a Multicontext Approach

This review of research discusses how applications of multicontext theory can help foster a sense of belonging for students in higher education, resulting in stronger persistence. Multicontext theory may offer an approach to designing learning experiences and environments that take into account varied ways of thinking and knowing, are relevant inside and outside of the classroom, and can both enrich and encompass the lives of students on and off campus. Focusing on faculty-student interactions is one area within which multicontext approaches can be examined for insights into current successes and future potential.

Engaging Faculty in Professional Development: Lessons From Bangladesh

Engagement can be defined as participation, involvement, and commitment (Harper & Quaye, 2015). This paper explains faculty engagement in professional development. Faculty engagement in professional development can be defined as faculty participation and involvement in formal and informal learning activities. These formal and informal activities focus on professionalism that might include exercises leading to the development of knowledge, skills, abilities, values, and self-awareness. Some examples of these formal and informal learning activities are classroom teaching, curriculum and instruction development, training, consulting, faculty/student interactions, workshops/conferences, and academic publications etc. Faculty engagement in professional development incorporates the total sum of formal and informal learning or continuous learning throughout one’s career (Broad & Evans, 2006; Capps, Crawford, & Constas, 2012). Since professional development includes faculty engagement, the paper explores how university faculty professionally develop themselves through engagement.

Accommodations in the College Setting: The Perspectives of Students Living with Disabilities

Using a critical interpretive framework, the authors utilized semi-structured interviews to understand the experiences and perceptions of two college students living with disability concerning their use of accommodations, modifications, and adaptations in program requirements, classroom instruction, and testing. The central research questions were: “Are accommodations perceived as effective in supporting students with disabilities in their academic and social pursuits? Do students perceive that accommodations allow them maximum engagement and participation in their educational experiences?” and “To what extent are accommodations perceived by the participants as leveling the playing field for students with disabilities?” And, finally, “What do the participants perceive as the biggest obstacles to success for students with disabilities?” An understanding of the participants’ perceptions will enhance the overall awareness and appreciation for the experiences of students living with disability and will have direct implications for faculty-student interactions, student-to-student interactions as well as larger interactions within society.