Educational Methods Commons^™

Building Virtual Community: The Power Of Peer-Led Engagement, Emily Clossin, Shane Collins, Lisa Ruch, Kristina Horn Sheeler, Kara M. Woodlee

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Honors College developed a multi-layered strategy to foster interpersonal connection and a sense of belonging among incoming students as well as continued opportunities for engagement among the entire community of scholars. Via social media posts and takeovers, peer mentor commitment, and virtual activities organized and led by students, along with more traditional face-to-face events, our new students developed connections, relationships, and a sense of identity as honors scholars. Our continuing students took on new leadership roles in the honors college, displaying their talents and contributing in ways they had not before in face-to-face formats. …

Before They Set Foot On Campus: Building A Virtual Summer Community For Incoming Honors Students, Laura G. Eldred, Gillian Wenhold, Jacquelyn Mcbride

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Discusses the launching of a brand-new program rooted in community creation during a pandemic, which meant that traditional modes of cohort building were not going to fly. That said, although the impetus was pandemic-specific, the lessons learned about the creation and value of virtual communities are not limited to one historical moment.

Lasting Lessons From Covid-19: A Story Of Successful Community Building, Christian Rubio

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

To state that the landscape of higher education has changed is an understatement. Strategies and approaches have been altered radically since the spring of 2020. After all, college and universities understood that they needed, as Glen Llopsis observes, a “process of reinvention, whether we like it or not. [Because] post-COVID-19 will not look like pre-COVID-19.” Many of these new strategies will undoubtedly become permanent fixtures because their aim was to foster a sense of community in our honors program. It is precisely some of these activities that this article will detail.

Harnessing Flip In Both Hybrid And Fully Online Honors Courses To Build Community, Monica Vandieren, Sylvia A. Pamboukian

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

To encourage emotionally and socially significant student collaboration, the University Honors Program at Robert Morris University developed a variety of Flip assignments and activities, including scavenger hunts, journals, and peer-advising, that were integrated into online and hybrid courses in order to create a sense of community for students from their first year through their senior year.

Peer Mentoring In A Pandemic: An Honors Experiment In Community Building, Jennifer Schlegel, Alexis Duhadaway

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

During fall 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic created a situation that necessitated initiative and required agency across all domains of society and every aspect of higher education, we prioritized the physical and mental health and well-being of our students at Kutztown University, and we recognized the increased significance of establishing social connections when so many had been disrupted. For a generation that has grown up with smart technology, flipping peer mentoring makes sense because it provides a context for the students’ immediate development and assertion of agency in familiar modalities for social and academic connections.

Connecting Honors Students In A Virtual Environment: Activities For Engagement, Sarah Sudar, Colin Sisk

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

With a mix of students returning online and staying at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Community College of Beaver County (CCBC) Honors Program in Monaca, Pennsylvania, had to adapt our model of extracurricular activities to accommodate students who felt comfortable coming on campus as well as balancing virtual events for those who did not.

Transcending Distance: Connecting During Imposed Seclusion, Lauri B. Cockfield

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Although the world endured many losses because of the COVID- 19 virus, including missing the hustle and bustle of seeing and socializing with our students in person on campus, I am pleased with the way the honors college at Perimeter turned this challenging time into an opportunity to focus on and build the community our students and faculty have told us they want. We are now adept at archiving virtual events, and our practice is to seek permission from all our speakers to record and archive their presentations. Our plan is to track views of these recorded sessions so we …

Creating Virtual Honors Spaces With Discord And Webex, Trista M. Merrill, Ce Rosenow

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Although Discord and WebEx are different platforms that lend themselves to different types of events, they are both useful for creating virtual honors spaces. They can easily be used in addition to other ways of reaching students, such as blogs and social media. Through these virtual spaces, students have an opportunity to gain information, hear guest speakers, and, most importantly, feel connected to their honors community.

The Tightrope Walk Of Academic Creativity: Eliciting Growth In Online Honors Courses, Jacob Arnold

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

This essay reflects upon and explicates the inception, implementation, and publication of the experimental assignment, “A Quibbler,” from a course entitled “Forms of Literature: Influences of and on Harry Potter” (ENGL 2341) at North Central Texas College in Gainesville, Texas.

Honors Online: Teaching, Learning, And Building Community Virtually In Honors Education: Front And Back Matter, Victoria M. Bryan, Cat Stanfield

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Front and back matter from Honors Online: Teaching, Learning, and Building Community Virtually in Honors Education (NCHC, 2024), edited by Victoria M. Bryan and Cat Stanfield.

Building And Fostering Honors Communities: Lessons From Social Distancing, Anne Dotter, Kathleen King

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

While scholars of online education have been developing ways to foster a sense of belonging in online spaces for years, many of us in honors were thrown into the deep end for the first time in March 2020. As a result, we are now able to see the potential of online practices in a way we could not previously. This chapter tells the story of how we came to see the value of virtual community made possible by digital technology as an invaluable complement to the in-person work of a twenty-first-century honors program. Before the Work from Home (WFH) era, …

Mentoring In The Mix: Building Mentoring Capacity Intentionally In A New Honors College, Kathryn Butler-Valdez, Hailey Silver Rodis, Audrey Cerfoglio

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The University of Nevada, Reno Honors College’s approach to mentorship capitalizes on guiding students through a variety of directed activities and experiential discussions to promote critical thinking and the adoption of new, transferable knowledge. Enhancing traditional advising activities such as course selection and discovery of co-curricular opportunities, programming around mentorship additionally provides another avenue for keeping students engaged, encouraging full participation in the honors college, and improving student retention and persistence rates. Because oversight of these common metrics for success in higher education very often falls to advising staff, and because formal academic advising is a kind of mentorship, it …

Serving Our Communities: Leveraging The Honors College Model At Two-Year Institutions, Eric Hoffman, Victoria M. Bryan, Dan Flores

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Honors colleges at two-year institutions play a uniquely important role in twenty-first century higher education by providing additional opportunities, services, and programming that support greater outcomes for the community, especially for those members of underrepresented and underserved populations. Two-year institutions may wonder how the honors college structure could be valuable, particularly when honors programs are already well established, recognized, and understood among the faculty and staff as providing opportunities for students and supported by administration. Honors colleges can give honors a seat at the table in deans councils, budgetary discussions, campus planning, and curriculum development processes, which in turn allows …

Teaching And Learning In The Fourth Space: Preparing Scholars To Engage In Solving Community Problems, Heidi Appel, Rebecca C. Bott-Knutson, Joy Hart, Paul Knox, Andrea Radasanu, Leigh E. Fine, Timothy J. Nichols, Daniel Roberts, Keith Garbutt, William Ziegler, Jonathan D. Kotinek, Kathy Cooke, Ralph Keen, Mark Andersen, Jyotsna Kapur

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Honors education has a rich history of preparing students to be good communicators, to think deeply and broadly, to collaborate effectively, and to be ethical citizens engaged in communities. The challenges of contemporary society, however, call for something more. To engage effectively with complex societal issues, students must identify and collaborate effectively with a broad range of stakeholders in the community, understand and employ systems thinking, value highly diverse perspectives, and develop communication skills for conflict management. To develop these additional skills and perspectives, the authors invoke the concept of fourth space as the deep engagement of honors students in …

The Elective System, Honors Degrees, And Academic Advising, Erin E. Edgington

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Introduction to Advising for Today's Honors Students, Erin E. Edgington, editor. Published by the National Collegiate Honors Council, Lincoln, Nebraska, United States, 2023.

Advising With Purpose: Utilizing The Motivation For College Success Model, Stephanie Veltman Santarosa

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Conclusion

Whether or not advisors choose to use the formal MSLQ instrument as a tool in advising, they can contribute to their advisees’ academic success by listening for the presence or absence of the motivational constructs it measures in advisee comments and conversation and by responding in ways that develop positive motivations and encourage management of those constructs that may present barriers to success. Because intrinsic goal orientation, task value, control of learning beliefs, and self-efficacy can be learned, and extrinsic goal orientation and test anxiety can be lessened and managed, advisors equipped with the knowledge and tools to evaluate …

Motivation In Honors Advising, Matthew T. Best, Kenneth E. Barron, Jared Diener, Philip L. Frana

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Section headings:

Honors advising and student motivation

Scenarios

Implications for Honors Advising

Conclusion

Equipping advisors with a motivation toolbox to be used in regular interactions with prospective and current students, including formal office visits, open houses, and sidewalk conversations, makes our advising interactions more purposeful and relevant. Introducing honors motivation in advising encounters and first-year experience courses will help students gain a better sense of who they are both individually and as a group. This approach also helps students to be curious about finding their purpose, vocation, ideas, and curricula. The EVC model allows honors advisors to understand and help …

Beyond The Letterhead: A Tactical Toolbox For Transitioning From Program To College, Sarah Hottinger, Megan Mcilreavy, Clay Motley, Louis E. Keiner

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

As institutions of higher education evolve to better meet the needs of highly motivated students, conversations have focused on the role of an honors education in the undergraduate collegiate experience. Specifically, administrators have been evaluating the value and merits of maintaining an honors program or deciding to make a transition to a new honors college. This chapter clarifies the essential differences between these two approaches to honors education. Additionally, it provides some guiding principles that can generate widespread support and facilitate the development of impactful student experiences that are generally applicable to a broad range of institutions. Overall, honors colleges …

From The Top Down: Implications Of Honors College Deans’ Race And Gender, Malin Pereira, Jacqueline Smith-Mason, Karoline Summerville, Scott Linneman

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Most honors college deans are White males, yet most students enrolled in honors colleges are women; more often than not, there is glaring underrepresentation of diverse races and ethnicities among student populations in honors colleges. Considering these data, the authors ask whether honors colleges perpetuate the “Oxford College Don” model of White male privilege and power. Black, Indigenous, Hispanic, and other students of color often look at the leaders of honors colleges and rarely see themselves, and White honors students lack the opportunity to see diverse leadership models. This chapter explains how and why faculty of color and women face …

Something Borrowed, Something New: Honors College Faculty And The Staffing Of Honors Courses, Erin E. Edgington, Linda Frost

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

This chapter offers an overview of the most current and common methods of staffing honors college courses as well as the problems and possibilities of these methods. The chapter’s literature review notes the typical characteristics of the most successful honors faculty members as well as how those characteristics tend to mirror those of successful honors students. As honors colleges themselves have proliferated, so has the number of tenure-track faculty lines contained in them; the details of how several universities have evaluated those faculty are included. The authors make three final recommendations regarding honors college faculty and note that as honors …

Cultivating Institutional Change: Infusing Principles Of Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Into Everyday Honors College Practices, Tara Tuttle, Julie Stewart, Kayla Powell

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Envisioning and implementing strategic changes around diversity, equity, and inclusion in honors can be paradoxical. While honors colleges are traditionally regarded as tight-knit communities that serve as centers of curricular and pedagogical innovation, they have also been sites of exclusion because of outdated definitions of excellence based on inequitable presuppositions inherent to the university admissions process. Because many honors programs endeavor to produce publicly engaged graduates, creating a diverse, inclusive, and equitable learning environment is a moral imperative. Not only does it provide a safe and welcoming environment for learners, but it also models the type of behavior we want …

Positioning Honors Colleges To Lead Diversity And Inclusion Efforts At Predominantly White Institutions, Susan Dinan, Jason T. Hilton, Jennifer Willford

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Honors Colleges are well positioned to be leaders in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives on the campuses of Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) by embracing motivated and engaged students from a broad range of backgrounds. Stretching the missions of honors education beyond narrowly defined academic excellence to embrace intellectually curious and creative students and not just those with stellar standardized test scores and GPAs will yield more dynamic and inclusive communities. Embracing holistic admissions practices allows honors colleges to build cohorts of students whose experiences may or may not include being recognized as the smartest in the class in their …

How Honors Advising Is Different, Philip L. Frana

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Section headings:

How honors advising is different

Institutional motivations

Philosophical approaches

Actual practices

How honors students are different

How honors goals and outcomes are different

Last paragraph:

We must guide students into experiences that enable them to develop their potentialities. The emphasis must be on the new and changing nature of life as lived in the twenty-first century. Advisors are fellow travelers with students in the pursuit of lifelong learning and communities of interest, practice, and commitment. Together we struggle to find meaningful, relevant work; to achieve autonomy and intellectual independence; and to develop empathy, humility, and gratitude. Advising as …

Advising Honors Students: Motivational Interviewing As A Tool For Identity Building And Development, Chelsea Mckeirnan

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Section headings:

Advising needs of the honors population

Motivational interviewing

The spirit of motivational interviewing

The four processes of motivational interviewing

Motivational interviewing within an honors advising model

Honors advising and the spirit of motivational interviewing

Honors advising and the four processes of motivational interviewing

Honors advising and the skills of motivational interviewing

Motivational interviewing resources

Conclusion

Arthur W. Chickering and Linda Reisser (1993) noted that “to be effective in educating the whole student, colleges must hire and reinforce staff members who understand what student development looks like and how to foster it” (p. 44). Advising an honors student requires …

Intellectual Humility, Honors, And Appreciative Advising: Exploring With Students That Changing Their Mind Does Not End The World, Alan Sells

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Section headings:

Honors and the foreclosure student

Major changing and intellectual humility

Intellectual humility and appreciative advising

Conclusion and final thoughts

Honors students who change majors often find themselves faced with an identity crisis. Our job as advisors is to support these students by guiding them through this difficult transition. It is easy to look at these students and to regard them as having all of their plans in order and to believe they do not need extra attention (Robinson, 1997). Nothing could be further from the truth. Honors students are, in many ways, like any other student, and they …

Honors Advising For Large Programs, Art L. Spisak, Holly B. Yoder

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

This study was conducted within the Honors Program at the University of Iowa, which is the flagship public research university of the State of Iowa. Its Carnegie classification is Doctoral University with Highest Research Activity (R1), and it is a member of the Association of American Universities. Its current student population is about 21,600 undergraduates and about 9,600 graduate and professional students.

This study was conducted within the Honors Program at the University of Iowa, which is the flagship public research university of the State of Iowa. Its Carnegie classification is Doctoral University with Highest Research Activity (R1), and it …

Advising To Support Meaning Making And Purpose: Helping Honors Students Focus On Priorities And Evaluate Opportunities Through Intention Setting, Kristy Spear, Ron Cahlon, Katherine Mccall

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Section headings:

What is an intention?

The value of setting an intention

Setting an intention with honors students

Ron’s intention

Katherine’s intention

Final thoughts

The experiences provided are just two examples of how, with the guidance of an advisor, honors students might formulate and incorporate an intention into their lives. This simple yet profound technique is a useful addition to the advisor’s toolbox; it presents the opportunity to help students examine their values, who they are, who they want to be, and how they want to live their lives. This critical reflection can result in a clear focus and systematic …

Exploring The Relationship Between Mindset, Mental Health, And Academic Performance Among College Students, Eileen Makak, Douglas A. Medina, Harmony D. Osei

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In recent years students’ mental health has been one of the most discussed topics at colleges and universities throughout the United States. Brad Wolverton (2019) notes in The New York Times that students are facing anxiety and depression at alarming rates. More than 60% are suffering from “overwhelming anxiety” and over 40% feel “so depressed they [have] difficulty functioning” (Wolverton, 2019). In this chapter, we explore how mental health impacts one’s academic performance and mindset, and vice versa. It is important to acknowledge that the first drafts of this chapter were written prior to 2020, and therefore it does not …

Oxbridge And Core Curricula: Continuing Conversations With The Past In Honors Colleges, Christopher A. Snyder

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The American honors college, as it exists in the twenty-first century, is idiosyncratic and an amalgam of centuries old European traditions in higher education with pedagogies and practices that have emerged only since about the 1980s and are particular to America. These disparate influences coexist—sometimes uneasily—in American universities, and yet American honors colleges have continued to have conversations with the past in order to seek wisdom for dealing with contemporary issues such as the democratization of higher education, social justice and diversity, the use of instructional technology, and the controversy between vocational training and liberal learning. Because, unlike departments, an …

Should We Start An Honors College? An Administrative Playbook For Working Through The Decision, Richard Badenhausen

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The last two decades have seen significant growth in honors colleges, though the transition to that model takes many forms. This essay lays out crucial questions for stakeholders considering such a move. While highlighting material advantages that may accrue from the transition, the chapter also notes reasons for not starting an honors college; and it explores some of the new challenges that recently founded honors colleges will face. Above all, the essay frowns upon the so-called “switch out the sign over the door” approach to institutional change in favor of deliberate, thoughtful, and strategic processes that involve many stakeholders and …