Using data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education (WNS), this study examined the college experiences and cognitive outcomes of non-native English speaking (NNES) students. After an extensive control of precollege and college level influences, results indicate that NNES students had a lower level of participation in collaborative…

Academic rigor has long been considered important for students' learning and development in higher education. However, findings about students' outcomes from previous studies of rigor are mixed, in part because of varying conceptions of what constitutes rigor. In quantitative research, rigor is often operationalized in one of two ways: through…

Although a growing body of research has demonstrated the value of interacting with diverse peers, a number of questions remain about the relationship between the quality of students' diversity interactions and their cognitive development. In a longitudinal study following 3 cohorts of students from entry into college through the end of their 4th…

In this study the authors analyze longitudinal student survey data from the 17-institution Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education (WNS) to determine the extent that the influence of overall exposure to clear and organized instruction on four-year growth in two measures of cognitive development is mediated by student use of deep approaches…

This paper synthesizes research from the Wabash National Study on Liberal Arts Education, the National Study on Student Learning, and the Research on Iowa Student Experiences study that estimates the influence of certain effective instructional practices on a range of student outcomes. Student perceptions of two specific teacher…

This study analyzes longitudinal data from 17 four-year institutions in the United States to determine how the distinctive instructional and learning environment of American liberal arts colleges accounts for the positive impact of liberal arts college attendance on four-year growth in critical thinking skills and need for cognition. We find that,…

This study estimates the effects of a deep approaches to learning scale and its subscales on measures of students' critical thinking, need for cognition, and positive attitudes toward literacy, controlling for pre-college scores for the outcomes and other covariates. Results suggest reflection is critical to making gains across the outcomes.

The publication of Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's influential new book, "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses," the findings of which were summarized in an article by the same authors in the March/April "Change," has caused a national furor centering around their multi-institutional findings that the…

Funded by the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts (CILA) at Wabash College, the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education (WNS) is a multi-institution, multi-year, longitudinal study designed to identify the academic and non-academic collegiate experiences that foster liberal learning. This article describes how the study was done and…

Reviews research on the influence of the college experience in students' moral development, particularly within the framework of Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development. Issues discussed include the amount of principled moral growth occurring during college, how much can be attributed to college attendance, institutional characteristics…

Previous research published in this journal found broad-based negative effects of Greek affiliation on standardized measures of cognitive development after 1 year of college. Following the same sample, and employing essentially the same research design and analytic model, the present study found that the negative effects of Greek affiliation were…

A study investigated the influence on critical-thinking skills of part-time and full-time student status. Subjects were 2,076 first-year students at 2- and 4-year colleges. Full-time students developed a higher level of critical-thinking skills than did part-time students, even controlling for other factors. Full-time two-year college students…

With statistical controls in place for confounding influences, students' involvement in diversity experiences during college had statistically significant positive effects on their scores on an objective, standardized measure of critical thinking skills. However, different diversity experiences influenced critical thinking for students in…

Longitudinal study compared matched groups of college freshmen (N=30) and high school graduates who did not attend college (N=17) on changes in critical thinking over a one-year period. The results indicated that the students who attended college for one year scored higher in critical thinking than did nonattendees. (Author/NB)

This paper presents the results of eight analyses based upon data from the National Study of Student Learning (NSSL), a 3-year longitudinal research project begun in 1992 to examine the influence of academic and nonacademic experiences on student learning, student attitudes about learning, student cognitive development, and student persistence.…