News
Survey to gauge student preparedness
Are UB’s incoming freshmen prepared to handle the demands and expectations of college?
Many are not, some members of the UB faculty believe.
There’s casual, anecdotal evidence to support that belief, says Phillips Stevens Jr., associate professor of anthropology and chair of the Faculty Senate Teaching and Learning Committee. And in order to get a better sense of the issue and gather data, the Teaching and Learning Committee is surveying faculty to assess their views on the subject.
Stevens, a longtime member of the Teaching and Learning Committee who has chaired the panel for the past two years, notes that over the past few years, committee members “have agreed there are problems (among incoming freshmen) with a basic understanding of what college is all about,” including “academic expectations.”
Moreover, he says he knows many local high school teachers and principals, and they agree that many of the students entering college are not as prepared as they should be.
Stevens points out that this lack of preparedness does not, for the most part, involve subject knowledge, but rather a lack of awareness of the qualities, characteristics and behaviors “that contribute to ‘college readiness’ and ‘college success.’”
The survey, which was distributed to teaching faculty at the end of March, seeks to gather faculty members’ views of student preparedness in four general categories: organization and time management; reading, writing and comprehension; exams and assessment; and academic integrity.
More than 100 faculty members have completed the survey so far; Stevens hope more will take the survey over the next few weeks.
He stresses that faculty members who teach upperclassmen also are encouraged to complete the survey, since the students they currently are teaching were once freshmen, and the Teaching and Learning Committee is interested in trends over the past three to five years.
“We will tabulate the results and use them as the basis for a dialogue across UB and between UB and local high school administrators and teachers,” he says.
Reader Comments