More About Executive Director Peter Felten

Peter Felten is executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning, professor of history, and assistant provost for teaching and learning at Elon University. He has published seven books about undergraduate education, including Connections are Everything: A College Student’s Guide to Relationship-Rich Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023) co-authored by Isis Artze-Vega, Leo Lambert, and Oscar Miranda Tapia – with an open access online version free to all readers. His next book, The SoTL Guide (CEL Open Access Book Series), is co-authored by Katarina Mårtensson and Nancy Chick, and will be published in 2025. He is on the advisory board of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and is a fellow of the Gardner Institute. Contact Peter at pfelten@elon.edu.

Peter’s Recent CEL Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes

Eric Hall, professor of exercise science, works with Elon University students Mark Sundman, Drew Gardner and Chris Fry (test subject) to measure cognitive functions in research used to study the effects of concussions.

Student-Faculty Interaction: What the Research Tells Us

by Peter Felten This post is adapted from chapter 5 of A. Cook-Sather, C. Bovill, and P. Felten, Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching (Jossey-Bass, 2014). Decades of research indicates that close interaction between faculty and students is…

Understanding how students change in higher education

by Peter Felten This post is adapted from C. Johansson and P. Felten, Transforming Students: Fulfilling the Promise of Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), pages 5 and 13-15. Transformative learning has been the subject of considerable scholarship over…

International Perspectives on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

The October 2013 issue of Arts and Humanities in Higher Education offers three national perspectives on the book The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Reconsidered: Institutional Integration and Impact by Pat Hutchings, Mary Taylor Huber, and Anthony Ciccone (Jossey-Bass, 2011). Coming on the heels of the recent conference of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, these three articles raise the question of just how international SoTL practice really is.

Student-Faculty Partnerships to Study Teaching and Learning

Many of the good practices faculty use to gather insights from students, such as asking for mid-semester feedback, are helpful, but they typically do not lead to authentic partnership between students and faculty. In most of these cases, faculty frame the questions, students provide answers, and then faculty alone decide whether, and how, to use to that information. This process often resembles a customer-service relationship. How satisfied are you with the teaching in this course? What do you like best, and least, about the class?

Partnership, on the other hand, is a collaborative, reciprocal process. In a partnership, all participants have the opportunity to contribute meaningfully, although not necessarily in the same ways.

Threshold Concepts: Student and Faculty Perspectives

by Peter Felten

This post is adapted from the introduction to a special issue of “Teaching and Learning Together In Higher Education” (Issue 9, Spring 2013).

Meyer and Land developed the “threshold concepts” framework to help faculty focus their teaching on essential aspects of disciplinary knowledge (Meyer & Land, 2005). Threshold concepts act, by definition, like doorways; crossing a particular threshold enables significant new disciplinary learning, often learning that was impossible before. Mastering a threshold concept not only allows the learner to grasp important disciplinary material, but it also reshapes how the learner sees other aspects of the world. When a student understands the concept of opportunity cost in economics, for instance, she not only can apply her understanding to more advanced work in economics, but she thinks differently about how she spends her time when she is not studying economics.

While threshold concepts are transformative, Meyer and Land explain, they are not easy to learn because they involve “troublesome knowledge” (Perkins, 2006). Knowledge can be troublesome for a variety of reasons, but in all cases the crossing of a threshold involves a shift in epistemological understanding, provoking “learners to move on from their prevailing way of conceptualizing a particular phenomenon to new ways of seeing” (Land, 2011, p. 176). In addition, troublesome knowledge has an affective component that calls into question assumptions about or practices linked to identity: “Grasping a threshold concept is never just a cognitive shift; it might also involve a repositioning of self in relation to the subject” (Land et al., 2005, p.58). Precisely because of this difficulty, once crossed, thresholds are unlikely to be reversed; they cannot be unlearned.

Taken together, the special issue’s essays not only provide valuable insights into teaching and learning in the disciplines, but also raise three challenging questions about threshold concepts:

  1. Are threshold concepts inherently disciplinary?
  2. What tend to be the most troublesome aspects of threshold concepts?
  3. Is the metaphor of “threshold” appropriate to describe these concepts?

High Quality High-Impact Practices

In 2008 George Kuh synthesized research on engagement and persistence in college to conclude that certain experiences are particularly beneficial for students. Kuh’s original list identified ten high-impact practices: first-year seminars and experiences, common intellectual experiences, learning communities, writing-intensive courses, collaborative assignments and projects, undergraduate research, diversity/global learning, service learning/community-based learning, internships, and capstone courses and projects.

These practices are not perfect, of course. Research on first-year seminars, for example, demonstrates that the quality of the experience is linked to its impact. Higher quality experiences lead to deeper outcomes. For example, according to research by Linda DeAngelo (in press 2013), discussing course material outside of class with peers is a significant indicator of positive outcomes for first year students, more than either being in a first year-seminar or living in a learning community.

As Ashley Finley from AAC&U comments in a Center for Engaged Learning interview, a crucial challenge with high-impact practices “is not that they exist on campus, but that they are done well.”

What makes for a high quality high-impact practice?

Select Recent Publications

Books:

Select Articles/Chapters:

  • Cook-Sather, Alison, Peter Felten, ^Kayo Stewart, and ^Heidi Weston (2023). “Reviving the Construct of ‘Mattering’ in Pursuit of Equity and Justice in Higher Education: Illustrations from Mentoring and Partnership Programs.” In Academic Belonging in Higher Education: Fostering Student Connection, Competence, and Confidence, edited by Eréndira Rueda and Candice Lowe-Swift. Routledge. 198-214.
  • Lim, Lisa-Angelique, Simon Buckingham Shum, Peter Felten, and Jennifer Uno (2023). “Belonging Analytics: A Proposal.” Learning Letters 1, art. 4, 1-12.  https://learningletters.org/index.php/learn/libraryFiles/downloadPublic/14
  • Johnson, Amy M., Jonathan Iuzzini, Peter Felten, and Tazin Daniels (2023). “Institutional and Instructional Humility for Equity-Forward Teaching and Learning.” In Recentering Learning, edited by Maggie Debelius, Joshua Kim, and Eddie Maloney. Johns Hopkins University Press (forthcoming).
  • Felten, Peter, Rachel Forsyth, and Kathrine Sutherland (2023). “Building Trust in the Classroom: A Conceptual Model for Teachers, Scholars, and Academic Developers in Higher Education.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 11, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.11.20
  • Bovill, Catherine, Ashton Croft, Caroline Dean Glover, and Peter Felten (2023). “Is Discussing Identity More Important than Shared Identity to Student-Staff Relationship Building?” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 11, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.11.17
  • Felten, Peter (2022). “From Pandemic to Endemic Teaching: Being CLEAR in Our Teaching.” In International Perspectives on University Teaching and Learning, edited by Andrew Gillespie, James E. Groccia, Jennifer Mason, and Kalani Long. New Directions for Teaching and Learning. Wiley Periodicals.
  • Bheda, Divya, Peter Felten, and Natasha Jankowski (2022). “Equitable Assessment: An Invitation.” In Reframing Assessment to Center Equity: Theories, Models, and Practices, edited by Gavin Henning, Gianina Baker, Natasha Jankowski, Anne Lundquist, and Erick Montenegro. Stylus.
  • Ketcham, Caroline J., Anthony G. Weaver, Jessie L. Moore, and Peter Felten (2022). “Living up to the Capstone Promise: Improving Quality, Equity, and Outcomes in Culminating Experiences” In Delivering on the Promise of High Impact Practices, edited by Jerry Daday, Jillian Kinzie, Ken O’Donnell, Carleen Vande Zande, and John Zilvinskis. Stylus.
  • Hampshire, Claire, Jessie L. Moore, and Peter Felten (2022). “Social Media and Public SoTL.” In SoTL as Public Scholarship, edited by Nancy Chick and Jennifer Friberg. Stylus. 
  • McGowan, Susannah, and Peter Felten (2021). “On the Necessity of Hope in Academic Development.” International Journal for Academic Development 26:4, 473-476. DOI: 10.1080/1360144X.2021.1903902
  • Anderson, Paul and Peter Felten (2021). “Improving Writing, Teaching, and Learning in Higher Education.” In Schreiblehrkonzepte an Hochschulen. Fallstudien und Reflexionen zum Schreibenlehren und –lernen, edited by Swantje Lahm, Frank Meyhöfer und Friederike Neumann. Bielefeld, 21-34. DOI: 10.3278/6004807w
  • Felten, Peter (2020). “Critically Reflecting on Identities, Particularities and Relationships in Student Engagement.” In A Handbook for Student Engagement in Higher Education: Theory into Practice, edited by Tom Lowe and Yassein El Hakim. Routledge, 148-155.
  • Chick, Nancy, and Peter Felten (2020). “Slow: Liberal Learning for and in a Fast-Paced World.” In Redesigning the Liberal Arts, ed. by Rebecca Pope-Ruark, Phillip Motley, and William Moner. Johns Hopkins University Press, 254-265.
  • Felten, Peter (2020). “Critically Reflecting on Identities, Particularities and Relationships inStudent Engagement.” In A Handbook for Student Engagement in Higher Education: Theory into Practice, ed. by Tom Lowe and Yassein El Hakim. Routledge.
  • Cook-Sather, Alison, Sophia Abbot, and Peter Felten (2019). “Legitimating Reflecting Writing in SoTL: ‘Disfunctional Illusions of Rigor’ Revisited.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 7:2 (14-27).
  • Felten, Peter, Sophia Abbot, Jordan K. Kirkwood, Aaron Long, Tanya Lubicz-Nawrocka, Lucy Mercer-Mapstone, and Roselynn Verwoord (2019). “Reimagining the Place of Students in Academic Development.” International Journal for Academic Development, 24:2 (192-203). https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2019.1594235.
  • Felten, Peter, Jessie L. Moore, and Tim Peeples (2019). “Multi-Institutional SoTL: A Case Study of Practices and Outcomes.” In Conducting and Applying the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning beyond the Individual Classroom Level, ed. by Jennifer Friberg and Kathleen McKinney. Indiana University Press, 149-161.
  • Matthews, Kelly, Lucy Mercer-Mapstone, Sam Lucie Dvorakova, Anita Acai, Alison Cook-Sather, Peter Felten, Mick Healey, Ruth L. Healey, and Elizabeth Marquis (2019). “Enhancing Outcomes and Reducing Inhibitors to the Engagement of Students and Staff in Learning and Teaching Partnerships: Implications for Academic Development. International Journal for Academic Development, 24:3 (246-259). DOI: 10.1080/1360144X.2018.1545233.
  • Moore, Jessie L., and Peter Felten (2019). “Understanding Writing Transfer as a Threshold Concept across the Disciplines.” In Threshold Concepts on the Edge, ed., by Julie A. Timmermans and Ray Land. Brill, 341-352.
  • Felten, Peter, Kristina Meinking, Shannon Tennant, and Katherine Westover (2019). “Developing Learning Partnerships: Navigating Troublesome and Transformational Relationships.” In Building Teaching and Learning Communities: Creating Shared Meaning and Purpose, ed. by Craig Gibson and Sharon Mader. Association of College and Research Libraries/American Library Association.
  • Little, Deandra, David A. Green, and Peter Felten (2019). “Identity, Intersectionality, and Educational Development.” In Educational Development and Identity: New Directions for Teaching and Learning, ed. By Lindsay Bernhagen and Emily Gravett. Jossey-Bass, 11-23. DOI: 10.1002/tl.20335.
  • Felten, Peter, Margy MacMillan, and Joan Ruelle (2019). “SoTL Difference: The Value of Incorporating SoTL into Librarian Professional Development.” In The Grounded Instructional Librarian: Participating in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, ed. by Melissa Mallon, Lauren Hays, Cara Bradley, Rhonda Huisman, and Jackie Belanger. Association of College and Research Libraries/American Library Association.
  • Felten, Peter (2019). “Student Engagement in the United States: From Customers to Partners?” In Student Engagement and Quality Assurance in Higher Education: International Collaborations for the Enhancement of Learning, ed. by Masahiro Tanaka. Routledge, 46-56.
  • Matthews, Kelly, Alison Cook-Sather, Anita Acia, Sam Dvorakova, Peter Felten, Elizabeth Marquis, and Lucy Mercer-Mapstone (2018). “Theories, Constructs, and Metaphors: Conceptual Frameworks for Students as Partners in Higher Education.” Higher Education Research and Development, 38:2 (280-293). DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2018.1530199.
  • Knight-McKenna, Peter Felten, and Alexa Darby (2018). “Student Engagement with Community.” In Student Engagement: New Directions for Teaching and Learning 154, ed. by James E. Groccia and William Buskitt. Jossey-Bass, 65-74.
  • Felten, Peter, and Nancy Chick. “Is SoTL a Signature Pedagogy of Educational Development?” To Improve the Academy 37:1 (2018), 4-16.

Special Issues Edited:

Select Presentations