This case study describes the first of six principles, which informed the development of a capstone design for Australian legal education, and according to the authors, should inform the development of any capstone. The authors focus on Transition–the first of their selected principles–as a theoretical framework for the pedagogical design they develop. They extend Kift’s Transition Pedagogy, an adaptation of Schlossberg that focuses on first year students, to inform final year practices—viewing final year students as students in transition, too. The authors identify three areas in which the incorporation of transition pedagogy can enhance a capstone experience and help students manage uncertainty, complexity, and change; develop a professional identity; and career plan. While the case study doesn’t cover the implementation of the capstone design, the study can offer a useful model for capstone development. Additionally, the transition framework does a helpful job of linking student development theory (and Schlossberg’s theory of transition) with pedagogy and ends with qualitative data from students as evidence of the necessity of the framework.

Collier’s article studies the effect of participation in a capstone experience on undergraduate students’ identification as a college student. He proposes that the increased identification with this role by capstone students over time indicate capstones’ effectiveness in socialization. Using different identity theories around role identities and role-identity acquisition as theoretical frameworks, Collier developed a longitudinal study of 26 senior capstone students (multidisciplinary and across the university) of one year’s capstone at a university, with a nonequivalent control group (n=26). Using pre- and post-measurements, Collier found that the nature of the capstone as a grounded and experiential course contributed to its transformative impact on students. Students connecting with the community in a capstone context were pushed to work more collaboratively, and this social aspect of their learning and work helped them to associate more strongly with the role of a college student. The development of identity as a student is a potential strength of capstones. However, Collier fails to discuss why developing a student identity–especially in the senior year–is a worthwhile or positive practice, nor does he discuss how that student identity intersects with other social identities a student may hold. Collier does offer several practical implications for curriculum and specifically capstone development.

Dunlap employed a mixed methods approach to study the self-efficacy of 31 students in a required undergraduate capstone course. She analyzed guided journal submissions and triangulated those responses with student responses to a survey tool called the General Perceived Self-Efficacy Scale, a 10-item scale that “assesses optimistic self-beliefs to cope with a variety of difficult demands in life” (73). Her findings—that students’ participation in a problem-based learning environment impacts students’ sense of capability, especially looking forward to career prospects and their sense of professional identity—offer data to support why capstones serve as a powerful facilitator of transition for students. While her findings are most specific to problem-based learning, a related high impact practice, their basis in a capstone context may help support the development of positively impactful capstone experiences. 

Henscheid, Skipper, and Young identify the importance of reflection, integration, and application in their piece about Intentional Design Strategies for Senior Capstone Experiences. They suggest that these three elements can aid in developing advanced “analytical and critical thinking, communication skills, employment skills, problem-solving competencies, and team-building.” In addition, in order to foster an environment in which reflection, integration, and application are used to their fullest potential there must be a meaningful educational experience for the student. Something unique and quite important is the acknowledgment that a meaningful educational experience can be different for each individual. Overall, the piece unfolds how to build experiences that “provide structured opportunities for applied learning.”

The authors describe four capstone experiences that promote application of learning:

• Independent Research Experiences: Apply what students have learned to   Real world experiences allow the student to expand their knowledge even more.
• Internships: Allows students to go beyond curriculum and apply what they have learned to the workforce.
• Service Learning: Apply classroom information to community problems.
• Preprofessional Capstones: Allow students to apply academic content in real-world contexts attentive to disciplinary or professional standards.

These experiences, not only are reflective in nature but also suggest that the student take time to reflect on their own interests, needs, and desires, as they move forward in integrating and applying what they have learned.

This piece expands on different ways in which students can engage in learning experiences that support reflection, integration, and application. Breaking down examples of these types of learning experiences can help us to better understand what elements of those experiences really lend themselves to cycles of reflection, integration, and application.

Annotation contributed by Sophie Miller, 2021-2024 CEL Student Scholar

This case study describes two physiology capstones that culminate the Bachelor of Health Science at La Trobe University. The authors describe the student assessments involved in the capstones and evaluate the program itself based on student performance, student feedback, and faculty perceptions of the course. The authors found that final grades for students were significantly higher in 2011, following the implementation of the capstone course than final grades in the previous two years. Students reported positive skill development and satisfaction, and instructors noticed a higher degree of student-centered learning along with a “vastly increased workload” and “greater need for infrastructure services” (11). The value of this case study is not only the model it provides for capstone development, but also the consideration of staffing and resource needs to support strong capstone experiences. Other institutions looking to launch or revise capstone experiences would do well to recognize this resource challenge.

This study used pre- and post-tests to estimate the efficacy of the 10 high impact practices supported by AAC&U and found that overall, the high impact practices do, in fact, support student learning. They found that active, collaborative learning and undergraduate research were especially effective in promoting critical thinking, cognition, and intercultural effectiveness, while capstones (among other HIPs) had more mixed effects. For capstones in particular, the authors found a negative link to critical thinking, “but positive net association with four-year gains in need for cognition” (519). The authors highlight several other specific positive gains in student learning as a result of capstones, and this data can be especially helpful in advocating not only for the value of capstones themselves, but in the value of intentionally designed capstones. The multi-institutional results help generalize the benefits, and even more importantly point to areas where negative links occurred, suggesting that administration and facilitation are key in capstones actually having high (positive) impact. 

This literature review analyzes the purposes of capstones as presented by faculty involved in capstone design and instruction. This review is valuable in offering a broad overview of capstone literature and present understandings—for example, capstones are frequently linked to development of employability skills and personal student attributes. In addition to a review of the literature, Lee and Loton conducted an online survey of 216 capstone educators internationally (with just over three–quarters originating from Australia, the authors’ base). Here, they found the 20 most highly rated purposes for capstones were similarly rated across disciplinary groups—implying they serve a common purpose regardless of discipline. The survey responses echoed what has been focused on broadly in the literature and adds some nuance that will be useful to readers seeking to understand capstones at an introductory level. Finally, the purposes raised may help designers of capstones identify shared purposes from which to backward design the capstone experience. 

This article offers a useful analysis of the capstone experience broadly, offering some recent historical context for capstones as well as recommendations for where they are headed today based on practice examples found across the United States. For American readers in particular, this analysis will offer some helpful comparisons to programs in a more familiar context. Unlike some of the heavier and formal research-centered pieces, another benefit of this article is its accessibility, due in large part because it serves to introduce a whole issue of Peer Review focused on capstone experiences. Paris and Ferren’s focus on the faculty-student relationship within capstones may be especially useful to readers, as it’s a lens of capstones not frequently seen in other literature and may be a key element in what makes capstones a high impact practice. 

This is an introduction to a special issue on capstone courses, which describes a range of models, common goals across capstones, popular teaching methods used in capstones, the value of capstones as a way to assess a curricular program, and issues related to faculty development. The curricular focus, mathematics, is somewhat unique and so may be especially useful for instructors who come with a strong disciplinary connection and are unsure of how capstones may fit into or enhance the content they hope to impart on students. An interesting and also unique aspect of this piece is the acknowledgement of capstones’ value in program assessment. For administrators in particular, this may be a helpful argument for an added benefit of capstones beyond student learning directly associated with the course. This article, as with several others, is explicit in framing the teaching of capstones as more of a mentorship relationship–an idea that would be worth following up on in future research. 

This case study describes capstones across the curriculum and educational levels (bachelors, master’s, and doctoral) at the University of La Verne in southern California. By looking at the 127 capstone projects that students produced (41 undergraduate), Redman analyzed student writing and learning. As a result of the findings associated with this analysis, the university adapted a more integrated and reflective process across all four years to prepare students for their final capstone. This piece serves as a valuable model for thoughtfully embedding and scaffolding the capstone experience not only in the final year, but from a student’s first experience on campus. Additionally, the piece offers innovative ideas for linking capstones to other high impact practices such as community partnerships (service-learning) and ePortfolios. 

This study examines capstone experiences for religious studies majors at 29 different U.S. institutions. Upson-Saia not only explores the strengths across these experiences, and the factors that set apart especially successful programs, but also takes an explicit focus on “the most frustrating aspects of the capstone” and “how some departments avoid such frustrations” (4). Unlike Lee and Loton (2017), who found strong consensus among the top purposes of capstones, Upson-Saia found little consensus among religious studies capstones beyond “culmination” in their educational objectives. This may be a difference in scale–on a smaller scale, more variation is visible–or in context. Perhaps authors have similar ideas about what should be talked about in published articles, but in practice, there may be more variation in purpose. Interestingly, Upson-Saia discusses one of the themes Lee and Loton raised about the pressures put on the capstone: suggesting that frustrations about the capstone as not going well, or doing as much as it could, stem from those pressures for capstone to be doing everything. She takes a historical lens in her response to this, exploring the evolution of capstones and their purposes through history to think through how capstones may be positioned today. Her resulting list of best practices for religious studies capstones may be adapted across disciplinary contexts and offer a useful starting point for people designing and developing capstones. 

Participants from the 2018-2020 research seminar on Capstone Experiences profile Boston College’s Capstone Program.

This article discusses the importance of dissecting feedback and the student’s interaction with such to determine the benefit provided by specific feedback tools. The authors first establish the importance of conversational feedback, in which students can both understand and reject, if necessary, the feedback offered by their teacher. Such a technique should offer students a semblance of classroom agency, which encourages a partnership between teachers and their students so there exists reciprocity of feedback. The authors then goes on to note that a spectrum of feedback exists (12 types), which should be judiciously used in both evaluative and descriptive manners to evoke the most meaningful conversations from their student body. In varying subjects—which this article displays by offering evidence from STEM, English, and athletic perspectives—students tended to offer different responses after question prompting offered by the teacher. This is, in part, due to the dispositions of the students engaging with the feedback, but those in STEM were noted to respond with fewer words rather than with a dialog. English Studies students, on the other hand, were quicker to note areas of improvement within their work, thus allowing a dialog to flow between teacher the student. Due to the importance of this dialogic element, the authors conclude with the recommendation that feedback typologies cannot be fixed and thus should follow the idiosyncrasies that conversations oftentimes offer. 

Annotation contributed by Christina Wyatt, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar

The objective of this paper was to review literature about near-peer mentoring programs for first-year medical students. “A near-peer is one who is one or more years senior to another on the same level of education training, that is, learners providing pastoral support to other learners in contrast to faculty staff mentoring learners” (2) Across the five papers in the review, three outcomes were summarized: personal and professional development, transitioning and stress reduction. For personal and professional development, 72.5% mentees reported much improvement working on a team; 61.2% reported greater respect towards themselves and mentors; 58% said they were more accountable about schoolwork; and 100% said they improved their “professionalism” skills. For transitioning, some of the studies showed support that mentoring programs helped in the transition phase of medical school. For stress reduction, some studies showed near-peer mentoring programs helped build resilience and be less stressed.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This literature review reviews the topics of mentoring and peer mentoring in higher education. It then expands to the mentoring of Hispanic students. “As established by Zachary (2012), mentoring is a process of engagement, no one can mentor without connection, and the relationships is more successful when it is done collaboratively. Mentoring provides the mentee with a safe situation to explore new ideas with confidence” (398). The concept of empathy is briefly discussed, and this might be useful to think about related to training and development of mentoring programs. The importance of understanding culture and values of population was discussed.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This was an empirical study of a mentoring program for first-year African-American students. The mentors in this study included students (32%), faculty members (28%) and staff members (40%). The overall findings were that the students was beneficial for their transition to college. The main topics discussed were academic concerns, personal concerns, and career guidance. Despite the overall program being successful, a majority of the mentees that were mentored by peers reported a less favorable experience. Students in these relationships reported issues of availability, community, and personality conflicts. Once again, the idea of mentor training was highlighted as important for the creation and success of these programs.

Annotation by Eric Hall

Brundiers et al. look at sustainability education and how it can be supported by real world experiences, including project-based learning, service learning, and internships. Giving students real world experiences helps their acquisition of goals related to the sustainability education they are receiving. From collaborative work to and problem-solving skills, these real-world experiences contributed to the student’s sustainability education. This article also highlighted how real-world experiences play into the curriculum and then how the skills they are supposed to be acquiring fit into the progression. This article served as a case study for what implementation of real-world experiences may look like, and how they can be fit into the curriculum on a wider scale.  

Annotation contributed by Ellery Ewell, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar

This research took place at two matched universities in the UK from which 109 first year undergraduates were recruited. All participants took a series of questionnaires during the first week and 10 weeks into the semester. Peer mentoring happened at one of the institutions. Measures included: perceived stress, adaptation to university life, intention to leave (all time 2); and social support, negative affect and self-esteem (time points 1 and 2). “Peer mentored individuals showed higher levels of integration to university. Four times as many non-peer mentored students had seriously considered leaving university compared to peer mentored students. Integration partially mediated the relationship between mentoring and intention to stay at university. Moderating effects analyses indicate that mentoring may buffer the effect of the transition to University.” (928) Tinto’s theory of student retention was used to explain the results.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This article examined a “mentor leadership program under the premise of students helping students.” (122) Interviews were conducted of 40 participants which included current mentors (n = 12), new mentors (n = 8), instructors (n = 10) and students in class (n = 10). From the interviews, three themes emerged: 1) roles, 2) benefits and risks, and 3) power and resistance. For roles, five specific roles were identified: 1) connecting link; 2) peer leader; 3) learning coach; 4) student advocate; and 5) trusted friend. Three benefits were identified: 1) being able to support students; 2) reapplying concepts in their own lives; and 3) developing connections. There were some gender differences a swell with women seeing benefits in relationships and men in academics. Some of the risks and challenges of mentoring included: balancing mentor role with time and other commitments, making themselves vulnerable to students, getting emotionally attached to students and having to “let go” at the end of semester. There were a few issues of power and resistance, but fewer than the benefits recognized. The issue of resistance resonated around amount of time and pestering from the mentors.

Annotation by Eric Hall

Cooper et al. have been cited in several recent publications about fostering relationships in college. The authors suggest that using nameplates to facilitate addressing students by name leads to relationship gains, even if faculty wouldn’t otherwise remember students’ names. Cooper et al. studied a high-enrollment biology class in which instructors used active-learning strategies and asked students to use name tents – folded card stock on which students wrote their names. At the end of the semester, the instructors could name approximately half of their students when looking at a deidentified photo roster, but 78% of the students surveyed thought the instructors knew their names (5). Moreover 23% of the students indicated that instructors knowing their names contributed to student-instructor relationships (7). 

Annotation contributed by Dr. Buffie Longmire-Avital

Costa and Mims describe using notecards to check-in with students at the beginning or end of class as a way to build rapport. In this “Quick Fix” article, they describe distributing index cards to their students periodically during the semester. They ask students to respond to questions about their stress level, self-care plans, or recent good news, and the instructors respond either individually or with synthesized responses to the class. Costa and Mims write, “Setting aside five minutes during class has allowed us to quickly and easily learn (1) what is currently causing distress, (2) the good and the bad things that are going on in students’ lives, and (3) whether students are utilizing resources on campus that they might need. As a result, notecard check-ins have fostered a greater sense of connection between us and our students” (33). 

Annotation contributed by Dr. Buffie Longmire-Avital

The authors are calling this a case study which is examining the functions of mentoring in both faculty and peer mentors who participated in a first-year experience program. “The respondents tended to agree that mentoring includes providing feedback, teaching, sharing information, directing, academic goal setting, advising, encouraging, aiding, academic goal tracking, modeling, problem solving, introducing, and observing. However, they did not agree on whether mentoring includes socializing, affirming, confidence building, providing practical application, helping on assignments, calming, collaborating, advocating, personal goal setting, personal goal tracking, befriending, sheltering, or supporting.” (73) “Table 3 also illustrates that faculty and peer mentors agree there are functions that should be reserved for peer mentors, including helping on assignments, affirming, and socializing. Faculty respondents reported that it is the peer mentor’s role, not their role, to befriend and support students. On the other hand, peer mentors are unsure if it is their role to befriend and support students. Finally, findings from this study suggest there are several mentoring functions that peer and faculty mentors believe are not appropriate for an FYE program, including collaborating, personal goal setting and tracking, providing practical application, calming, confidence building, advocating, and sheltering.” (83) At the end in the implication for practice section, the authors discuss the importance of clarifying the role of the mentor to improve mentor training.

Annotation by Eric Hall

Alise de Bie provides an interesting editorial explaining Mad(ness) Studies – “an area of scholarship and pedagogy establishing roots in the academy, has emerged as a result of this activism and is principally inspired by and concerned with Mad people’s ways of knowing, being and doing (Menzies, LeFrancois, and Reaume 2013; Reville 2013)” (2). Her inclusion of Mad people includes: “(service) users, (psychiatric) survivors, consumers, patients, disabled, Mad (for an overview see Reaume [2002]; Speed [2006])” (2). The four main themes include: 1) equality; 2) interpersonal concord and consensus; 3) mutual collaboration; and 4) inclusion. The article brings up many excellent points about how certain voices may be valued more in Students as Partners practices and that conflict may be fine – everything does not have to be okay. 

Annotation contributed by Dr. Buffie Longmire-Avital

This was a systematic literature that identified 9 studies from 2006-2016 which focused on outcomes of the mentors. They were interested in mentors between 14-25 years. “Peer-to-peer mentoring was defined as a reciprocal relationship where peers of similar age and experiences (mentor) share their knowledge, skills and experiences with their peers (mentees) and provide support in a formal mentoring programme to foster positive growth and development.” (37) Interestingly, the attempted to classify the mentor training involved and ongoing adult support; these are often not discussed as much in this literature. The four important outcomes highlighted were: personal growth (changed perception of identity); psychosocial well-being (e.g., enhanced leadership skills); universality of the shared experience (connection with mentees); and mentor experiences (feel they could make a difference).

Annotation by Eric Hall

This is a review of previous literature reviews around peer mentoring as “peer mentoring is often considered the single most effective strategy for increasing student retention and student satisfaction.” (abstract, 265). The role of the peer mentor is often seen as having multiple functions—academic advisor, confidante, friend, study buddy, career advisor, support, and role model. The article highlights the issues with defining mentoring and the importance of “setting the boundary conditions” for mentoring (272). For this paper, they write “mentoring programs had specified function, as did the mentor – to encourage student engagement and their sense of belonging the university.” (272-273). A major conclusion from the paper was that there appears to be no best/standard practice for mentoring, but diversity does matter in these relationships.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This article examines the process of connecting theory to practice and outlines a “new approach” to formulating these connections. Allan et al. utilize nursing education as a case study to frame their approach. The main tenet of their approach is re-contextualization; knowledge learned in one context has to be recontextualized to in different ways that utilize that knowledge. The framework of recontextualization overcomes the theory to practice gap that they saw in nursing education. They also examine some of the implementations in terms of how it plays into building curricula. They discuss gradual release, which is reflective of how curricula are scaffolded, building on base knowledge and skill as learners move through their education. The principle of gradual release is integral to building connections to broader contexts and the principles of recontextualization will help us how to increase these connections to broader contexts.  

Annotation contributed by Ellery Ewell, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar

This research study examined the benefits of both mentors and mentees in peer mentoring program. The participants were 107 first-year business students (mentees) and 16, 4^th year mentors. The goals of the mentoring program were to help first-years students adjust to the university and for the 4^th year student to get leadership experience. The mentoring model used in this program was based on the four domains identified by Crisp and Cruz (2009): psychological and emotional support; goal setting and career path; academic subject knowledge support; and the existence of a role model. Mentees regard identified the acquisition of subject knowledge and support as the most beneficial aspect of the mentoring program, as well as the biggest challenge. The mentors reported being a role model the most beneficial aspect of the mentoring experience, but also the most challenging. The findings of this study need to be taken in light of the mentoring program being within a departmental context and what the goals were for the mentors and mentees.

Annotation by Eric Hall

Henscheid, Skipper, and Young identify the importance of reflection, integration, and application in their piece about Intentional Design Strategies for Senior Capstone Experiences. They suggest that these three elements can aid in developing advanced “analytical and critical thinking, communication skills, employment skills, problem-solving competencies, and team-building.” In addition, in order to foster an environment in which reflection, integration, and application are used to their fullest potential there must be a meaningful educational experience for the student. Something unique and quite important is the acknowledgment that a meaningful educational experience can be different for each individual. Overall, the piece unfolds how to build experiences that “provide structured opportunities for applied learning.”

The authors describe four capstone experiences that promote application of learning:

• Independent Research Experiences: Apply what students have learned to   Real world experiences allow the student to expand their knowledge even more.
• Internships: Allows students to go beyond curriculum and apply what they have learned to the workforce.
• Service Learning: Apply classroom information to community problems.
• Preprofessional Capstones: Allow students to apply academic content in real-world contexts attentive to disciplinary or professional standards.

These experiences, not only are reflective in nature but also suggest that the student take time to reflect on their own interests, needs, and desires, as they move forward in integrating and applying what they have learned.

This piece expands on different ways in which students can engage in learning experiences that support reflection, integration, and application. Breaking down examples of these types of learning experiences can help us to better understand what elements of those experiences really lend themselves to cycles of reflection, integration, and application.

Annotation contributed by Sophie Miller, 2021-2024 CEL Student Scholar

This is an empirical study that examined mentor’s attachment style and self-efficacy and mentor-provided support. “Results showed that mentor self-efficacy mediated the relation between an avoidant attachment style and mentor-reported support; that is, peer mentors with a more avoidant attachment style reported lower self-efficacy to mentor and, in turn, endorsed providing lower levels of support for mentees” (67). Mentor–mentee contact; however, was the only predictor of mentees’ ratings of mentor support. “Potential peer mentors should feel comfortable (a) assisting students with academic, social, and personal challenges, (b) serving as a role model, (c) discussing their own academic and social experiences and challenges, (d) connecting students to campus resources, and (e) helping mentees to develop academic skills that allow them to function more autonomously in college” (85).

Annotation by Eric Hall

The author uses an integrative literature review process to examine peer mentoring within first year programs. The author found seven articles which they reviewed. From this review, four issues emerged: 1) lack of a consistent peer mentoring definition; 2) theoretical and methodological issues of concern, 3) unexpected findings that impact program results, and 4) international comparisons. (9) The author suggests, “Tinto’s (1975) integration and social support framework appears to be most appropriate for assessing peer mentoring on retention as it relates to social and academic integration into college” (12).

Annotation by Eric Hall

This literature review discussed how some of the traditional definitions of mentoring may be falling out of favor. In traditional definitions of mentoring the career function may have carried more weight, but in more recently the psychosocial aspects of mentoring are becoming more prominent. To show this diversity in thinking, the authors describe nine mentoring alternatives or types: formal; informal; diverse; electronic; comentoring/collaborative; group; peer; multilevel; and cultural mentoring. Throughout the discussion of different mentoring options, it seems that issues related to DEI are present, as well as the recognition that development is not one-way, “mentees and mentors alike are learner, comentor, and change agent” (32).

Annotation by Eric Hall

This is a short article based on a presentation about developing peer-mentoring programs with a students-as-partners approach. While the article didn’t talk much about the content of the presentation, there was one question that they posed that is noteworthy to consider when designing: “Who better to expose the implicit or hidden curriculum of university than those who are already on that journey?” (114)

Annotation by Eric Hall

This was an article written for a more general audience and was based on a previous study done by the participants and tried to provide practical implications for the reader. “Indeed, we found that the best matches integrated these two factors, in an approach we call relational instrumentality. That is, the incom­ing students were most successful when their mentors didn’t just help them meet their immediate needs but also bonded with them personally” (48). “Effective mentors build trusting relationships with their mentees and adopt mentee-centric, respectful approaches. This begins with establishing the right kind of match, but it also includes ensuring that the pairs share a strong commitment to the match and engage in activities that promote relational instrumentality” (50). From this they discuss four strategies to help with this: 1) building relationally instrumental matches; 2) fostering trust, 3) mentee-centric mentoring and 4) committing to the process.

Annotation by Eric Hall

Ryan explores formative and summative feedback styles alongside the importance of language to implore further discussion on the matter. Ryan begins by delineating the importance of emphasizing formative and summative feedback to students, which involves the assessment of learning prior to and after assessments. While formative assessments can take the shape of peer-to-peer feedback as well as self-feedback, a summative assessment would typically take the form of an exam. Ryan then further delves into the nuance that comes with self and peer-to-peer feedback to highlight the importance of student agency. She mentions establishing class norms to create a sense of trust in her students before implementing a critique system, as oftentimes individuals, especially musicians, tend to take criticism as a personal offense rather than a performance growth opportunity. She mentioned highlighting what went well in a performance prior to discussion of what could have been improved and, to improve the quality of discussion in a peer setting, using a word-bank system to highlight important vocabulary that offers intrinsic growth opportunity. Lastly, Ryan discusses how feedback can come in many shapes and forms beyond verbal as different learning styles oftentimes require differences in feedback approach. 

Annotation contributed by Christina Wyatt, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar

Ryan identifies reflection as a process that should be taught. This article shares analysis of a project that collected data across different university courses in Education, Health, Business, Law and Creative Industries in one Australian university. Ryan uses Bain et al.’s (2002) terminology of the 5 Rs – reporting, responding, relating, reasoning, and reconstructing – to sort her data. However, she slims it down to 4 R’s by combining “reporting” and “responding.” The four resulting categories consist of: reporting and responding, relating, reasoning, and reconstructing. These are ordered from the most basic level of reflection to the highest level of reflection. Ryan’s larger project involves semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 40 volunteer staff and 40 volunteer students from across university faculties, along with samples of reflective work from 60 participating students across faculties. Based on her analysis, Ryan explores why reflection is critical to learning and to application of knowledge.

Annotation contributed by Sophie Miller, 2021-2024 CEL Student Scholar

This research article discussed a peer mentoring program that was an orientation to Social Sciences program with the primary goal to develop social networks  at the University College Dublin. This program mentors about 500 students with 66 peer mentors. In this study, peer mentors helped design and deliver the program and then some served as co-researchers. Three themes were identified for the mentors. First, peer mentors built relationships amongst students as well as university staff; the latter suggesting that the partnership approach worked. Second, there was a disconnect in expectations and experience of the program. Mentors expected to have more of an altruistic benefit for the mentees, but felt that much of their role was pragmatic helping navigate the university and less relational. Finally, as a result of not having the relational experience they expected, mentors experienced disappointment and feelings of rejection.

Annotation by Eric Hall

The use of fictive kin by African American communities is a longstanding practice. Beyond extended families, fictive kin are relationships elevated to the status of familial and have been effective in creating nuanced support networks, and tangible social capital for historically underrepresented minority groups (HURM). The authors find that first-generation students who create a network of fictive kinships across peers, faculty, student life, and administrators associate their persistence, self-efficacy, sense of belonging and perceived inclusion with the engagement in these relationships. Relationship building should consider the effectiveness of a fictive kinship models and approaches.

Annotation contributed by Dr. Buffie Longmire-Avital

Svanes and Skagen discuss benefits that Didaktik, feedback research, and classroom research could garner if used in tandem with each other. Didaktik is a Swedish tradition that underlines the importance of a teacher’s professional autonomy alongside the importance of creating feedback that matches with the subject matter and the pupils involved. Svanes and Skagen go on to argue that a focus on language-based intentionality is too narrow of a lens to fully understand what is happening in the classroom. Didaktik instead focuses on what qualities the teacher uses when giving feedback. To further this idea, its mentioned that a student’s learning is subject to the presentation of the teacher, thus the outcome of such cannot be fixed in advance. This means that students may not understand what the teacher attempts to convey, which can sometimes boil down to classroom context. The authors provide an extended example, focused on guided reading.

Annotation contributed by Christina Wyatt, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar

In this piece, the effectiveness of feedback strategies are tested to determine what styles of feedback genuinely provide the most support to students. The journal article begins by discussing the merit of using explanations in place of simple corrective feedback in a timely manner to the interception of the issue. Alongside this concept, it was recommended that teachers profile their students to determine how one might go about receiving, perceiving, interpreting, and understanding the information presented to them. Such is important given that feedback is only as powerful as a student’s perception of it, in which case students oftentimes refuse to utilize the feedback received. To offer a unique perspective away from surveys, this journal used oral classroom feedback alongside video-stimulated recall to gather perceptions of feedback within one-on-one conversations to provide a time for reflection and correction. The results concluded that 30% of teacher feedback is not recognized by students, and further that around 30% of the feedback recognized was interpreted as per the teacher’s intention.  

 Annotation contributed by Christina Wyatt, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar

This piece explores how helpful it may be to have prior knowledge in academic situations. Specifically, the authors researched pre-service music teachers and their performance relative to whether they received related instruction prior to a lecture or not. The findings show that relevant instruction produced higher performance during the lecture. Having the ability to integrate prior learning and experience is deemed to be extremely beneficial in this situation. Not only is prior knowledge important, but the knowledge structures the teachers have in their brains are vital to the retrieval of information while in the classroom (p. 713).

Annotation contributed by Sophie Miller, 2021 CEL Student Scholar

Brundiers et al. look at sustainability education and how it can be supported by real world experiences, including project-based learning, service learning, and internships. Giving students real world experiences helps their acquisition of goals related to the sustainability education they are receiving. From collaborative work to and problem-solving skills, these real-world experiences contributed to the student’s sustainability education. This article also highlighted how real-world experiences play into the curriculum and then how the skills they are supposed to be acquiring fit into the progression. This article served as a case study for what implementation of real-world experiences may look like, and how they can be fit into the curriculum on a wider scale.  

Annotation contributed by Ellery Ewell, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar

This article examines the process of connecting theory to practice and outlines a “new approach” to formulating these connections. Allan et al. utilize nursing education as a case study to frame their approach. The main tenet of their approach is re-contextualization; knowledge learned in one context has to be recontextualized to in different ways that utilize that knowledge. The framework of recontextualization overcomes the theory to practice gap that they saw in nursing education. They also examine some of the implementations in terms of how it plays into building curricula. They discuss gradual release, which is reflective of how curricula are scaffolded, building on base knowledge and skill as learners move through their education. The principle of gradual release is integral to building connections to broader contexts and the principles of recontextualization will help us how to increase these connections to broader contexts.  

Annotation contributed by Ellery Ewell, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar

This article discusses the importance of dissecting feedback and the student’s interaction with such to determine the benefit provided by specific feedback tools. The authors first establish the importance of conversational feedback, in which students can both understand and reject, if necessary, the feedback offered by their teacher. Such a technique should offer students a semblance of classroom agency, which encourages a partnership between teachers and their students so there exists reciprocity of feedback. The authors then goes on to note that a spectrum of feedback exists (12 types), which should be judiciously used in both evaluative and descriptive manners to evoke the most meaningful conversations from their student body. In varying subjects—which this article displays by offering evidence from STEM, English, and athletic perspectives—students tended to offer different responses after question prompting offered by the teacher. This is, in part, due to the dispositions of the students engaging with the feedback, but those in STEM were noted to respond with fewer words rather than with a dialog. English Studies students, on the other hand, were quicker to note areas of improvement within their work, thus allowing a dialog to flow between teacher the student. Due to the importance of this dialogic element, the authors conclude with the recommendation that feedback typologies cannot be fixed and thus should follow the idiosyncrasies that conversations oftentimes offer. 

Annotation contributed by Christina Wyatt, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar

Ryan explores formative and summative feedback styles alongside the importance of language to implore further discussion on the matter. Ryan begins by delineating the importance of emphasizing formative and summative feedback to students, which involves the assessment of learning prior to and after assessments. While formative assessments can take the shape of peer-to-peer feedback as well as self-feedback, a summative assessment would typically take the form of an exam. Ryan then further delves into the nuance that comes with self and peer-to-peer feedback to highlight the importance of student agency. She mentions establishing class norms to create a sense of trust in her students before implementing a critique system, as oftentimes individuals, especially musicians, tend to take criticism as a personal offense rather than a performance growth opportunity. She mentioned highlighting what went well in a performance prior to discussion of what could have been improved and, to improve the quality of discussion in a peer setting, using a word-bank system to highlight important vocabulary that offers intrinsic growth opportunity. Lastly, Ryan discusses how feedback can come in many shapes and forms beyond verbal as different learning styles oftentimes require differences in feedback approach. 

Annotation contributed by Christina Wyatt, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar

Svanes and Skagen discuss benefits that Didaktik, feedback research, and classroom research could garner if used in tandem with each other. Didaktik is a Swedish tradition that underlines the importance of a teacher’s professional autonomy alongside the importance of creating feedback that matches with the subject matter and the pupils involved. Svanes and Skagen go on to argue that a focus on language-based intentionality is too narrow of a lens to fully understand what is happening in the classroom. Didaktik instead focuses on what qualities the teacher uses when giving feedback. To further this idea, its mentioned that a student’s learning is subject to the presentation of the teacher, thus the outcome of such cannot be fixed in advance. This means that students may not understand what the teacher attempts to convey, which can sometimes boil down to classroom context. The authors provide an extended example, focused on guided reading.

Annotation contributed by Christina Wyatt, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar

In this piece, the effectiveness of feedback strategies are tested to determine what styles of feedback genuinely provide the most support to students. The journal article begins by discussing the merit of using explanations in place of simple corrective feedback in a timely manner to the interception of the issue. Alongside this concept, it was recommended that teachers profile their students to determine how one might go about receiving, perceiving, interpreting, and understanding the information presented to them. Such is important given that feedback is only as powerful as a student’s perception of it, in which case students oftentimes refuse to utilize the feedback received. To offer a unique perspective away from surveys, this journal used oral classroom feedback alongside video-stimulated recall to gather perceptions of feedback within one-on-one conversations to provide a time for reflection and correction. The results concluded that 30% of teacher feedback is not recognized by students, and further that around 30% of the feedback recognized was interpreted as per the teacher’s intention.  

 Annotation contributed by Christina Wyatt, 2021-2023 CEL Student Scholar

Barefoot writes that high-quality FYE have small class size to increase student-to-faculty interactions; integration of curricular and co-curricular experiences; increased investment of time on campus; and high academic expectations. Barefoot emphasizes that these are the areas that FYE should be focused on in order to obtain the desired outcomes in first-year students. These outcomes are most commonly student retention after the first year and higher grade point averages. The best practices that Barefoot identifies for FYE are similar to the characteristics of HIPs identified by Kuh, O’Donnell, and Schneider in 2017.

In basic terms, this article is helpful in how it describes study away experiences using five levels, with full immersion representing the highest level of learning engagement. More importantly, the article does a good job of demonstrating comparable differences in the range of study away experiences that a typical college student might have. The authors suggest that deeply immersive experiences, such as ones that involve home stays, language challenges, and/or community-based interactions or professional internships, provide students with deeper levels of learning engagement on a variety of fronts than ones in which students live in co-housing or take classes in their primary language. The article also discusses the value of authentic cultural engagement and the need for guided reflective processing to help students make sense of potentially dissonant experiences. 

In basic terms, this article is helpful in how it describes study away experiences using five levels, with full immersion representing the highest level of learning engagement. More importantly, the article does a good job of demonstrating comparable differences in the range of study away experiences that a typical college student might have. The authors suggest that deeply immersive experiences, such as ones that involve home stays, language challenges, and/or community-based interactions or professional internships, provide students with deeper levels of learning engagement on a variety of fronts than ones in which students live in co-housing or take classes in their primary language. The article also discusses the value of authentic cultural engagement and the need for guided reflective processing to help students make sense of potentially dissonant experiences. 

This article focuses on designing student–directed, authentic, community-based learning experiences for students and the need for an active facilitative guide from a faculty member. This article draws nuanced learning engagement distinctions between types of work-integrated learning experiences and models of service learning. It also points out interesting differences between the immersive learning experiences as described in the article and internships stating that in the former students benefit from the active and continual involvement by a faculty member in ways that aren’t part of the typical internship experience. The article further defines the team-based approach of the designed immersive learning experience and the inherent value of students experiencing and learning from the authentic, partnered work together. 

This article describes immersive learning in the context of international service learning (or domestic service learning that happens away from the local community surrounding an institution) where students and faculty live and work together in a deeply immersive environment. The article is careful to articulate the difference in international or away service learning, where the immersion is constant, with localized experiences where the service learning experience is socketed into a student’s day. The article also discusses the value and need of the instructor working in close proximity to students as a facilitative guide to the learning experience. 

In a national research project analyzing data from employers, students, and practitioners, the study finds a lack of consistent methods and pedagogies for ensuring integration of knowledge in New Zealand’s Work-Integrated Knowledge (WIL)/cooperative education program. Makes specific recommendations for practitioners based on these findings.

Discusses important decisions that practitioners must make when designing internship programs. Includes brief discussion of research finding relevant to these decisions. Includes topics such as required vs elective internships, graded vs ungraded experiences, full-time vs part-time experiences, and managed vs unmanaged placement of students.

Elucidates the possibilities and challenges of internships and service-learning, emphasizing the unique roles these experiences can play in bidirectional transfer of learning between classroom and the workplace and other higher level intellectual skills and learning outcomes. Summarizes succinctly guidelines for creating high quality programs.

Focuses on internship experiences of students in the sciences, examining student perceptions of transfer of learning in their work along with additional data collected from site supervisors.  Identifies various forms of learning transfer described by students and concludes that faculty have a key role in ensuring knowledge transfer in internships. The article also provides an excellent summary of the transfer of knowledge literature.

Using an experimental design, the study examines the impact of teaching physical therapy students a specific reflection model (i.e., Model of Effective Practice) as a tool for deepening student reflection during a cooperative education experience.  Students in the test group demonstrated significant benefits, indicating the importance and value of teaching internship students skills of reflection prior to the experience.

Drawing upon knowledge transfer theory, this study examines the roles that students, universities, and businesses play in internship effectiveness in effort to construct a multistage model of determinants of internship effectiveness.  Offers recommendations for each of these participant stakeholders geared toward enhancing internship effectiveness and makes suggestions for future research.

Describes the opportunities and challenges in developing high-impact internships.  Offers an excellent discussion of definitional issues in the field and provides suggested guidelines for developing high-impact experiences.  Emphasizes the role of institutions in developing high quality experiences.

Using an experimental design, the study examines the role of reflection in the cognitive development of students in internship. Defines “internship” and “reflection” and describes the structure of the internship experience focused on in the study. Concludes that critical reflection is not a natural skill for most students and must be taught and guided by faculty. Implications for practitioners and scholars are discussed.

Employs a multi-method approach to identify student learning outcomes in psychology internships.  Employs pre-test/post-test surveys and perspectives of students, field supervisors, and faculty.  Findings include that students increased in multicultural skills and grew in personal, civic, and career development.

The author presents six principles “to guide institutional efforts to enhance student learning and personal development by more purposefully integrating curricular goals and outcomes with students’ experiences outside the classroom.” Based on existing research, the author shares ten conditions that foster student learning and personal development that when implemented together represent an institution with a seamless learning environment, that is, an environment that takes once separate parts of the academic experience (e.g., in-class and out-of-class, academic and non-academic, curricular and co-curricular, on- and off-campus experiences) and blends them into a whole and continuous experience. The six principles reflect the broad scope of activities that must be implemented to move toward an ethos of learning: generate enthusiasm for institutional renewal; create a common vision for learning; develop a common language; foster collaboration and cross-functional dialogue; examine the influence of student cultures on student learning; and focus on systemic change. Some institutions may require additional interventions not described in the six principles. The principles are also not presented as a “hierarchy of activities” – an institution may begin with any one of the activities to move toward an ethos of learning, though all must be addressed.

A multi-institutional research team from the 2017-2019 research seminar on Residential Learning Communities as a High-Impact Practice examines collaboration between student affairs and academic affairs. Using a Delphi method, the team explored how academic and student affairs professionals define collaboration in residential learning communities and distilled a definition through multiple rounds of feedback. The research team’s resulting definition is: “Collaboration between academic and student affairs is the continuous process of cultivating an independent relationship where each stakeholder is mutually committed to working toward the shared purpose of holistic student learning” (p. 671).

This study was conducted in order to determine whether student success can be linked to participation in a learning community, success being defined as student engagement in educationally purposeful activities, self-reported gains in a variety of outcomes, and overall satisfaction with the college experience. For the purposes of the study, a learning community was defined as a formal program where groups of students take two or more classes together, that may or may not have a residential component. The study used the National Survey for Student Engagement (NSSE), an annual survey of first-year and senior students, that measures the degree to which students participate in educational practices linked to the desired outcomes of college. The survey sample was 80,479 randomly selected first-year and senior students from 365 4-year colleges and universities who completed the survey in the spring of 2002. The results support the assertion that participating in learning communities is “uniformly and positively linked with student academic performance, engagement in educationally fruitful activities, gains associated with college attendance, and overall satisfaction with the college experience.” The article goes on to describe these effects in detail.

Limitations of the study include the wording of the question (it is impossible to determine if students had already participated in a learning community or if they were planning to do so); inability to distinguish between the different types of learning communities in which students had participated; the reliability of some of the scales employed in the study; and the measures are based on self-reported data. The study does, however, provide evidence that learning communities do warrant classification as a high-impact educational practice, and based on this the authors recommend two actions: 1) every campus should evaluate how many and what kinds of learning communities exist on campus and the numbers of different groups of students who are participating in them; 2) efforts should be focused on creating additional learning communities and attracting underrepresented students to participate them, such as male students, transfer students, and part-time students as these are the groups least likely to participate in learning communities before graduation.

The objective of this paper was to review literature about near-peer mentoring programs for first-year medical students. “A near-peer is one who is one or more years senior to another on the same level of education training, that is, learners providing pastoral support to other learners in contrast to faculty staff mentoring learners” (2) Across the five papers in the review, three outcomes were summarized: personal and professional development, transitioning and stress reduction. For personal and professional development, 72.5% mentees reported much improvement working on a team; 61.2% reported greater respect towards themselves and mentors; 58% said they were more accountable about schoolwork; and 100% said they improved their “professionalism” skills. For transitioning, some of the studies showed support that mentoring programs helped in the transition phase of medical school. For stress reduction, some studies showed near-peer mentoring programs helped build resilience and be less stressed.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This literature review reviews the topics of mentoring and peer mentoring in higher education. It then expands to the mentoring of Hispanic students. “As established by Zachary (2012), mentoring is a process of engagement, no one can mentor without connection, and the relationships is more successful when it is done collaboratively. Mentoring provides the mentee with a safe situation to explore new ideas with confidence” (398). The concept of empathy is briefly discussed, and this might be useful to think about related to training and development of mentoring programs. The importance of understanding culture and values of population was discussed.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This was an empirical study of a mentoring program for first-year African-American students. The mentors in this study included students (32%), faculty members (28%) and staff members (40%). The overall findings were that the students was beneficial for their transition to college. The main topics discussed were academic concerns, personal concerns, and career guidance. Despite the overall program being successful, a majority of the mentees that were mentored by peers reported a less favorable experience. Students in these relationships reported issues of availability, community, and personality conflicts. Once again, the idea of mentor training was highlighted as important for the creation and success of these programs.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This research took place at two matched universities in the UK from which 109 first year undergraduates were recruited. All participants took a series of questionnaires during the first week and 10 weeks into the semester. Peer mentoring happened at one of the institutions. Measures included: perceived stress, adaptation to university life, intention to leave (all time 2); and social support, negative affect and self-esteem (time points 1 and 2). “Peer mentored individuals showed higher levels of integration to university. Four times as many non-peer mentored students had seriously considered leaving university compared to peer mentored students. Integration partially mediated the relationship between mentoring and intention to stay at university. Moderating effects analyses indicate that mentoring may buffer the effect of the transition to University.” (928) Tinto’s theory of student retention was used to explain the results.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This article examined a “mentor leadership program under the premise of students helping students.” (122) Interviews were conducted of 40 participants which included current mentors (n = 12), new mentors (n = 8), instructors (n = 10) and students in class (n = 10). From the interviews, three themes emerged: 1) roles, 2) benefits and risks, and 3) power and resistance. For roles, five specific roles were identified: 1) connecting link; 2) peer leader; 3) learning coach; 4) student advocate; and 5) trusted friend. Three benefits were identified: 1) being able to support students; 2) reapplying concepts in their own lives; and 3) developing connections. There were some gender differences a swell with women seeing benefits in relationships and men in academics. Some of the risks and challenges of mentoring included: balancing mentor role with time and other commitments, making themselves vulnerable to students, getting emotionally attached to students and having to “let go” at the end of semester. There were a few issues of power and resistance, but fewer than the benefits recognized. The issue of resistance resonated around amount of time and pestering from the mentors.

Annotation by Eric Hall

The authors are calling this a case study which is examining the functions of mentoring in both faculty and peer mentors who participated in a first-year experience program. “The respondents tended to agree that mentoring includes providing feedback, teaching, sharing information, directing, academic goal setting, advising, encouraging, aiding, academic goal tracking, modeling, problem solving, introducing, and observing. However, they did not agree on whether mentoring includes socializing, affirming, confidence building, providing practical application, helping on assignments, calming, collaborating, advocating, personal goal setting, personal goal tracking, befriending, sheltering, or supporting.” (73) “Table 3 also illustrates that faculty and peer mentors agree there are functions that should be reserved for peer mentors, including helping on assignments, affirming, and socializing. Faculty respondents reported that it is the peer mentor’s role, not their role, to befriend and support students. On the other hand, peer mentors are unsure if it is their role to befriend and support students. Finally, findings from this study suggest there are several mentoring functions that peer and faculty mentors believe are not appropriate for an FYE program, including collaborating, personal goal setting and tracking, providing practical application, calming, confidence building, advocating, and sheltering.” (83) At the end in the implication for practice section, the authors discuss the importance of clarifying the role of the mentor to improve mentor training.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This was a systematic literature that identified 9 studies from 2006-2016 which focused on outcomes of the mentors. They were interested in mentors between 14-25 years. “Peer-to-peer mentoring was defined as a reciprocal relationship where peers of similar age and experiences (mentor) share their knowledge, skills and experiences with their peers (mentees) and provide support in a formal mentoring programme to foster positive growth and development.” (37) Interestingly, the attempted to classify the mentor training involved and ongoing adult support; these are often not discussed as much in this literature. The four important outcomes highlighted were: personal growth (changed perception of identity); psychosocial well-being (e.g., enhanced leadership skills); universality of the shared experience (connection with mentees); and mentor experiences (feel they could make a difference).

Annotation by Eric Hall

This is a review of previous literature reviews around peer mentoring as “peer mentoring is often considered the single most effective strategy for increasing student retention and student satisfaction.” (abstract, 265). The role of the peer mentor is often seen as having multiple functions—academic advisor, confidante, friend, study buddy, career advisor, support, and role model. The article highlights the issues with defining mentoring and the importance of “setting the boundary conditions” for mentoring (272). For this paper, they write “mentoring programs had specified function, as did the mentor – to encourage student engagement and their sense of belonging the university.” (272-273). A major conclusion from the paper was that there appears to be no best/standard practice for mentoring, but diversity does matter in these relationships.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This research study examined the benefits of both mentors and mentees in peer mentoring program. The participants were 107 first-year business students (mentees) and 16, 4^th year mentors. The goals of the mentoring program were to help first-years students adjust to the university and for the 4^th year student to get leadership experience. The mentoring model used in this program was based on the four domains identified by Crisp and Cruz (2009): psychological and emotional support; goal setting and career path; academic subject knowledge support; and the existence of a role model. Mentees regard identified the acquisition of subject knowledge and support as the most beneficial aspect of the mentoring program, as well as the biggest challenge. The mentors reported being a role model the most beneficial aspect of the mentoring experience, but also the most challenging. The findings of this study need to be taken in light of the mentoring program being within a departmental context and what the goals were for the mentors and mentees.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This is an empirical study that examined mentor’s attachment style and self-efficacy and mentor-provided support. “Results showed that mentor self-efficacy mediated the relation between an avoidant attachment style and mentor-reported support; that is, peer mentors with a more avoidant attachment style reported lower self-efficacy to mentor and, in turn, endorsed providing lower levels of support for mentees” (67). Mentor–mentee contact; however, was the only predictor of mentees’ ratings of mentor support. “Potential peer mentors should feel comfortable (a) assisting students with academic, social, and personal challenges, (b) serving as a role model, (c) discussing their own academic and social experiences and challenges, (d) connecting students to campus resources, and (e) helping mentees to develop academic skills that allow them to function more autonomously in college” (85).

Annotation by Eric Hall

The author uses an integrative literature review process to examine peer mentoring within first year programs. The author found seven articles which they reviewed. From this review, four issues emerged: 1) lack of a consistent peer mentoring definition; 2) theoretical and methodological issues of concern, 3) unexpected findings that impact program results, and 4) international comparisons. (9) The author suggests, “Tinto’s (1975) integration and social support framework appears to be most appropriate for assessing peer mentoring on retention as it relates to social and academic integration into college” (12).

Annotation by Eric Hall

This literature review discussed how some of the traditional definitions of mentoring may be falling out of favor. In traditional definitions of mentoring the career function may have carried more weight, but in more recently the psychosocial aspects of mentoring are becoming more prominent. To show this diversity in thinking, the authors describe nine mentoring alternatives or types: formal; informal; diverse; electronic; comentoring/collaborative; group; peer; multilevel; and cultural mentoring. Throughout the discussion of different mentoring options, it seems that issues related to DEI are present, as well as the recognition that development is not one-way, “mentees and mentors alike are learner, comentor, and change agent” (32).

Annotation by Eric Hall

This is a short article based on a presentation about developing peer-mentoring programs with a students-as-partners approach. While the article didn’t talk much about the content of the presentation, there was one question that they posed that is noteworthy to consider when designing: “Who better to expose the implicit or hidden curriculum of university than those who are already on that journey?” (114)

Annotation by Eric Hall

This was an article written for a more general audience and was based on a previous study done by the participants and tried to provide practical implications for the reader. “Indeed, we found that the best matches integrated these two factors, in an approach we call relational instrumentality. That is, the incom­ing students were most successful when their mentors didn’t just help them meet their immediate needs but also bonded with them personally” (48). “Effective mentors build trusting relationships with their mentees and adopt mentee-centric, respectful approaches. This begins with establishing the right kind of match, but it also includes ensuring that the pairs share a strong commitment to the match and engage in activities that promote relational instrumentality” (50). From this they discuss four strategies to help with this: 1) building relationally instrumental matches; 2) fostering trust, 3) mentee-centric mentoring and 4) committing to the process.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This research article discussed a peer mentoring program that was an orientation to Social Sciences program with the primary goal to develop social networks  at the University College Dublin. This program mentors about 500 students with 66 peer mentors. In this study, peer mentors helped design and deliver the program and then some served as co-researchers. Three themes were identified for the mentors. First, peer mentors built relationships amongst students as well as university staff; the latter suggesting that the partnership approach worked. Second, there was a disconnect in expectations and experience of the program. Mentors expected to have more of an altruistic benefit for the mentees, but felt that much of their role was pragmatic helping navigate the university and less relational. Finally, as a result of not having the relational experience they expected, mentors experienced disappointment and feelings of rejection.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This article examines students’ experiences at a national undergraduate research conference in an effort to understand the development of graduate attributes, which are the framework of skills, attitudes, values and knowledge that graduates ought to have developed by the end of their degrees. The research takes a largely qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews to collect data. The authors explain that research on graduate attributes is relevant because there is a growing, international conversation about the purpose and characteristics of higher education, and that it is becoming ever more important for institutions to justify their social roles to students. This article focuses on a case study of 22 Geography, Earth and Environmental Science (GEES) graduates, and forms part of a larger study on interdisciplinary graduate attributes. Additionally, the authors split the attributes they analyzed into five categories: communication; research and inquiry skills; personal and intellectual autonomy; ethical, social, and professional understanding; and information literacy. Notably, the authors found that the conference provided a safe and supportive, while also challenging, context for students to develop these skills. This research highlights the importance of opportunities to develop such skills outside of formal disciplinary curricula.

This article offers an overview of existing higher education literature on and attitudes towards the development of graduate attributes, while introducing the papers which comprised a symposium on this research context. One issue the authors discuss is the extent of the connection between what academic staff set up for students in terms of skill development and how much students actually experience. The authors also note the importance of students accepting agency in the process of developing their own graduate attributes, rather than letting the system determine their identities. In their conclusion, the authors emphasize that regardless of inconsistencies in teaching and assessing graduate attributes, they play a valuable role in enhancing learning and connecting learning to work beyond students’ academic careers.

This article outlines the benefits and challenges of co-mentoring for students, faculty mentors, and institutions. The authors themselves have several years of experience co-mentoring undergraduate research projects, and offer insights they have gained through those projects. The authors present the co-mentoring model they have developed and a practical guide to co-mentoring, incorporating salient practices of mentoring undergraduate research. In their conclusion, the authors note that a lot of work needs to happen to foster co-mentoring relationships, but if that happens, they can be extremely beneficial to all involved parties.

This paper assesses the significance of participation in undergraduate research conferences on students’ attitudes and professional development, including the development of graduate attributes. The paper positions the undergraduate research conference as an authentic learning context using the theory of situated learning. The authors interviewed 90 undergraduate students at research conferences, and analyzed their responses using the Researcher Development Framework. Students reported that paper presentations, poster presentations, and the overall conference experience were particularly valuable to their skill development. Two of these skills were public engagement and communication, which the authors note are routinely sought after by employers. The authors also offered some suggestions to conference organizers in order to maximize skill development, including providing dedicated networking time within the program.

In this paper, the authors argue that multi-mentoring can be applied in a global, interdisciplinary context to undergraduate research, and make the case for moving beyond the traditional one-to-one model as the default for inquiry into undergraduate research practices. The paper includes descriptions of relevant multi-mentoring and co-mentoring models, and offers suggestions for implementing multi- and co-mentoring practices to advance the undergraduate experience. In their conclusion, the authors note that institutions will need to assist faculty mentors in overcoming some of the challenges that accompany starting out with multi-mentoring.

The authors conducted a literature review that focused on UR mentors’ practices. They wanted to know what effective mentorship looks like, because mentorship is the basis for successful UR. They described ten salient mentoring practices: strategic pre-planning; clear and well-scaffolded expectations; teach technical skills, method, and techniques; balance rigorous expectations with emotional support; build community among team members; dedicate time to one-on-one mentoring; increase student ownership over time; support student professional development; create opportunities for peer-mentoring; and guide students through dissemination.

In this article, the authors set out to identify likely future trends for undergraduate research (UR) in the next five to ten years. This research is important for the field because it can help faculty and administrators consider how they plan to allocate resources to ensure equitable and high-quality UR mentoring in the future. The authors conducted a literature review and interviews with faculty who have won awards for their commitment to and expertise of UR. Their two main findings are as follows. First, UR will likely see greater democratization in terms of greater access to opportunities for students from historically-underserved groups, students from nontraditional populations, and students with average academic performance histories. And second, mentor-mentee relationships are expected to strengthen across national and international borders as online communication capacities continue to advance. Curricula redesigns that incorporate inquiry-based learning may also facilitate greater participation in UR.

This article investigates the benefits of attending a multidisciplinary research conference as an undergraduate researcher, focusing on student voices and self-perceptions of learning and skill development. The authors conducted 90 interviews with student conference participants over the course of three years, and found that the opportunity to present research in a setting outside of institutional or disciplinary contexts bolstered student researchers’ development of skills and confidence. The authors frame the undergraduate research conference as a threshold experience for self-authorship development, and thus such conferences are much more than just a space to present research findings. They also found that students who presented at conferences often reported a sense of unfinishedness, which challenges academics to consider ways to bring comparable experiences into the classroom, to provide space for students to develop knowledge through reciprocal dialogue.

Bharath uses an e-service learning project as an educational tool that helps students develop technical writing skills and meet their partner organization’s needs in an online nonprofit course. Furthermore, this paper provides a discussion on the benefits and challenges facing e-service learning projects.

Bourelle implements an e-service learning project in a distance communication course. The researcher specifically examined students’ sense of civic responsibility, application of skills, peer learning, and their use of technology.

In this study, the authors take a hybrid-approach to create a service-learning project with Engineering students. Using a two-prong approach, the authors had students completed the first half of the project virtually and second half in the field. Additionally, the authors reflected on the use of virtual versus traditional methods of service-learning.

This paper examines how educators can use eLearning pedagogies in service-learning courses through theoretical frameworks and practical considerations. Though authors intended to use their findings to help create innovative pedagogical approaches to respond to emerging technology and educational preferences of Millennials, the results can be adapted to fit Gen-Z students as well.

Using the university’s competence framework and the service-learning methodology, the authors propose a virtual service-learning project between students from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spain) and the University of Porto-Novo (Benin).

Through this case study, Guthrie and McCraken examine how service-learning pedagogies can be used in an online format. The authors explore how to create a virtual learning environment as well as the associated benefits and challenges.

The author examined how Australian students engaged in mediated intercultural dialogue through an e-service learning project with a non-government organization in India. Additionally, the author analyzed the online tools students utilize and their online communication processes and habits during this project.

McWhorter, Delello, and Roberts examined how service-learning opportunities could be embedded in an online graduate business course. The study sought to understand the academics benefits of having a service-learning an online course and how did students apply their coursework to their service-learning experience.

Using theoretical and practical consideration, Purcell examines how community-engaged pedagogies, such as service-learning, can be used by leadership educators in creating an online community-engaged course.

In this case study, the authors explore using collaborative mapping to help students create a virtual sense of place in their service e-learning experience.

The authors performed a mixed-methods experimental study to see how incorporating a virtual service-learning experience can affect student learning outcomes in a distance technical writing course. The purpose of the study was to determine how service-learning could enhance student learning outcomes in a distance course and to understand how virtual learning can be deepened through community engagement.

In this study, the authors explore the concept of extreme e-service learning, where instruction and service projects are entirely online. Additionally, the authors examine the benefits, challenges, and best practices of implementing an extreme e-service learning experience.

In this literature review, the authors examined the evolution and expansion of e-service learning. From this review, they have identified four types of e-service learning—Hybrid: Instruction Online with Service on Site, Hybrid: Instruction on Site with Service Online, Hybrid: Instruction and/or Service Partially on Site and Partially Online, and Extreme: Instruction and Service 100% Online—and best practices in conducting these endeavors.

Though this study provides a mixture of face-to-face and online instruction to create a hybrid service-learning experience for Engineering undergraduate students in Malaysia, the authors explore how virtual tools such as online discussions and online meetings can have a positive impact on the student’s learning and engagement.

The objective of this paper was to review literature about near-peer mentoring programs for first-year medical students. “A near-peer is one who is one or more years senior to another on the same level of education training, that is, learners providing pastoral support to other learners in contrast to faculty staff mentoring learners” (2) Across the five papers in the review, three outcomes were summarized: personal and professional development, transitioning and stress reduction. For personal and professional development, 72.5% mentees reported much improvement working on a team; 61.2% reported greater respect towards themselves and mentors; 58% said they were more accountable about schoolwork; and 100% said they improved their “professionalism” skills. For transitioning, some of the studies showed support that mentoring programs helped in the transition phase of medical school. For stress reduction, some studies showed near-peer mentoring programs helped build resilience and be less stressed.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This literature review reviews the topics of mentoring and peer mentoring in higher education. It then expands to the mentoring of Hispanic students. “As established by Zachary (2012), mentoring is a process of engagement, no one can mentor without connection, and the relationships is more successful when it is done collaboratively. Mentoring provides the mentee with a safe situation to explore new ideas with confidence” (398). The concept of empathy is briefly discussed, and this might be useful to think about related to training and development of mentoring programs. The importance of understanding culture and values of population was discussed.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This was an empirical study of a mentoring program for first-year African-American students. The mentors in this study included students (32%), faculty members (28%) and staff members (40%). The overall findings were that the students was beneficial for their transition to college. The main topics discussed were academic concerns, personal concerns, and career guidance. Despite the overall program being successful, a majority of the mentees that were mentored by peers reported a less favorable experience. Students in these relationships reported issues of availability, community, and personality conflicts. Once again, the idea of mentor training was highlighted as important for the creation and success of these programs.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This research took place at two matched universities in the UK from which 109 first year undergraduates were recruited. All participants took a series of questionnaires during the first week and 10 weeks into the semester. Peer mentoring happened at one of the institutions. Measures included: perceived stress, adaptation to university life, intention to leave (all time 2); and social support, negative affect and self-esteem (time points 1 and 2). “Peer mentored individuals showed higher levels of integration to university. Four times as many non-peer mentored students had seriously considered leaving university compared to peer mentored students. Integration partially mediated the relationship between mentoring and intention to stay at university. Moderating effects analyses indicate that mentoring may buffer the effect of the transition to University.” (928) Tinto’s theory of student retention was used to explain the results.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This article examined a “mentor leadership program under the premise of students helping students.” (122) Interviews were conducted of 40 participants which included current mentors (n = 12), new mentors (n = 8), instructors (n = 10) and students in class (n = 10). From the interviews, three themes emerged: 1) roles, 2) benefits and risks, and 3) power and resistance. For roles, five specific roles were identified: 1) connecting link; 2) peer leader; 3) learning coach; 4) student advocate; and 5) trusted friend. Three benefits were identified: 1) being able to support students; 2) reapplying concepts in their own lives; and 3) developing connections. There were some gender differences a swell with women seeing benefits in relationships and men in academics. Some of the risks and challenges of mentoring included: balancing mentor role with time and other commitments, making themselves vulnerable to students, getting emotionally attached to students and having to “let go” at the end of semester. There were a few issues of power and resistance, but fewer than the benefits recognized. The issue of resistance resonated around amount of time and pestering from the mentors.

Annotation by Eric Hall

The authors are calling this a case study which is examining the functions of mentoring in both faculty and peer mentors who participated in a first-year experience program. “The respondents tended to agree that mentoring includes providing feedback, teaching, sharing information, directing, academic goal setting, advising, encouraging, aiding, academic goal tracking, modeling, problem solving, introducing, and observing. However, they did not agree on whether mentoring includes socializing, affirming, confidence building, providing practical application, helping on assignments, calming, collaborating, advocating, personal goal setting, personal goal tracking, befriending, sheltering, or supporting.” (73) “Table 3 also illustrates that faculty and peer mentors agree there are functions that should be reserved for peer mentors, including helping on assignments, affirming, and socializing. Faculty respondents reported that it is the peer mentor’s role, not their role, to befriend and support students. On the other hand, peer mentors are unsure if it is their role to befriend and support students. Finally, findings from this study suggest there are several mentoring functions that peer and faculty mentors believe are not appropriate for an FYE program, including collaborating, personal goal setting and tracking, providing practical application, calming, confidence building, advocating, and sheltering.” (83) At the end in the implication for practice section, the authors discuss the importance of clarifying the role of the mentor to improve mentor training.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This was a systematic literature that identified 9 studies from 2006-2016 which focused on outcomes of the mentors. They were interested in mentors between 14-25 years. “Peer-to-peer mentoring was defined as a reciprocal relationship where peers of similar age and experiences (mentor) share their knowledge, skills and experiences with their peers (mentees) and provide support in a formal mentoring programme to foster positive growth and development.” (37) Interestingly, the attempted to classify the mentor training involved and ongoing adult support; these are often not discussed as much in this literature. The four important outcomes highlighted were: personal growth (changed perception of identity); psychosocial well-being (e.g., enhanced leadership skills); universality of the shared experience (connection with mentees); and mentor experiences (feel they could make a difference).

Annotation by Eric Hall

This is a review of previous literature reviews around peer mentoring as “peer mentoring is often considered the single most effective strategy for increasing student retention and student satisfaction.” (abstract, 265). The role of the peer mentor is often seen as having multiple functions—academic advisor, confidante, friend, study buddy, career advisor, support, and role model. The article highlights the issues with defining mentoring and the importance of “setting the boundary conditions” for mentoring (272). For this paper, they write “mentoring programs had specified function, as did the mentor – to encourage student engagement and their sense of belonging the university.” (272-273). A major conclusion from the paper was that there appears to be no best/standard practice for mentoring, but diversity does matter in these relationships.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This research study examined the benefits of both mentors and mentees in peer mentoring program. The participants were 107 first-year business students (mentees) and 16, 4^th year mentors. The goals of the mentoring program were to help first-years students adjust to the university and for the 4^th year student to get leadership experience. The mentoring model used in this program was based on the four domains identified by Crisp and Cruz (2009): psychological and emotional support; goal setting and career path; academic subject knowledge support; and the existence of a role model. Mentees regard identified the acquisition of subject knowledge and support as the most beneficial aspect of the mentoring program, as well as the biggest challenge. The mentors reported being a role model the most beneficial aspect of the mentoring experience, but also the most challenging. The findings of this study need to be taken in light of the mentoring program being within a departmental context and what the goals were for the mentors and mentees.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This is an empirical study that examined mentor’s attachment style and self-efficacy and mentor-provided support. “Results showed that mentor self-efficacy mediated the relation between an avoidant attachment style and mentor-reported support; that is, peer mentors with a more avoidant attachment style reported lower self-efficacy to mentor and, in turn, endorsed providing lower levels of support for mentees” (67). Mentor–mentee contact; however, was the only predictor of mentees’ ratings of mentor support. “Potential peer mentors should feel comfortable (a) assisting students with academic, social, and personal challenges, (b) serving as a role model, (c) discussing their own academic and social experiences and challenges, (d) connecting students to campus resources, and (e) helping mentees to develop academic skills that allow them to function more autonomously in college” (85).

Annotation by Eric Hall

The author uses an integrative literature review process to examine peer mentoring within first year programs. The author found seven articles which they reviewed. From this review, four issues emerged: 1) lack of a consistent peer mentoring definition; 2) theoretical and methodological issues of concern, 3) unexpected findings that impact program results, and 4) international comparisons. (9) The author suggests, “Tinto’s (1975) integration and social support framework appears to be most appropriate for assessing peer mentoring on retention as it relates to social and academic integration into college” (12).

Annotation by Eric Hall

This literature review discussed how some of the traditional definitions of mentoring may be falling out of favor. In traditional definitions of mentoring the career function may have carried more weight, but in more recently the psychosocial aspects of mentoring are becoming more prominent. To show this diversity in thinking, the authors describe nine mentoring alternatives or types: formal; informal; diverse; electronic; comentoring/collaborative; group; peer; multilevel; and cultural mentoring. Throughout the discussion of different mentoring options, it seems that issues related to DEI are present, as well as the recognition that development is not one-way, “mentees and mentors alike are learner, comentor, and change agent” (32).

Annotation by Eric Hall

This is a short article based on a presentation about developing peer-mentoring programs with a students-as-partners approach. While the article didn’t talk much about the content of the presentation, there was one question that they posed that is noteworthy to consider when designing: “Who better to expose the implicit or hidden curriculum of university than those who are already on that journey?” (114)

Annotation by Eric Hall

This was an article written for a more general audience and was based on a previous study done by the participants and tried to provide practical implications for the reader. “Indeed, we found that the best matches integrated these two factors, in an approach we call relational instrumentality. That is, the incom­ing students were most successful when their mentors didn’t just help them meet their immediate needs but also bonded with them personally” (48). “Effective mentors build trusting relationships with their mentees and adopt mentee-centric, respectful approaches. This begins with establishing the right kind of match, but it also includes ensuring that the pairs share a strong commitment to the match and engage in activities that promote relational instrumentality” (50). From this they discuss four strategies to help with this: 1) building relationally instrumental matches; 2) fostering trust, 3) mentee-centric mentoring and 4) committing to the process.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This research article discussed a peer mentoring program that was an orientation to Social Sciences program with the primary goal to develop social networks  at the University College Dublin. This program mentors about 500 students with 66 peer mentors. In this study, peer mentors helped design and deliver the program and then some served as co-researchers. Three themes were identified for the mentors. First, peer mentors built relationships amongst students as well as university staff; the latter suggesting that the partnership approach worked. Second, there was a disconnect in expectations and experience of the program. Mentors expected to have more of an altruistic benefit for the mentees, but felt that much of their role was pragmatic helping navigate the university and less relational. Finally, as a result of not having the relational experience they expected, mentors experienced disappointment and feelings of rejection.

Annotation by Eric Hall

Henscheid, Skipper, and Young identify the importance of reflection, integration, and application in their piece about Intentional Design Strategies for Senior Capstone Experiences. They suggest that these three elements can aid in developing advanced “analytical and critical thinking, communication skills, employment skills, problem-solving competencies, and team-building.” In addition, in order to foster an environment in which reflection, integration, and application are used to their fullest potential there must be a meaningful educational experience for the student. Something unique and quite important is the acknowledgment that a meaningful educational experience can be different for each individual. Overall, the piece unfolds how to build experiences that “provide structured opportunities for applied learning.”

The authors describe four capstone experiences that promote application of learning:

• Independent Research Experiences: Apply what students have learned to   Real world experiences allow the student to expand their knowledge even more.
• Internships: Allows students to go beyond curriculum and apply what they have learned to the workforce.
• Service Learning: Apply classroom information to community problems.
• Preprofessional Capstones: Allow students to apply academic content in real-world contexts attentive to disciplinary or professional standards.

These experiences, not only are reflective in nature but also suggest that the student take time to reflect on their own interests, needs, and desires, as they move forward in integrating and applying what they have learned.

This piece expands on different ways in which students can engage in learning experiences that support reflection, integration, and application. Breaking down examples of these types of learning experiences can help us to better understand what elements of those experiences really lend themselves to cycles of reflection, integration, and application.

Annotation contributed by Sophie Miller, 2021-2024 CEL Student Scholar

Ryan identifies reflection as a process that should be taught. This article shares analysis of a project that collected data across different university courses in Education, Health, Business, Law and Creative Industries in one Australian university. Ryan uses Bain et al.’s (2002) terminology of the 5 Rs – reporting, responding, relating, reasoning, and reconstructing – to sort her data. However, she slims it down to 4 R’s by combining “reporting” and “responding.” The four resulting categories consist of: reporting and responding, relating, reasoning, and reconstructing. These are ordered from the most basic level of reflection to the highest level of reflection. Ryan’s larger project involves semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 40 volunteer staff and 40 volunteer students from across university faculties, along with samples of reflective work from 60 participating students across faculties. Based on her analysis, Ryan explores why reflection is critical to learning and to application of knowledge.

Annotation contributed by Sophie Miller, 2021-2024 CEL Student Scholar

This piece explores how helpful it may be to have prior knowledge in academic situations. Specifically, the authors researched pre-service music teachers and their performance relative to whether they received related instruction prior to a lecture or not. The findings show that relevant instruction produced higher performance during the lecture. Having the ability to integrate prior learning and experience is deemed to be extremely beneficial in this situation. Not only is prior knowledge important, but the knowledge structures the teachers have in their brains are vital to the retrieval of information while in the classroom (p. 713).

Annotation contributed by Sophie Miller, 2021 CEL Student Scholar

Cooper et al. have been cited in several recent publications about fostering relationships in college. The authors suggest that using nameplates to facilitate addressing students by name leads to relationship gains, even if faculty wouldn’t otherwise remember students’ names. Cooper et al. studied a high-enrollment biology class in which instructors used active-learning strategies and asked students to use name tents – folded card stock on which students wrote their names. At the end of the semester, the instructors could name approximately half of their students when looking at a deidentified photo roster, but 78% of the students surveyed thought the instructors knew their names (5). Moreover 23% of the students indicated that instructors knowing their names contributed to student-instructor relationships (7). 

Annotation contributed by Dr. Buffie Longmire-Avital

Costa and Mims describe using notecards to check-in with students at the beginning or end of class as a way to build rapport. In this “Quick Fix” article, they describe distributing index cards to their students periodically during the semester. They ask students to respond to questions about their stress level, self-care plans, or recent good news, and the instructors respond either individually or with synthesized responses to the class. Costa and Mims write, “Setting aside five minutes during class has allowed us to quickly and easily learn (1) what is currently causing distress, (2) the good and the bad things that are going on in students’ lives, and (3) whether students are utilizing resources on campus that they might need. As a result, notecard check-ins have fostered a greater sense of connection between us and our students” (33). 

Annotation contributed by Dr. Buffie Longmire-Avital

Alise de Bie provides an interesting editorial explaining Mad(ness) Studies – “an area of scholarship and pedagogy establishing roots in the academy, has emerged as a result of this activism and is principally inspired by and concerned with Mad people’s ways of knowing, being and doing (Menzies, LeFrancois, and Reaume 2013; Reville 2013)” (2). Her inclusion of Mad people includes: “(service) users, (psychiatric) survivors, consumers, patients, disabled, Mad (for an overview see Reaume [2002]; Speed [2006])” (2). The four main themes include: 1) equality; 2) interpersonal concord and consensus; 3) mutual collaboration; and 4) inclusion. The article brings up many excellent points about how certain voices may be valued more in Students as Partners practices and that conflict may be fine – everything does not have to be okay. 

Annotation contributed by Dr. Buffie Longmire-Avital

The use of fictive kin by African American communities is a longstanding practice. Beyond extended families, fictive kin are relationships elevated to the status of familial and have been effective in creating nuanced support networks, and tangible social capital for historically underrepresented minority groups (HURM). The authors find that first-generation students who create a network of fictive kinships across peers, faculty, student life, and administrators associate their persistence, self-efficacy, sense of belonging and perceived inclusion with the engagement in these relationships. Relationship building should consider the effectiveness of a fictive kinship models and approaches.

Annotation contributed by Dr. Buffie Longmire-Avital

The authors report on a survey of students and alumni, examining their “rhetorical training”—their writing knowledge and experiences across multiple courses, campus employment, and workplace contexts. The survey asked participants to identify their most often written genres and their most valued type of writing, the rhetorical situations in which they compose their most valued genre, and the writing processes they have developed. The authors examined the multiple sources of rhetorical training that participants believe prepared them to write their most valued genre. Multiple rhetorical training experiences prepare writers for the writing they value, and both students and alumni describe robust writing processes and appreciate feedback from others. Yet alumni continue to express challenges adapting writing for new audiences and genres.

From the published abstract: “This article explores ways that work-integrated learning (WIL) scholarship and the field of writing studies can benefit from intentional engagement in the context of transfer research. This conceptual paper foregrounds writing in WIL contexts, introduces writing transfer and its relationship to writing in WIL contexts, discusses conceptual
overlaps of writing transfer research and WIL, and suggests what writing transfer can mean for WIL practitioners. Overall, we argue that intentional engagement with writing transfer can enrich both WIL research and pedagogy.”

This article examines students’ experiences at a national undergraduate research conference in an effort to understand the development of graduate attributes, which are the framework of skills, attitudes, values and knowledge that graduates ought to have developed by the end of their degrees. The research takes a largely qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews to collect data. The authors explain that research on graduate attributes is relevant because there is a growing, international conversation about the purpose and characteristics of higher education, and that it is becoming ever more important for institutions to justify their social roles to students. This article focuses on a case study of 22 Geography, Earth and Environmental Science (GEES) graduates, and forms part of a larger study on interdisciplinary graduate attributes. Additionally, the authors split the attributes they analyzed into five categories: communication; research and inquiry skills; personal and intellectual autonomy; ethical, social, and professional understanding; and information literacy. Notably, the authors found that the conference provided a safe and supportive, while also challenging, context for students to develop these skills. This research highlights the importance of opportunities to develop such skills outside of formal disciplinary curricula.

This article offers an overview of existing higher education literature on and attitudes towards the development of graduate attributes, while introducing the papers which comprised a symposium on this research context. One issue the authors discuss is the extent of the connection between what academic staff set up for students in terms of skill development and how much students actually experience. The authors also note the importance of students accepting agency in the process of developing their own graduate attributes, rather than letting the system determine their identities. In their conclusion, the authors emphasize that regardless of inconsistencies in teaching and assessing graduate attributes, they play a valuable role in enhancing learning and connecting learning to work beyond students’ academic careers.

Drawing on surveys, interviews, and maps collected from students at six institutions, this 2019-2021 research seminar team explores student writing lives within course-based, self-motivated, civic, internship, co-curricular, work-based, and other “spheres” of writing. Based on their analysis of students’ writing lives within and across these spheres, the authors advocate re-envisioning writing across the curriculum through a lifewide lens and fostering students’ agency as they continue to develop their lifewide writerly identities.

This article outlines the benefits and challenges of co-mentoring for students, faculty mentors, and institutions. The authors themselves have several years of experience co-mentoring undergraduate research projects, and offer insights they have gained through those projects. The authors present the co-mentoring model they have developed and a practical guide to co-mentoring, incorporating salient practices of mentoring undergraduate research. In their conclusion, the authors note that a lot of work needs to happen to foster co-mentoring relationships, but if that happens, they can be extremely beneficial to all involved parties.

This paper assesses the significance of participation in undergraduate research conferences on students’ attitudes and professional development, including the development of graduate attributes. The paper positions the undergraduate research conference as an authentic learning context using the theory of situated learning. The authors interviewed 90 undergraduate students at research conferences, and analyzed their responses using the Researcher Development Framework. Students reported that paper presentations, poster presentations, and the overall conference experience were particularly valuable to their skill development. Two of these skills were public engagement and communication, which the authors note are routinely sought after by employers. The authors also offered some suggestions to conference organizers in order to maximize skill development, including providing dedicated networking time within the program.

In this paper, the authors argue that multi-mentoring can be applied in a global, interdisciplinary context to undergraduate research, and make the case for moving beyond the traditional one-to-one model as the default for inquiry into undergraduate research practices. The paper includes descriptions of relevant multi-mentoring and co-mentoring models, and offers suggestions for implementing multi- and co-mentoring practices to advance the undergraduate experience. In their conclusion, the authors note that institutions will need to assist faculty mentors in overcoming some of the challenges that accompany starting out with multi-mentoring.

The authors conducted a literature review that focused on UR mentors’ practices. They wanted to know what effective mentorship looks like, because mentorship is the basis for successful UR. They described ten salient mentoring practices: strategic pre-planning; clear and well-scaffolded expectations; teach technical skills, method, and techniques; balance rigorous expectations with emotional support; build community among team members; dedicate time to one-on-one mentoring; increase student ownership over time; support student professional development; create opportunities for peer-mentoring; and guide students through dissemination.

In this article, the authors set out to identify likely future trends for undergraduate research (UR) in the next five to ten years. This research is important for the field because it can help faculty and administrators consider how they plan to allocate resources to ensure equitable and high-quality UR mentoring in the future. The authors conducted a literature review and interviews with faculty who have won awards for their commitment to and expertise of UR. Their two main findings are as follows. First, UR will likely see greater democratization in terms of greater access to opportunities for students from historically-underserved groups, students from nontraditional populations, and students with average academic performance histories. And second, mentor-mentee relationships are expected to strengthen across national and international borders as online communication capacities continue to advance. Curricula redesigns that incorporate inquiry-based learning may also facilitate greater participation in UR.

This article investigates the benefits of attending a multidisciplinary research conference as an undergraduate researcher, focusing on student voices and self-perceptions of learning and skill development. The authors conducted 90 interviews with student conference participants over the course of three years, and found that the opportunity to present research in a setting outside of institutional or disciplinary contexts bolstered student researchers’ development of skills and confidence. The authors frame the undergraduate research conference as a threshold experience for self-authorship development, and thus such conferences are much more than just a space to present research findings. They also found that students who presented at conferences often reported a sense of unfinishedness, which challenges academics to consider ways to bring comparable experiences into the classroom, to provide space for students to develop knowledge through reciprocal dialogue.

Participants from the 2018-2020 research seminar on Capstone Experiences profile Boston College’s Capstone Program.

A multi-institutional research team from the 2017-2019 research seminar on Residential Learning Communities as a High-Impact Practice examines collaboration between student affairs and academic affairs. Using a Delphi method, the team explored how academic and student affairs professionals define collaboration in residential learning communities and distilled a definition through multiple rounds of feedback. The research team’s resulting definition is: “Collaboration between academic and student affairs is the continuous process of cultivating an independent relationship where each stakeholder is mutually committed to working toward the shared purpose of holistic student learning” (p. 671).

The authors conducted a literature review that focused on UR mentors’ practices. They wanted to know what effective mentorship looks like, because mentorship is the basis for successful UR. They described ten salient mentoring practices: strategic pre-planning; clear and well-scaffolded expectations; teach technical skills, method, and techniques; balance rigorous expectations with emotional support; build community among team members; dedicate time to one-on-one mentoring; increase student ownership over time; support student professional development; create opportunities for peer-mentoring; and guide students through dissemination.

In this article, the authors set out to identify likely future trends for undergraduate research (UR) in the next five to ten years. This research is important for the field because it can help faculty and administrators consider how they plan to allocate resources to ensure equitable and high-quality UR mentoring in the future. The authors conducted a literature review and interviews with faculty who have won awards for their commitment to and expertise of UR. Their two main findings are as follows. First, UR will likely see greater democratization in terms of greater access to opportunities for students from historically-underserved groups, students from nontraditional populations, and students with average academic performance histories. And second, mentor-mentee relationships are expected to strengthen across national and international borders as online communication capacities continue to advance. Curricula redesigns that incorporate inquiry-based learning may also facilitate greater participation in UR.

Reflection is an integral aspect of service-learning, but it does not simply happen by telling students to reflect. This paper describes the risks involved in poor quality reflection and explains the results of rigorous reflection. A rigorous reflection framework is introduced that involves objectively describing an experience, analyzing the experience, and then articulating learning outcomes according to guiding questions.

Bharath uses an e-service learning project as an educational tool that helps students develop technical writing skills and meet their partner organization’s needs in an online nonprofit course. Furthermore, this paper provides a discussion on the benefits and challenges facing e-service learning projects.

Bourelle implements an e-service learning project in a distance communication course. The researcher specifically examined students’ sense of civic responsibility, application of skills, peer learning, and their use of technology.

In this study, the authors take a hybrid-approach to create a service-learning project with Engineering students. Using a two-prong approach, the authors had students completed the first half of the project virtually and second half in the field. Additionally, the authors reflected on the use of virtual versus traditional methods of service-learning.

For those seeking empirical data regarding the value of service-learning, this meta-analysis provides considerable evidence. Representing data from 11,837 students, this meta-analysis of 62 studies identified five areas of gain for students who took service-learning courses as compared to control groups who did not. The students in service-learning courses demonstrated significant gains in their self-esteem and self-efficacy, educational engagement, altruism, cultural proficiency, and academic achievement. Studies of service-learning courses that implemented best practices (e.g., supporting students in connecting curriculum with the service, incorporating the voice of students in the service-learning project, welcoming community involvement in the project, and requiring reflection) had higher effect sizes.

This paper examines how educators can use eLearning pedagogies in service-learning courses through theoretical frameworks and practical considerations. Though authors intended to use their findings to help create innovative pedagogical approaches to respond to emerging technology and educational preferences of Millennials, the results can be adapted to fit Gen-Z students as well.

Felten and Clayton define service-learning, describe its essential aspects, and review the empirical evidence supporting this pedagogy. Both affective and cognitive aspects of growth are examined in their review. The authors conclude that effectively designed service-learning has considerable potential to promote transformation for all involved, including those who mentor students during the service-learning experience.

Using the university’s competence framework and the service-learning methodology, the authors propose a virtual service-learning project between students from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spain) and the University of Porto-Novo (Benin).

Through this case study, Guthrie and McCraken examine how service-learning pedagogies can be used in an online format. The authors explore how to create a virtual learning environment as well as the associated benefits and challenges.

The author examined how Australian students engaged in mediated intercultural dialogue through an e-service learning project with a non-government organization in India. Additionally, the author analyzed the online tools students utilize and their online communication processes and habits during this project.

Historically, universities have lauded their role in developing citizens who contribute to the public good. Every community needs citizens who are knowledgeable about local issues of inequity and who are willing to work with others to advocate for and help bring about positive social change related to those issues. This article examines the influence of service-learning experiences in fostering philanthropy and civic activity that continues after graduation. Five suggestions are made for tailoring service-learning such that students can eventually become civic-minded graduates.

Although an older publication, this article is not outdated. Jones describes how some students resist examining assumptions and refuse to see how their beliefs perpetuate negative stereotypes. These students challenge both the faculty member teaching the service-learning course and classmates. Jones discusses the need for faculty to anticipate how to respond to students’ racist or homophobic comments in a way that acknowledges where the students are developmentally, while also honoring the complexity involved. Additionally, the author recommends that faculty examine their own background and level of development relative to issues of privilege and power that can arise in service-learning pedagogy.

Developing a positive partnership with a community organization is a critical aspect service-learning. McDonald and Dominguez discuss best practice for service-learning and explain a framework for developing a successful partnership in the community. Faculty need to

1. Identify the objectives of the course that will be met through service,
2. Identify the community organization whose mission or self-identified need can be address with service-learning,
3. Define the purpose of the project, the roles, responsibilities and benefits of individuals involved,
4. Maintain regular communication with the community partner, and
5. Invite the community partner to the culminating student presentation on their service-learning.

Two service-learning projects, one for an environmental course and another for an elementary methods science course, are described along with the positive outcomes for students and community partners.

McWhorter, Delello, and Roberts examined how service-learning opportunities could be embedded in an online graduate business course. The study sought to understand the academics benefits of having a service-learning an online course and how did students apply their coursework to their service-learning experience.

Using theoretical and practical consideration, Purcell examines how community-engaged pedagogies, such as service-learning, can be used by leadership educators in creating an online community-engaged course.

In this case study, the authors explore using collaborative mapping to help students create a virtual sense of place in their service e-learning experience.

The authors performed a mixed-methods experimental study to see how incorporating a virtual service-learning experience can affect student learning outcomes in a distance technical writing course. The purpose of the study was to determine how service-learning could enhance student learning outcomes in a distance course and to understand how virtual learning can be deepened through community engagement.

Based on a review of literature for civic learning outcomes, the authors of this article propose a model for a civic-minded graduate, which involves the intersection of identify, educational experiences, and civic experiences within a cultural and social context. The authors then outline ten domains of civic learning outcomes organized according to knowledge, skills, dispositions, and behavioral intentions. All ten of the domains are manifest in literature on service-learning and civic engagement. The authors describe the instruments used to measure the civic-minded graduate construct and three studies conducted for the purpose of establishing validity of this construct. The article concludes with implications for practice in programs designed to promote civic development, using the construct of a civic-minded graduate as a metaphorical north star.

In this study, the authors explore the concept of extreme e-service learning, where instruction and service projects are entirely online. Additionally, the authors examine the benefits, challenges, and best practices of implementing an extreme e-service learning experience.

In this literature review, the authors examined the evolution and expansion of e-service learning. From this review, they have identified four types of e-service learning—Hybrid: Instruction Online with Service on Site, Hybrid: Instruction on Site with Service Online, Hybrid: Instruction and/or Service Partially on Site and Partially Online, and Extreme: Instruction and Service 100% Online—and best practices in conducting these endeavors.

This article describes immersive learning in the context of international service learning (or domestic service learning that happens away from the local community surrounding an institution) where students and faculty live and work together in a deeply immersive environment. The article is careful to articulate the difference in international or away service learning, where the immersion is constant, with localized experiences where the service learning experience is socketed into a student’s day. The article also discusses the value and need of the instructor working in close proximity to students as a facilitative guide to the learning experience. 

Though this study provides a mixture of face-to-face and online instruction to create a hybrid service-learning experience for Engineering undergraduate students in Malaysia, the authors explore how virtual tools such as online discussions and online meetings can have a positive impact on the student’s learning and engagement.

Alison Cook-Sather and Zanny Alter focus on student experiences as pedagogical consultants in a faculty development program at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges. The authors claim that this type of collaboration between student consultants, faculty and undergraduate students enrolled in a course has “the potential to transform deep-seated societal understandings of education based on traditional hierarchies and teacher/student distinctions” (p. 37). Cook-Sather and Alter borrow anthropological concept of liminality and revise it as “a threshold between and among clearly established roles at which one can linger, from which one can depart and to which one can return” (p. 38) to describe the shift in the relationship between faculty and students and emphasize the fact that having students as educational consultants falls outside of all previously established roles and categories in higher education system.

The context of Cook-Sather and Alter’s study is Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges’ Student as Learners and Teachers (SaLT) program, which employs students as pedagogical consultants to faculty. Both students and faculty go through an established training process. The authors report several important changes in both, students’ and faculty’s perception of teaching and learning, as well as the relationship between them, as a result of the experience:

• It prompts literal and metaphorical (re)positioning of the student consultants in the classroom, changing their perspective on learning and teaching, as well as their traditional roles as students;
• It exposes the participants to ambiguity and vulnerability, which in the end helps in developing the capacity to be between “all fixed points of classification” (p. 48);
• Student consultants report becoming better students as they are able to understand better the professors’ perspectives and goals and experience deeper learning as a result of being exposed to multiple angles;
• Faculty report being more willing to shift their teaching and more open to a dialogue with students; move towards less hierarchical and more dialogic understanding of teaching and learning; and
• Students report being willing to take more responsibility for their education and active participants in their education.

In conclusion, the authors argue that such partnerships have a potential to move us toward a more democratic education: the potential to generate a democratic dialogue about teaching and learning between students and faculty.

Alison Cook-Sather and Zanny Alter focus on student experiences as pedagogical consultants in a faculty development program at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges. The authors claim that this type of collaboration between student consultants, faculty and undergraduate students enrolled in a course has “the potential to transform deep-seated societal understandings of education based on traditional hierarchies and teacher/student distinctions” (37). Cook-Sather and Alter borrow anthropological concept of liminality and revise it as “a threshold between and among clearly established roles at which one can linger, from which one can depart and to which one can return,” (38) to describe the shift in the relationship between faculty and students and emphasize the fact that having students as educational consultants falls outside of all previously established roles and categories in higher education system.

The context of Cook-Sather and Alter’s study is Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges’ Student as Learners and Teachers (SaLT) program, which employs students as pedagogical consultants to faculty. Both students and faculty go through an established training process. The authors report several important changes in both, students’ and faculty’s perception of teaching and learning, as well as the relationship between them, as a result of the experience: a) it prompts literal and metaphorical (re)positioning of the student consultants in the classroom, changing their perspective on learning and teaching, as well as their traditional roles as students; b) It exposes the participants to ambiguity and vulnerability, which in the end helps in developing the capacity to be between “all fixed points of classification” (48); c) Student consultants  report becoming better students as they are able to understand better the professors’ perspectives and goals and experience deeper learning as a result of being exposed to multiple angles; d) Faculty report being more willing to shift their teaching and more open to a dialogue with students; move towards less hierarchical and more dialogic understanding of teaching and learning; e) Students report being willing to take more responsibility for their education and active participants in their education.

In conclusion, the authors argue that such partnerships have a potential to move us toward a more democratic education: the potential to generate a democratic dialogue about teaching and learning between students and faculty.

Alise de Bie provides an interesting editorial explaining Mad(ness) Studies – “an area of scholarship and pedagogy establishing roots in the academy, has emerged as a result of this activism and is principally inspired by and concerned with Mad people’s ways of knowing, being and doing (Menzies, LeFrancois, and Reaume 2013; Reville 2013)” (2). Her inclusion of Mad people includes: “(service) users, (psychiatric) survivors, consumers, patients, disabled, Mad (for an overview see Reaume [2002]; Speed [2006])” (2). The four main themes include: 1) equality; 2) interpersonal concord and consensus; 3) mutual collaboration; and 4) inclusion. The article brings up many excellent points about how certain voices may be valued more in Students as Partners practices and that conflict may be fine – everything does not have to be okay. 

Annotation contributed by Dr. Buffie Longmire-Avital

In this comprehensive literature review on the subject of Students as Partners (SaP) Mercer-Mapstone et al. are guided by an overarching question about “[h]ow are “students as partners” practices in higher education presented in the academic literature” (p. 4). The article offers a comprehensive analysis of the percentage of publications authored by faculty/academic staff, undergraduate students, and post doctoral researchers; percentage of publications coming from specific disciplines, as well as the types of partnerships frequently undertaken, a detailed and clear picture of the positive and, in some cases, negative, outcomes of student-faculty engagement, and finally, proposes areas within the subject of student-faculty partnership for further investigation and development.

The authors also address some of the major characteristics of student-faculty partnerships, highlighting the importance of reciprocity in the relationship, which can be understood as a form of shared responsibility in the process of learning, shared goals and risks, viewing students as co-learners and/or colleagues, i.e. a relationship that destabilizes the traditional power hierarchy between the faculty and students. Interestingly, the authors conclude that the analysis of current scholarship about subject of student-faculty partnerships shows that this does not always translate into shared authorship: the vast majority of research published on the topic of SaP is authored primarily by faculty, concluding that “[w]hile our literature review captured a plethora of SaP practices premised on the ideals of reciprocity and shared responsibility, the artifacts (publications) of those interactions tended to be staff-centric” (p. 14).

This is a short article based on a presentation about developing peer-mentoring programs with a students-as-partners approach. While the article didn’t talk much about the content of the presentation, there was one question that they posed that is noteworthy to consider when designing: “Who better to expose the implicit or hidden curriculum of university than those who are already on that journey?” (114)

Annotation by Eric Hall

This research article discussed a peer mentoring program that was an orientation to Social Sciences program with the primary goal to develop social networks  at the University College Dublin. This program mentors about 500 students with 66 peer mentors. In this study, peer mentors helped design and deliver the program and then some served as co-researchers. Three themes were identified for the mentors. First, peer mentors built relationships amongst students as well as university staff; the latter suggesting that the partnership approach worked. Second, there was a disconnect in expectations and experience of the program. Mentors expected to have more of an altruistic benefit for the mentees, but felt that much of their role was pragmatic helping navigate the university and less relational. Finally, as a result of not having the relational experience they expected, mentors experienced disappointment and feelings of rejection.

Annotation by Eric Hall

This essay describes Carmen Werder’s, Shevell Thibou’s and Blair Kaufer’s experiences with student-faculty collaborations on course and curricular development and the ways in which these experiences have been transformational for each. This is one of the few studies co-authored by a faculty member, a graduate student and an undergraduate student who participated in student-faculty collaborative process on curricular development. The process was part of the Teaching-Learning Academy (TLA) at Western Washington University. As the authors state, the essay “explores how partnering with students to study teaching and learning constitutes a threshold concept that is trans­formational, irreversible, and discursive”(p. 34).

The authors consider student-faculty partnership to be “threshold learning” because it opens up new and previously unconceivable ways of understanding something. After the experience with such partnership, both students and faculty comment that there is no way back for them. Students have developed a new and different understanding of their learning and are more enthusiastic, more motivated to learn. They comment that learning, as a result of the partnership, has started to excite them as it turned into a dialogic and community building activity, creating a welcoming space for faculty and students to share freely what they thought and/or knew.

As the authors reflect on their experience, they point out several important shifts in their understanding of teaching and learning that seem transformational. They start to: a) understand learning as a dialogic experience that is divergent and difference driven; b) question the power structure and the hierarchical dynamics inherent in contemporary education system that make it difficult for students to be active learners; and c) value equality that comes with partnership and that enables all participants to have a voice in the decision making process.

This is a co-written piece by an educational developer and their legally blind daughter highlighting the barriers encountered in their educational experience. The piece includes a video to help exemplify the student’s experience of navigating the campus. This is both a powerful piece and an example that any institution could draw from and replicate with students on their campuses.

This is a short publication and tool to switch your classroom from deficit-based thinking to strength-based thinking around differences and disabilities. It invites students to identify differences and disabilities that can then turn into resources within the classroom community.

This publication is by neurodivergent students of various academic stages that, with a parent advocate, provide recommendations for higher education campuses to be more supportive and inclusive of neurodiverse identities.

This article uses the Disability Identity Development Scale (DIDS), which is a useful tool to understand identity in disability populations. This can be used by campuses to understand self-advocacy, disability advocacy, wellness, and inclusion. Dr. Forber-Pratt is a scholar to search for, as her work and her current role as Director of the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) are leading this work in many realms.

This article highlights the benefit of universal design for learning (UDL) framework for students with barriers, as well as a critical analysis about why implementation of UDL on its own can create additional barriers for access and inclusion.

This article connects the living experience of disabled students to the sense of community and inclusion on a college campus. There are specific insights to how community-building initiatives support these students and their college experience.

This article is a systematic review of work that examines the employability and transition to employability for graduates with disabilities. This topic is important for both neurodivergent and disabled populations, and the article covers how universities can facilitate successful matching and transitions.

This paper investigates identity formation and self-acceptance of students at an institution that serves neurodiverse students. They look at the connections between strength of identity with wellness and social justice advocacy around neurodiversity and disability.

This article highlights the need for intentional intersection of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and pedagogical practices to be inclusive of neurodiversity and universal design of learning practices. There are very concrete recommendations that can be implemented into any course and curriculum.

Past studies have examined current students’ perceptions of UR. These authors asked University of Delaware alumni about their participation in a number of campus activities, including UR. They were asked to rate whether their skills were enhanced because of their undergraduate degree on 32 items (e.g., write effectively, use statistics or math formulas, carry out research, maintain openness to new ideas, etc.). Some participants had participated in the university’s formal UR program (URP alumni), some stated they had engaged in UR but were not in the formal program (self-reported UR), and some had not engaged in UR (non-research alumni). URP alumni reported the most benefits from engaging in UR when compared to the other two groups, particularly for those who had completed a senior thesis. Both research groups stated that they were better able to carry out research than the non-research alumni group, with the highest scores from the URP alumni. URP alumni also scored higher than non-research alumni on other skills like intellectual curiosity, acquiring information independently, acting as a leader, and speaking effectively. For all alumni who engaged in research, those who participated for longer expressed greater benefit from the experience. UR had clear benefits for students as measured by their attitudes and self-reported skills.

While many studies on the benefits of UR have used self-report measures, this study used research skill performance in graduate school as its main measure. All students were first year graduate students in a STEM program. They wrote research proposals at the beginning and end of their first year of graduate school. Some of these students had engaged in UR as undergraduates and some had not. Two trained raters independently evaluated the proposals using a pre-established rubric (composed of four subscales) and inter-rater reliability was high. On the pre-proposal, students with UR experience outperformed those without UR experience on 3 of the 4 subscales (Data Presentation, Results, Total Score). On the post-proposal, students with UR also outperformed the other group on all parts of the rubric except Introduction and Context. The authors underscored the importance of UR for successful graduate school performance.

This article examines students’ experiences at a national undergraduate research conference in an effort to understand the development of graduate attributes, which are the framework of skills, attitudes, values and knowledge that graduates ought to have developed by the end of their degrees. The research takes a largely qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews to collect data. The authors explain that research on graduate attributes is relevant because there is a growing, international conversation about the purpose and characteristics of higher education, and that it is becoming ever more important for institutions to justify their social roles to students. This article focuses on a case study of 22 Geography, Earth and Environmental Science (GEES) graduates, and forms part of a larger study on interdisciplinary graduate attributes. Additionally, the authors split the attributes they analyzed into five categories: communication; research and inquiry skills; personal and intellectual autonomy; ethical, social, and professional understanding; and information literacy. Notably, the authors found that the conference provided a safe and supportive, while also challenging, context for students to develop these skills. This research highlights the importance of opportunities to develop such skills outside of formal disciplinary curricula.

This article offers an overview of existing higher education literature on and attitudes towards the development of graduate attributes, while introducing the papers which comprised a symposium on this research context. One issue the authors discuss is the extent of the connection between what academic staff set up for students in terms of skill development and how much students actually experience. The authors also note the importance of students accepting agency in the process of developing their own graduate attributes, rather than letting the system determine their identities. In their conclusion, the authors emphasize that regardless of inconsistencies in teaching and assessing graduate attributes, they play a valuable role in enhancing learning and connecting learning to work beyond students’ academic careers.

This article outlines the benefits and challenges of co-mentoring for students, faculty mentors, and institutions. The authors themselves have several years of experience co-mentoring undergraduate research projects, and offer insights they have gained through those projects. The authors present the co-mentoring model they have developed and a practical guide to co-mentoring, incorporating salient practices of mentoring undergraduate research. In their conclusion, the authors note that a lot of work needs to happen to foster co-mentoring relationships, but if that happens, they can be extremely beneficial to all involved parties.

Kinkead (2003) defined UR, explored its importance in the undergraduate experience, and identified key UR programs at various institutions. She noted that although the elite students (honors) are typically engaged in UR, at risk and underrepresented students also benefit from engaging in UR. Kinkead (2003) also discussed institutional UR issues like administration, funding, and resources.

This paper assesses the significance of participation in undergraduate research conferences on students’ attitudes and professional development, including the development of graduate attributes. The paper positions the undergraduate research conference as an authentic learning context using the theory of situated learning. The authors interviewed 90 undergraduate students at research conferences, and analyzed their responses using the Researcher Development Framework. Students reported that paper presentations, poster presentations, and the overall conference experience were particularly valuable to their skill development. Two of these skills were public engagement and communication, which the authors note are routinely sought after by employers. The authors also offered some suggestions to conference organizers in order to maximize skill development, including providing dedicated networking time within the program.

Students engaging in summer research completed the SURE (Survey of Undergraduate Research Experiences) and an altered version again 9 months later to see if their perceptions changed over time. Students reported similar gains on both surveys on items like understanding of the research process and readiness for more demanding research. Some participants engaged in summer research programs away from their home institutions. These students reported higher scores on clarifying their career path, science writing skills, and self-confidence. These students were also more likely to finish their research project in the summer when compared to students who stayed at their own campus. Minority students reported similar gains (if not greater gains) than other students. Further, a comparison of summer survey and follow-up survey results showed that student perceptions were stable over time. The author concluded with a discussion of methodological issues in UR research.

Lopatto (2010) described the benefits of UR and that standardized measures of those benefits can be accomplished using online assessments like the SURE survey. He also discussed the importance of a research community that can include peer mentors. The author also focused on the importance of integrating UR into the curriculum during the academic year. One potential model is CURE. He concluded with a discussion of future directions that includes interdisciplinary research.

In this paper, the authors argue that multi-mentoring can be applied in a global, interdisciplinary context to undergraduate research, and make the case for moving beyond the traditional one-to-one model as the default for inquiry into undergraduate research practices. The paper includes descriptions of relevant multi-mentoring and co-mentoring models, and offers suggestions for implementing multi- and co-mentoring practices to advance the undergraduate experience. In their conclusion, the authors note that institutions will need to assist faculty mentors in overcoming some of the challenges that accompany starting out with multi-mentoring.

The authors’ paper focused on UR in the sciences and included surveys of 15,000 students and mentors. They found that UR students are demographically diverse, are mostly juniors and seniors, have higher GPAs, and are more likely to want to obtain a higher degree than non-researchers. The authors described several positive outcomes of engaging in UR, including increased confidence and a clarified interest in STEM.

The authors studied the costs and benefits of engaging in UR. The student participants were engaged in a summer research program for rising seniors at one of four liberal arts institutions. Students were positive about their experiences. The largest reported gains were in confidence at working as a scientist. Students noted that their research and problem-solving skills were enhanced as was their disciplinary knowledge. Many students also discussed large improvement in their communication and lab skills. Students valued the time with their mentors as well as working with other colleagues. Several also gained clarity regarding their career pathway and felt better prepared for graduate school. The authors also discussed their plans for further research with these data.

In this article, the authors set out to identify likely future trends for undergraduate research (UR) in the next five to ten years. This research is important for the field because it can help faculty and administrators consider how they plan to allocate resources to ensure equitable and high-quality UR mentoring in the future. The authors conducted a literature review and interviews with faculty who have won awards for their commitment to and expertise of UR. Their two main findings are as follows. First, UR will likely see greater democratization in terms of greater access to opportunities for students from historically-underserved groups, students from nontraditional populations, and students with average academic performance histories. And second, mentor-mentee relationships are expected to strengthen across national and international borders as online communication capacities continue to advance. Curricula redesigns that incorporate inquiry-based learning may also facilitate greater participation in UR.

The authors conducted a literature review that focused on UR mentors’ practices. They wanted to know what effective mentorship looks like, because mentorship is the basis for successful UR. They described ten salient mentoring practices: strategic pre-planning; clear and well-scaffolded expectations; teach technical skills, method, and techniques; balance rigorous expectations with emotional support; build community among team members; dedicate time to one-on-one mentoring; increase student ownership over time; support student professional development; create opportunities for peer-mentoring; and guide students through dissemination.

These researchers used the Undergraduate Research Questionnaire (URQ) to assess the cognitive benefits of engaging in UR. The URQ’s subscales are Academic Mindset, Research Mindset, Research Methods, Faculty Support, and Peer Support. Biology and psychology students participated in the study. More research hours and lab course credits were related with higher enthusiasm for research. The frequency of faculty hours also mattered. More hours meeting with faculty was related to higher scores on Research Mindset and Research Methods. GPA also predicted scores on all five subscales, indicating that students with higher GPAs benefited more than those with lower GPAs. The authors conclude that we need to pay attention to student differences in UR.

This article investigates the benefits of attending a multidisciplinary research conference as an undergraduate researcher, focusing on student voices and self-perceptions of learning and skill development. The authors conducted 90 interviews with student conference participants over the course of three years, and found that the opportunity to present research in a setting outside of institutional or disciplinary contexts bolstered student researchers’ development of skills and confidence. The authors frame the undergraduate research conference as a threshold experience for self-authorship development, and thus such conferences are much more than just a space to present research findings. They also found that students who presented at conferences often reported a sense of unfinishedness, which challenges academics to consider ways to bring comparable experiences into the classroom, to provide space for students to develop knowledge through reciprocal dialogue.

This study examines the array of WIL opportunities offered and how they were reimagined and adapted to fit the needs of the people involved during the COVID-19 global health crisis. The flexible and innovative measures taken by the University of Cincinnati to continue and improve upon their offerings show that, for UC, student well-being and the health and success of faculty-scholars, administrators, and students is of the utmost importance to them. While it is still too early to have conclusive evidence on the success of the newer programs, the fact that we can see how well-adapted these programs can be shows that Work-Integrated Learning can survive and thrive in the most turbulent times.

This qualitative study defines and examines enabling factors in industry-based work-integrated learning (WIL) integration into technical-vocational education and training (TVET) teacher education in South African universities. The initiative is specifically designed for TVET lecturers because the WIL that schoolteachers would typically undertake in school placements is not relevant to preparing technical-vocational students for an industry workplace.

Through the implementation of a roundtable discussion of staff from various disciplines, Natalie Brown aimed to provide a space for University of Tasmania (UTAS) staff to recognize the potential and challenges of the practice of WIL. Understood as a way to provide students with an experience that integrates industry learning and academic coursework, WIL has been seen as beneficial to both students and industry members. While students can experience learning in context and enhance their employability, industry can participate in preparing graduates for a career. Yet, the absence of a general structure and collaboration in curriculum development allows gaps to remain within WIL opportunities.

This article focuses on how apprenticeships build relationships between community/technical colleges and the workforce. Cantor completed a research study that examines how effective cooperative apprenticeships are and how they have successful outcomes for linking employers and the community college system. This study was a 2-year case study in which Cantor studied multiple apprenticeship programs that produced interesting findings about collaboration and why employers and community colleges work with each other. According to Cantor, collaborations occur mostly when partnerships derive mutual exchanges, partnerships access monies and resources, partnerships can mediate conflicts, and contractual relationships exist (p. 53). Cantor notes that the intentionality of apprenticeships is really valuable and doesn’t just benefit the student but also the stakeholders involved with the apprenticeship. Cantor closes the article with suggestions and recommendations for developing and expanding successful apprenticeship programs.

This source provides a historical perspective of apprenticeships and then uses the Newport News Shipbuilding Company’s apprentice school as a case study, to look at the modern apprenticeship model and how students can benefit from these styles of programs. Christman wrote the article through the lens of a labor shortage in technical jobs within the engineering industry. The article provides an understanding of the apprenticeship system in the 21st century and recommends rethinking the current educational model to provide a complementary blend of college academic courses and career training with relevant work experiences.

The authors sought to determine how WIL can be integrated into students’ experiences of transitioning to college during their first year. Ten Subject Coordinators were interviewed, and each participant was asked to explain how their subject supported first-year students’ transition into college and then asked about WIL. They found that most important experiences fall into either an academic or social category. Results show that the academic experience supports the first transition, social experiences support the second, and WIL can and should be implemented in the third transition, a student’s transition into becoming a professional.

Through the review of student reflections after the completion of their WIL program, Hughes et al. conclude that these opportunities for application-based professional development provide graduates with “a range of transferable skills and informed industry perspectives” (277). Students emphasized in their reflections the ability to put their coursework and subject knowledge into practice, recognizing the skills they held and potential areas of improvement. The immersion allowed students to recognize what industry professionals expected of their employees and understand what is needed to be successful in their discipline. Further, WIL students reflected upon their career choice as a whole, utilizing program experience to confirm the professional path they had selected and to recognize the culture surrounding the industry.

Denise Jackson and Nicholas Wilton’s research determines and evaluates the impact of WIL on the development of undergraduate students’ career management competencies. As a result of their research, the authors claim that work placements and other variations of WIL positively impact the development of opportunity awareness, decision-making learning, and transition learning. The research in this study was conducted by gathering data through self-assessment with an online survey.

Jackson examines how work-integrated learning (WIL) enhances pre-professional identity in undergraduate students. Jackson finds that work placements positively affected the evolution of pre-professional identities. Students reported that personal reflection of their experience and appraisal were the most critical aspects of their WIL experience that strongly affected their pre-professional identities. Based on the triggers that were identified to progress pre-professional identities, Jackson also offers a variety of ways that practitioners can additionally enhance pre-professional identities in students. The author highlights that WIL allows students to understand expectations, attitudes, and responsibilities that are associated with their aspired profession, and progresses students professionally while they are still in college so that they are better prepared for their careers upon graduation.

Jackson defines WIL as “the practice of combining traditional academic study, or formal learning, with student exposure to the world-of-work in their chosen profession, has a core aim of better preparing undergraduates for entry into the workforce” (350). In this paper, Jackson explores the influence that the work placement design, content, and coordination had on the student’s development of employability skills. Facilitating WIL effectively, in a way that will benefit the future career of the student, requires careful planning to ensure that the student has the best possible experience while also learning from challenges. Jackson found that the students’ perceptions as to what was most important in their learning aligned with the principles for best practice for WIL design.

WIL is becoming foundational to higher education experiences across various Australian universities. In order to develop a breadth of industry partners and implementation of this practice in various disciplines, Kay et al. examine how institutions are seeking to abide by shifting work cultures and making WIL programs more adaptable. By reviewing current literature and exploring emerging models alongside university WIL facilitators through semi-structured interviews, the researchers seek to understand new approaches to WIL. This reflection on WIL emphasizes the efforts of institutions to expand opportunities for engaged learning experiences for students.

O’Banion’s article provides the history of workforce education in community colleges. Additionally, he highlights the issues and four current developments of workforce education. Workforce education is very much embedded in community colleges, as many higher education leaders indicate that workforce education may be the primary purpose of a student even attending college, and especially in community college. O’Banion notes that vocational education became very prevalent in 2003, and has evolved through apprenticeship training, trade school, and career and technical education for the past one hundred years.

Wanting to learn more about how students in WIL placements felt about their employability and application of coursework once completing their program, Papkonstantinou and Rayner sought to gauge student perspectives through various surveys. Utilizing a Likert scale, a sample of Monash University students reflected upon their WIL experience and the obtained skills and value immediately after completing their placement through the survey, then completing a follow-up at least six months after.

The authors report on a survey of students and alumni, examining their “rhetorical training”—their writing knowledge and experiences across multiple courses, campus employment, and workplace contexts. The survey asked participants to identify their most often written genres and their most valued type of writing, the rhetorical situations in which they compose their most valued genre, and the writing processes they have developed. The authors examined the multiple sources of rhetorical training that participants believe prepared them to write their most valued genre. Multiple rhetorical training experiences prepare writers for the writing they value, and both students and alumni describe robust writing processes and appreciate feedback from others. Yet alumni continue to express challenges adapting writing for new audiences and genres.

Abstract from the authors/article:

This article explores ways that the field of rhetoric and writing studies can benefit from intentional engagement with work-integrated learning (WIL) research and pedagogy in the context of transfer research. Specifically, the article discusses: (1) redesigning writing internship pedagogies to align with WIL learning and curriculum theories and practices; (2) revisiting threshold concepts of writing by accounting for knowledge, theories, and practices that are central to epistemological participation in a variety of professional writing careers; (3) reconsidering notions of vocation to emphasize the ways writers’ personal epistemologies and social trajectories interact with the purposes, aims, and values of academic and workplace contexts; and (4) reconceptualizing writing major curricula in relation to the conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and dispositions of expert writers in a range of professional contexts. In short, we argue that intentional engagement with WIL can enrich work on writing transfer and the field of rhetoric and writing studies as a whole. In addition to our theoretical discussion of the value of engaging with WIL frameworks in writing studies, we introduce our multi-institutional, transnational study of how WIL affects diverse populations of undergraduate students’ recursive transfer of writing knowledge and practices as an example of the kind of generative research on writing transfer and WIL that we are encouraging writing transfer researchers to take up.

From the published abstract: “This article explores ways that work-integrated learning (WIL) scholarship and the field of writing studies can benefit from intentional engagement in the context of transfer research. This conceptual paper foregrounds writing in WIL contexts, introduces writing transfer and its relationship to writing in WIL contexts, discusses conceptual
overlaps of writing transfer research and WIL, and suggests what writing transfer can mean for WIL practitioners. Overall, we argue that intentional engagement with writing transfer can enrich both WIL research and pedagogy.”

Drawing on surveys, interviews, and maps collected from students at six institutions, this 2019-2021 research seminar team explores student writing lives within course-based, self-motivated, civic, internship, co-curricular, work-based, and other “spheres” of writing. Based on their analysis of students’ writing lives within and across these spheres, the authors advocate re-envisioning writing across the curriculum through a lifewide lens and fostering students’ agency as they continue to develop their lifewide writerly identities.

The authors report on a survey of students and alumni, examining their “rhetorical training”—their writing knowledge and experiences across multiple courses, campus employment, and workplace contexts. The survey asked participants to identify their most often written genres and their most valued type of writing, the rhetorical situations in which they compose their most valued genre, and the writing processes they have developed. The authors examined the multiple sources of rhetorical training that participants believe prepared them to write their most valued genre. Multiple rhetorical training experiences prepare writers for the writing they value, and both students and alumni describe robust writing processes and appreciate feedback from others. Yet alumni continue to express challenges adapting writing for new audiences and genres.

Abstract from the authors/article:

This article explores ways that the field of rhetoric and writing studies can benefit from intentional engagement with work-integrated learning (WIL) research and pedagogy in the context of transfer research. Specifically, the article discusses: (1) redesigning writing internship pedagogies to align with WIL learning and curriculum theories and practices; (2) revisiting threshold concepts of writing by accounting for knowledge, theories, and practices that are central to epistemological participation in a variety of professional writing careers; (3) reconsidering notions of vocation to emphasize the ways writers’ personal epistemologies and social trajectories interact with the purposes, aims, and values of academic and workplace contexts; and (4) reconceptualizing writing major curricula in relation to the conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and dispositions of expert writers in a range of professional contexts. In short, we argue that intentional engagement with WIL can enrich work on writing transfer and the field of rhetoric and writing studies as a whole. In addition to our theoretical discussion of the value of engaging with WIL frameworks in writing studies, we introduce our multi-institutional, transnational study of how WIL affects diverse populations of undergraduate students’ recursive transfer of writing knowledge and practices as an example of the kind of generative research on writing transfer and WIL that we are encouraging writing transfer researchers to take up.

From the published abstract: “This article explores ways that work-integrated learning (WIL) scholarship and the field of writing studies can benefit from intentional engagement in the context of transfer research. This conceptual paper foregrounds writing in WIL contexts, introduces writing transfer and its relationship to writing in WIL contexts, discusses conceptual
overlaps of writing transfer research and WIL, and suggests what writing transfer can mean for WIL practitioners. Overall, we argue that intentional engagement with writing transfer can enrich both WIL research and pedagogy.”

Drawing on surveys, interviews, and maps collected from students at six institutions, this 2019-2021 research seminar team explores student writing lives within course-based, self-motivated, civic, internship, co-curricular, work-based, and other “spheres” of writing. Based on their analysis of students’ writing lives within and across these spheres, the authors advocate re-envisioning writing across the curriculum through a lifewide lens and fostering students’ agency as they continue to develop their lifewide writerly identities.