Higher Education Systems
Students’ learning mindsets can influence their decisions to pursue higher education and their performance and persistence once they get there. This has important implications for upward mobility since, in the United States, college graduates earn 75% more in wages than individuals with only a high school diploma.
Motivate Lab’s work in higher education is focused on supporting students, particularly traditionally underrepresented students, succeed on the postsecondary educational path that they have chosen. We collaborate directly with 4-year and 2-year institutions and also partner with system-level leaders to identify high leverage areas to bolster student and faculty learning mindsets. Our work in higher education includes randomized-controlled trials testing learning mindset interventions, prototyping and pilot testing interventions, professional development, institutional audits, and advising services.
THE COLLEGE SYSTEM OF TENNESSEE (TBR)
The College System of Tennessee (TBR) governs all thirteen community colleges and 27 technical colleges within the state of Tennessee, serving more than 100,000 students each year. Since the beginning of Motivate Lab’s partnership with TBR, we have worked to understand the root of Tennessee students’ motivation and barriers to success. We’ve spoken with advisors at two Advising Academies, listened to faculty and staff at the 2017, 2018, and November 2019 regional High Impact Practice drive ins, delivered a keynote presentation at the Pedagogy with Purpose Academy, and held a Mindset Summit in Nashville that was attended by over a dozen TBR institutions. We have held focus groups and meetings at three different pilot institutions across the state, and led a design charrette to involve stakeholders in our research process.
Currently, Motivate Lab is working with three community colleges to pilot interventions in co-requisite math and first year experience classes, as well as training students at five institutions to facilitate focus groups that center around student belonging. Together, we’re infusing classrooms with purpose and value and encouraging students to connect their personal values to their education.
OUR WORK ACROSS TENNESSEE:
THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM OF GEORGIA (USG)
The University System of Georgia (USG) governs all 26 four-year institutions within the state of Georgia, serving more than 318,000 students each year. Our partnership was established in 2017, and we are currently collecting data from students and faculty to understand the motivational culture in four-year institutions. Since the beginning of our partnership, we have attended two Advising Academies, consulted with USG institutions at the 2017 Momentum Summit, led USG institutions in understanding learning mindsets at the 2017 Mindset Summit, and visited 6 different USG institutions’ campuses.
Through this partnership and based on insights from our data, we will co-create a plan to infuse mindset-supportive practices into Georgia's higher education system at the student, instructional, curricular, institutional, and policy levels.
OUR WORK ACROSS GEORGIA:
BUILD CONNECTIONS
Students often struggle to understand the value of what they are learning. This is especially true for students who are at-risk for under-performance.
Prior field experiments show that utility value interventions can boost motivation and performance for students at risk of under-performance. Based on these findings, we have partnered with the Character Lab to develop a teacher-led activity aimed at helping them increase students’ perceptions of the value of their coursework.
Learn more about Build Connections in this short video, read our Executive Summary, or view the full resource here.
VALENCIA COLLEGE & MOTIVATE LAB
At a large community college system in central Florida, 40% of the more than 20,000 students who take developmental math each year don't pass. Similar patterns are found in community colleges across the U.S.
While teaching students about study skills and time management is important, it’s also important to foster students’ beliefs that they’re able and want to succeed. How can we help students believe they can bounce back from academic challenges and persevere through these critical math courses?
We are partnering with math faculty to test whether brief, in-class activities combining growth mindset and utility value interventions can boost students’ motivation and math performance. Over 12,000 students have been part of the study since 2015.
Currently, we are adapting and improving our interventions based on insights gained through initial mixed methods analyses from this study. We also plan to explore students' longitudinal outcomes, such as GPA, major path, and career trajectories.
Learn more about the Valencia Project here.
THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA & MOTIVATE LAB
White students and underrepresented minority (URM) students show an equal level of interest in STEM careers when they enter college, but URM students encounter poorly understood barriers to successfully completing STEM degrees.
At the University of Virginia (UVA), there is a 45-point differential in the percentage of white and African American students graduating with at least a 3.0 GPA in the School of Engineering and Applied Science (85% versus 40%, respectively). Similar outcome differentials nationwide severely threaten America's STEM workforce readiness and future economic security.
The Crafting Success for Underrepresented Scientists and Engineers project seeks to identify effective ways to close the achievement gap for underrepresented students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields at UVA. In this project we are collaborating with the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Provost's Office.