Nashville State — Motivate lab

Collaboration: Motivate Lab and Nashville state community college (NSCC)

Foundation of Our Partnership

As part of the TBR network of colleges, we surveyed Nashville State Community College first time freshman students in Fall 2017 and Fall 2018. In Fall 2018, we visited the NSCC campus, where we met with faculty and administrators, conducted focus groups, and observed classes. Combining these qualitative data with the quantitative survey data we’d collected, we created a comprehensive report for NSCC summarizing the state of student learning mindsets on their campus. In that report, we identified first year experience courses (NSCC 1010) as a high leverage point, and purpose and relevance as a key learning mindset to support in those courses.

Connecting Values and Education

In Fall 2018, we implemented a relevance affirmation intervention in NSCC 1010 courses. Relevance affirmation interventions ask students to reflect on their personally held values and then connect those values to some aspect of their educational experience. In this case, their experience as a NSCC student. We found that students struggled to make these connections, and identified instructors as a critical resource for better scaffolding students to complete this task. In close collaboration with NSCC 1010 faculty, we developed a full lesson plan on value for college, defining what we mean by values, guiding students in reflecting on their own values, facilitating class conversation, and identifying the criteria for a strong essay. Instructors implemented the lesson plan in Spring 2019, Fall 2019, and are currently implementing it in Spring 2020 courses. With each round of implementation, we have solicited faculty feedback and made revisions and improvements in collaboration with our partners.

Early Results

Combining the lesson plan with the reflection activity helped students in the process of connecting their personally held values to their experience in college and increased their sense of instructor caring. Specifically:

In Fall 2018, 32% of students made 0 connections between their values and college.
In Spring 2019, that number decreased to only 5% of students.
In Fall 2018, 24% of students made 2 or 3 connections. In Spring 2019, that number increased to 76%.
Average word count increased from 89 words to 160 words.
On a scale from 1-6, with 1 representing strongly disagree and 6 representing strongly agree, there was a 1 point increase in students’ sense that their instructor cared about them for the students who received the lesson plan and a 0.2 point decrease for students in the control group.

want to learn more?

If you’re interested in receiving more information on the project, relevance affirmation, or our collaboration with Nashville State, email Megan Moran, Project Manager.