The Benefits of Student Autonomy
What I sometimes call the “great Millian hope” is that freedom, knowledge, and happiness are positively correlated. A new study conducted by a philosopher and a psychologist provide some reasons to think that, in the college classroom at least, the hope can be realized. – In “Choosing to learn: The importance of student autonomy in higher education“, published yesterday at Science Advances, Simon Cullen and Daniel Oppenheimer (both at Carnegie Mellon University) report on a pair of studies they conducted about college student autonomy. In one, the students were given the choice of whether to have their particular class attendance mandatory and factored into their overall course grade. In the other, they gave students the option to opt out of some more challenging work. From the abstract of their paper: We demonstrate how two autonomy-supportive policies effectively increase classroom attendance and subject mastery. First, in a randomized controlled field study, we explored the effect of allowing students to choose whether to make their attendance mandatory (i.e., a component of their course grades). We found that nearly all students used the opportunity as a pre-commitment device and were subsequently more likely to attend class than were students whose attendance had been mandated. Second, in a multi-year cohort study, we explored the effect of allowing students to opt out of a challenging, high-effort assessment stream, finding that students given greater autonomy invested more effort into their assignments and attained greater proficiency with the material. And from the paper itself: Allowing students to commit to mandatory attendance and to choose more rigorous assignments led them to attend class more reliably, to put more effort into their assignments, and to understand the material better. Further, most students who chose mandatory attendance were happy with their choice (10% were not). You should check out the full paper for details on their studies and findings. Cullen and Oppenheimer think that the benefits of student autonomy probably apply beyond the domains in which they tested it. They write: While we have focused on attendance and assessment, similar choice architectures can be applied to many other course elements. For any mandatory course element, it is worth considering whether making it optional-mandatory might serve students better. They acknowledge that faculty..
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"content": "The Benefits of Student Autonomy\n\nWhat I sometimes call the “great Millian hope” is that freedom, knowledge, and happiness are positively correlated. A new study conducted by a philosopher and a psychologist provide some reasons to think that, in the college classroom at least, the hope can be realized. – In “Choosing to learn: The importance of student autonomy in higher education“, published yesterday at Science Advances, Simon Cullen and Daniel Oppenheimer (both at Carnegie Mellon University) report on a pair of studies they conducted about college student autonomy. In one, the students were given the choice of whether to have their particular class attendance mandatory and factored into their overall course grade. In the other, they gave students the option to opt out of some more challenging work. From the abstract of their paper: We demonstrate how two autonomy-supportive policies effectively increase classroom attendance and subject mastery. First, in a randomized controlled field study, we explored the effect of allowing students to choose whether to make their attendance mandatory (i.e., a component of their course grades). We found that nearly all students used the opportunity as a pre-commitment device and were subsequently more likely to attend class than were students whose attendance had been mandated. Second, in a multi-year cohort study, we explored the effect of allowing students to opt out of a challenging, high-effort assessment stream, finding that students given greater autonomy invested more effort into their assignments and attained greater proficiency with the material. And from the paper itself: Allowing students to commit to mandatory attendance and to choose more rigorous assignments led them to attend class more reliably, to put more effort into their assignments, and to understand the material better. Further, most students who chose mandatory attendance were happy with their choice (10% were not). You should check out the full paper for details on their studies and findings. Cullen and Oppenheimer think that the benefits of student autonomy probably apply beyond the domains in which they tested it. They write: While we have focused on attendance and assessment, similar choice architectures can be applied to many other course elements. For any mandatory course element, it is worth considering whether making it optional-mandatory might serve students better. They acknowledge that faculty..\nThe post https://dailynous.com/2024/07/18/the-benefits-of-student-autonomy/\n.\n\nhttps://dailynous.com/2024/07/18/the-benefits-of-student-autonomy/",
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