Do social interactions and project ownership promote student success?

by Dr. Mallory White -- 

I teach an introductory animal science course with mostly first-year students at Virginia Western Community College (VWCC), and some students have never given a formal individual presentation. In previous years, students would fail to do a presentation because it was too intimidating. Retention rates for these students dropped, and some did not return the next semester. To increase student success rates for final presentation projects, I implemented two strategies: social interaction and student ownership.


First, social interactions are an important strategy to promote success in community college students.  Many develop support networks that can span their entire college career (Karp, 2016). Rather than assigning individual presentations, students worked in groups of 3 to 4. To help address pitfalls related to group presentations, such as unequal contribution and social loafing, up to 20% of their grade was based on peer evaluation, which motivated individuals to contribute.

Second, I allowed students to take more ownership of the presentation. Student ownership refers to the personal buy-in a student feels towards the project and can increase retention and motivation (Hanauer et al., 2017). They had the freedom and an entire class period to develop 40% of the grading rubric. This new experience was a large task, so I guided them through the process. They understood I’d have to approve the final version.

We discussed project expectations through an informal question-answer session about qualities of good vs bad presentations. I would pose a question, give them 3 minutes to individually reflect and record answers on scrap paper, and then consolidate their thoughts on a whiteboard. To include everyone, I was deliberate about asking every single student if they had a comment to add that wasn’t already written. You can see an example of student comments in Figure 1. After our discussion, they distilled the entire conversation into a rubric with four key points to create the rubric (Figure 2).

On presentation day, I was not disappointed. All groups gave higher quality presentations compared to those from previous semesters. I did not see the usual pitfalls of a group presentation—it was clear everyone had contributed equally, and each student knew their topic well. For additional evidence, I surveyed their thoughts on using social interactions and student ownership through rubric creation. Most students reported feelings of ownership and motivation after participating in the process (Figure 3).

I challenge you to incorporate student ownership and social interaction in your coursework to increase student success. Check out Edutopia and Teach Hub for more information and ideas. To learn more about how our agriculture class implemented these strategies at VWCC, email mwhite@virginiawestern.edu. 

References:

Hanauer, D. I., Frederick, J., Fotinakes, B., & Strobel, S. A. (2012). Linguistic Analysis of Project ownership for undergraduate research experiences. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 11(4), 378–385. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.12-04-0043

Kiser, S. (2021). Tools to promote student ownership of learning. TeachHUB. Retrieved December 21, 2022, from https://www.teachhub.com/classroom-management/2021/06/tools-to-promote-student-ownership-of-learning/

Simms, A., & Nichols, T. (2014). Social loafing: A review of the literature. Journal of Management, 15(1), 58-67. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285636458_Social_loafing_A_review_of_the_literature


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