My research explores academic access in postsecondary education and develops evidence-based strategies to increase the success of underrepresented student populations in college. I focus on filling the gap between scholarship that analyzes academic performance problems and proposed solutions to increase student outcomes. Access programs often operate at the confluence of academic affairs, student affairs, and enrollment management. This busy intersection of interests and needs has generated considerable turbulence for these programs. My multidisciplinary academic preparation and work experiences in academic affairs, student affairs, and enrollment management afford me unique tools for this investigation.
My highest priority is building conversations that span the practitioner, researcher, and theoretician segments within the education and public policy communities. Too often these segments operate in intellectual silos, separated from one another. One element of my work disseminates best practices to the practitioners and policy makers through publications, training materials, conference presentations, training workshops, and use of new media delivery systems such as blog pages, web pages, and podcasting. Another element engages in conversation with theoreticians and researchers of the real-world needs of the practitioners and the students. This translation work among these communities is essential for moving forward with a more successful approach for improving student achievement.
We do not need to "reinvent the wheel" regarding best education practices. Instead, we must effectively communicate what already exists to others. I welcome your thoughts and comments about my work and would enjoy the opportunity to collaborate. Take care, David Arendale (arendale@umn.edu; http://Arendale.org)
Intersection of my Personal Faith with my Professional Life
For too much of my life, my faith as a Christ-follower was a stealth identity compared to professional life as an educator. However, I found intersections of my faith with my roles as a <researcher and knowledge disseminator>, <public service provider>, and <teacher>. Being a professional can be a solitary life. Much responsibility is on the educator for their work performance. Life as an educator was more of a lifestyle than a predictable job. The following Bible verse reminded me that I was responsible for my work, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” Colossians 3:23). Following is a description of those three parts of my life.
I was clear in my college classes and with my colleagues about being a Christ-follower rather than a Christian. An unfortunate growing trend is the word “Christian” having negative baggage affixed to it in the eyes of students and young adults. Too many think “Christians” are negative, overly judgmental about others, and a killjoy about life. Many think Christians automatically reject gay, bisexual, or transgender people. Some of my best colleagues and friends are gay. For purposes of this brief statement, I will not try to unpack those ideas other than to say I am a “Christ-follower”, literally someone who seeks to emulate the life of Jesus. Rather than focusing on others, I concern myself with my relationship with God. My issues are enough for me to deal with. The church that I attend welcomes everyone to worship and learn. I participate in the community outreach activities of our church to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and provide ministries for those in need. The first step toward long-lasting change in society is for people to have a changed heart and to become a Christ-follower. With change on the inside, they are more likely to behave differently towards others and work to achieve social justice for everyone. Inner freedom is the first step to a free society.
Intersection with <Research and Dissemination>
I have always been curious about things. As a youth, I disassembled items and then tried to put them back together again. Sometimes, I had a few parts left over at the end of the process. Many faculty members with graduate degrees in history spend most of their research on narrowly focused topics in history. It is common for them to focus on sharing what they learn through traditional print journals and books. While I was fascinated by many topics in history (especially the ancient Roman Empire and World War Two), I had little interest in pursuing this traditional path for historians.
My background helped to define my research interests. I was the first in my family to attend college, making me a “first-generation college student”. While my parents warmly supported my desire to attend college, they could offer me little advice or provide a role model to emulate. My parents did cultivate me to be goal-oriented, determined, hard-working, and disciplined. I found my undergraduate college experience challenging. As a result, I developed friendships with fellow students who shared my desire to earn high grades by studying together. My preferred ways of learning matched up well with the traditional classroom learning environment in the 1970s composed of lectures (some professors read from a script), no interactive classroom activities, no discussion sessions, and assigned readings without study guides. If there was a college learning center, I was not aware of it.
My personal experience as a first-generation college student led me to learn more about the challenges that similar students faced in college. I wanted to know more about support systems that could help similar students. This passion was partially influenced by a verse in the Bible from the Book of Proverbs 31:8-9, “Open your mouth for the mute and for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” While I had successfully navigated the college experience, I learned how half of the students who enroll in college never finish it. While a college education is not necessary for success in life, it provides many advantages and opportunities.
Along with this desire to research first-gen, historically underrepresented, and other marginalized students, I also wanted to share what I had learned with others. In addition to publishing through journal articles and books, I chose many other venues. To attract more readers, I posted my publications to online document repositories like my university library, Academia.edu, Researchgate.net, ERIC, and my <personal website>. My website has an extensive collection of my publications, draft reports, and more. I also disseminate my scholarship through <social media channels> such as podcasting, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
However, all this dissemination can be an isolated activity for me. The personal connection between my students and me was essential for much of my work. But, I needed a personal connection and collaboration with fellow educators and the general public with whom I wanted to share what I had learned. This desire provides a bridge to the final section of my faith statement, my passion for public service.
Research Projects
I employ an engaged scholarship model that collaborates with community agencies and professional groups to solve student success issues. These groups serve both as my research partners and as venues for the research studies. Engaged scholarship requires a dynamic research focus that changes through interactions between testing of hypothesizes and the needs expressed by potential consumers of the scholarship. This requires not only my observation, but also serving as an agent within the community.
Five inter-related research projects drive my research, with each providing a different context for understanding and improving secondary and postsecondary student success. It is probably unusual to have so many research projects, but my life experiences and natural curiosity has led me down these five paths.
Research Project 1: Academic Access, Developmental Education, Equity Programs, and Learning Assistance
· Goal: Identify effective practices and approaches for postsecondary academic access programs, developmental education, and learning assistance to increase access, academic success, and persistence towards graduation. This includes bridge programs that include TRIO among other equity programs. Identification, validation, and dissemination of best practices is a goal for students who are first-generation college students, historically-underrepresented, economically-disadvantaged, and who possess little to no social capital to support success in secondary and postsecondary education.
· Hypothesis: Best practices of postsecondary developmental education, learning enrichment, and learning assistance increase access, academic success, and persistence towards graduation.
· The individual publications, media projects, and other related materials are available at https://z.umn.edu/project-1
Research Project 2: History Curriculum and Simulations
· Goal: Create an engaging curriculum through use of history simulations to help students directly experience the roles and historical context of significant events. New perspectives are developed when students are placed into roles who make decisions and receive consequences for their actions.
· Hypothesis: Instructors can implement activities and approaches within their classes to increase student academic success and engagement.
· The individual publications, media projects, and other related materials are available at https://z.umn.edu/project-2
Research Project 3: Learning Technologies
· Goal: Identify learning technologies that can engage students, provide alternative ways of demonstrating attainment of learning objectives, and increase student achievement and motivation.
· Hypothesis: Some emerging learning technologies effectively increase achievement, engagement, and motivation for learning.
· The individual publications, media projects, and other related materials are available at https://z.umn.edu/project-3
Research Project 4: Postsecondary Peer Cooperative Learning Programs
· Goal: The project focuses on the academic, personal, and professional development of students involved with postsecondary peer academic support groups. I focus both on the student participants as well as the student paraprofessionals that facilitate these groups regarding outcomes.
· Hypothesis: Students benefit academically, personally, and professionally due to their involvement in these academic support programs. The participating students and the students that serve as small group facilitators.
· The individual publications, media projects, and other related materials are available at https://z.umn.edu/project-4
Research Project 5: Universal Design for Learning to Improve Access and Success of Students in First-Year Courses
· Goal: Develop research-based practices that classroom instructors can implement to widen access for students in their first-year courses employing principles from Universal Design for Learning. Instructors can implement no-cost and low-cost activities and approaches within their courses. It is essential for instructors to embed these practices within their courses since other campus resources are limited to support student academic success and persistence towards graduation.
· Hypothesis: Instructors can implement activities and approaches within their classes to increase student academic success and persistence towards graduation.
· The individual publications, media projects, and other related materials are available at https://z.umn.edu/project-5
Dissemination of My Scholarship
I use a variety of venues to share my scholarship with others: journal or book publishers, self-publishing, conference keynotes and presentations, workshops and webinars, online document depositories, websites, social media (YouTube, podcasting, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn), and experimenting with audiobooks and eBooks.
Most of my publications have been published through journals or book publishers related to my five research projects. While it is difficult to estimate the number of readers, Google Scholar has tracked publications that have cited one or more of my publications in their publication. As of May 1, 2022, this number has nearly reached 2,800. In recent years, approximately 100 publications cite my scholarship. Of these citations, nearly twenty percent are by authors or publishers outside the U.S.
My publications are posted to online document depositories. These include the University of Minnesota Digital Conservatory, Academia.edu, Researchgate.org, the Department of Education ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), and my personal website (arendale.org). My website has nearly 10,000 visitors annually with educators from more than 50 countries. According to Google, some of my scholarship posted online appear high in searches. For example, my definition for “best education practices” appeared #6 in a list of 11.9 billion web pages. My curriculum for history simulations appeared #24 in a list of 2.8 billion web pages.
I have been fortunate that the institutions for which I was worked have been generous with travel budgets for presenting at conferences. So far, I have been a keynote speaker, conference presenters, workshop leaders, and webinar facilitator over 400 times for conferences in Australia, Mexico, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States. For example, I facilitated workshops to train educators to implement the Supplemental Instruction student retention program. These workshops included faculty and staff from 400 colleges in the U.S. and other countries.
Social media has also been a venue for disseminating scholarship. I use blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, podcasting, and Twitter to provide links to my publications, discuss the research findings, and build a community to engage in scholarly conversations. I currently host five podcasts. The oldest one started in 2005 as a joint project with students in my global history course. The combined number of downloads of the episodes for all my podcasts is approximately two million. I host seven podcast channels where I post YouTube videos and share content created by others. I use this approach to scholarship dissemination since I have learned that educators in particular and the general public learn though different modalities. Reliance upon only publishing scholarship in a journal can lock out many educators from ever reading it. Far too many journals do not make their contents available through online searches. The costs of journal subscriptions are ever increasing. I am experimenting with audiobooks and eBooks. I plan to disseminate my scholarship through those venues without cost. I have already taken the first step by using podcasts to share. It is a complicated process to share through social media, but an important one to make knowledge more widely available on a global basis. I read the reports through my website, Academia.edu and Google Citations for the global readership. I do not take pride in those reports. It is humbling to know the scope of readership. It encourages me to be careful with what I produce and to keep up the work. It has encouraged me to become more involved with joint writing ventures with colleagues of color. That involvement is described below.
Engaged Scholarship with Community Partners
I deeply embrace public engagement as part of my responsibility as a University faculty member to collaborate with the community in creating and disseminating new scholarship. The new model of public engagement empowers the community to shape our research agenda and thus in turn enabling scholarship to more quickly test and implement new evidence-based practices that are responsive to real-time needs. The community is more than just a learning laboratory in which I study, it is an active partner that helps to guide and inspire me.
My longest working relationship is with the Association of Minnesota Community and Technical College Counselors which is composed of members throughout the 40 institutions within the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system. A practical product for the association has been the creation of research-based training materials for improving student persistence on their campuses. Since arriving in 2002, I have worked with the Twin Cities TRiO Association which has afforded a venue to test and refine training materials for student study group leaders in the Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) program that is being pilot tested at the University and other institutions in Minnesota.
Long-Term Research and Dissemination
It is clear that solutions to important issues of access and student success will require a multidisciplinary approach with sustained effort. I have cultivated working relationships with national leaders to explore deeper ties of traditional academic access approaches with culture, cognition, and motivation. These connections are essential to continue and expand my investigations and collaborations with others. Following are three collaborations that involve teams of different races working together to solve vexing issues in education.
The Educational Opportunity Association created the Best Education Practices Clearinghouse in 2010. https://besteducationpractices.org I worked with a team to create the Clearinghouse and recruit an external panel of experts to evaluate submissions to it. It contains evidence-based practices that increase secondary and postsecondary access and college student graduation rates. The work of the Clearinghouse is (a) identification of potential practices, (b) validation that such practices actually contribute to higher student outcomes through research and evaluation studies, and (c) dissemination of the practices through Web-delivered information (documents, training materials, video, podcasts, and webinars) and national training workshops. On a monthly basis, nearly 1,000 educators visit the website from more than 50 countries. We also host webinars and the video recordings of them are available through the website.
In 2015, a writing group that I had been involved for nearly a quarter-century decided to formalize our writing projects. We had previously worked under the National Association for Developmental Education to create best practices for peer learning programs, developmental-level courses, tutoring programs, and the teaching/learning process. Our new name is the Alliance for Postsecondary Academic Support Programs. We will be publishing our work with the National College Learning Centers Association.
In the fall of 2020, I recruited a group of college educators who were people of color to create a research and writing group. I had come to the conclusion that I needed to create multi-racial writing groups for upcoming publications and research projects. Our focus is the intersection of race and social justice with learning assistance and developmental education. The group is named Colleagues of Color for Social Justice. www.socialjustice.work This national group swelled to more than 50 members. We are currently working on a dozen publications and media projects. So far, we have completed an antiracism glossary for education and life and a guide to policies and practices for antiracist peer study groups.
Summary
My research explores academic access in postsecondary education and develops evidence-based strategies to increase the success of underrepresented student populations in college. Using an engaged scholarship approach requires testing and implementation of the scholarly findings with community partners. This provides an essential grounding for the scholarship and positions it for more effective dissemination and influence. This research seeks to illuminate more fully this area which exists at the crossroads of major forces within postsecondary education.