Tag: real-world learning

Beyond Breakout Rooms: Deepening Learning with Collaborative Whiteboards – Faculty Focus
Distance learning is here to stay. Both students and educators were required to quickly pivot to distance platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic without adequate preparation or training (Basilotta-Gomez-Pablos et al. 2022). Many programs elected to keep distance and hybrid learning options for students, with excellent reason. These platforms improve convenience, access, and inclusivity, gaining fast traction. Now, many institutions have an opportunity, or arguably a responsibility, to provide educators with the support needed to be successful while teaching in distance modalities; concurrently, educators are responsible for seeking resources and training to help them leverage technologies to thrive in this distance space (Crompton and Sykora 2021).

The use of technology in distance platforms is important; educators need to navigate a learning platform but don’t necessarily need to become digital technology experts (Crompton and Sykora 2021). So, what is possibly most important? Finding tools that are simple to use and have a high impact. Many educators still report that they do not feel equipped to apply new technologies, although today’s adult learners prefer novel and engaging technology tools (Borte, Nesje, and Lillejord 2023). Therefore, us educators should discuss, introduce, and share these technologies as we discover them to figure this out as a team.

In this article, we will explore how collaborative technologies, specifically collaborative whiteboards, can help bring life to adult learning theories in synchronous learning classrooms.

Students in distance learning platforms often have fewer opportunities to work collaboratively, outside of a break-out-room model, providing challenges for meaningfully applying adult learning theories. Theoretically speaking, collaboration and social engagement are essential components of adult learning, specifically to create a sense of community with learners, which can be more challenging in distance learning classes (Barbetta 2023; Shea, Richardson, and Swan 2022). Additionally, engaging students in more cognitively demanding ways, such as creating, analyzing, or developing information, is especially important to achieve higher-level learning outcomes (Vargas et al. 2024). Therefore, if we can strategically find ways to use digital technologies grounded in adult learning theory, we can strengthen the learning experience, enhance learning outcomes, and bridge the gap between theory and content delivery.

Many digital technologies and platforms exist and are met with opportunities and challenges. Time constraints and cost are common barriers (Borte, Nesje, and Lillejord 2023); therefore, free tools with relatively low preparation are prioritized. The Microsoft Collaborative Whiteboard app, which can be integrated within a Microsoft Teams Meeting space as a screen share, allows students to edit a document or template for more naturalistic collaborations simultaneously. Because it can be integrated into the meeting space, students do not need to download an app, leave the meeting, or switch to a new browser to participate. The form can be prepared before a lesson to allow instructors flexibility in their role and level of scaffolding.

Real-World Examples

A collaborative whiteboard can be applied to various programs, topic areas, or overall aims, and it may also be used as a formative assessment of content delivery. The examples included in this article were used in two separate synchronous occupational therapy courses, one focused on a neuroscience recap of the cranial nerves and one on adapting a therapeutic activity for different levels of traumatic brain injury rehabilitation. Pay special attention to the variance between the levels of learning targeted and how this is reflected in the collaborative efforts of the students.

Basic-level Whiteboard

This synchronous whiteboard was used at the beginning of the class session to serve as a formative assessment of the understanding of basic concepts of content. The 24 students were asked to match the function’s cranial nerve name, number, and a representative emoji. This was a more simplistic board that allowed students to reorganize the information presented at a basic knowledge-attainment level collaboratively. It was helpful as a formative assessment to adapt the rest of the lesson according to the students’ level of understanding, and their pace and accuracy of completion. In this case, the students moved their pointers to arrange the information simultaneously, with only a few attempts to collaborate verbally. This activity provided a collaborative effort to complete a joint, goal-oriented task.

Before

After

Advanced-level Whiteboard

The synchronous whiteboard in this example was created for a higher level of application-based learning, where 11 students were asked to alter components of an occupation and treatment modality, baking cookies, to apply to each unique level of traumatic brain injury recovery. This activity demanded greater levels of problem-solving and, therefore, greater levels of collaboration within the class. Many discussions and opportunities for problem-solving and aims for collective approval arose. To close the learning activity, I led a group debrief to discuss each level, provided immediate feedback, and facilitated discussions transferable to other real-world applications. In this example, the directions are in the middle, and the students filled in the sticky notes around the perimeter.

Make it Meaningful

We need buy-in and motivation in higher education. This begins with identifying real-world challenges and ends with reflection. The strategic use of digital technologies, specifically when combined with theoretical reasoning and adult learning principles, can improve classroom experiences through a greater sense of community while targeting higher levels of learning. If we are intentional with this design, educators can increase student engagement and facilitate higher levels of learning in synchronous online classrooms. Sprinkle goal-oriented and real-world relevant material on top, and you have a recipe for a meaningful outcome.

Looking Ahead

With institutions more widely embracing long-term implementation of distance education programs, faculty require ongoing support, training, and access to resources for sustained confidence and success. Dissemination of practical examples of use by peer educators and texts outlining an approach to identify and develop materials will benefit ongoing efforts to increase competency. In other words, we must keep each other informed on educational tech-gems we find to collectively improve our system.

How to Whiteboard: Quick Start Guide
1. Open Microsoft Teams
1. Click on the Whiteboard tab in your meeting space
1. Upload an editable template or create a blank canvas
1. Once in your meeting, share your screen and select the whiteboard app
1. Scaffold your task with prompts and questions
Jaimee Fielder, OTD, OTR is an Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy at the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences. She earned her Master of Science in Occupational Therapy from Touro University Nevada, Post-Professional Doctorate in Occupational Therapy from Texas Woman’s University, and is now pursuing a Doctorate in Education from the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences, with a dissertation focused on educational technology and active learning in higher education classrooms.

References

Barbetta, Patricia M. 2023. “Technologies as Tools to Increase Active Learning During Online Higher-Education Instruction.” Journal of Educational Technology Systems 51(3): 317–339.

Basilotta-Gomez-Pablos, Verónica, Matarranz, María, Casado-Aranda, Luis A., and Otto, Andreas. 2022. “Teachers’ Digital Competencies in Higher Education: A Systematic Literature Review.” International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education 19(8).

Børte, Kristi, Nesje, Kjersti, and Lillejord, Sølvi. 2023. “Barriers to Student Active Learning in Higher Education.” Teaching in Higher Education 28(3): 597–615.

Crompton, Helen, and Sykora, Christopher. 2021. “Developing Instructional Technology Standards for Educators: A Design-Based Research Study.” Computers and Education Open 2: 100044.

Shea, Peter, Richardson, Jennifer, and Swan, Karen. 2022. “Building Bridges to Advance the Community of Inquiry Framework for Online Learning.” Educational Psychologist 57(3): 148–161.

Vargas, Jesús H., Ojeda, Edison C. C., Zapata, Carlos A. C., Flores, Karen A. A., Vela, Juan A. H., and Espinoza, Yessenia E. D. 2024. “Analysis of Significant Learning in Higher Education: Usefulness of Fink’s Taxonomy: A Systematic Review.” Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research 7(S7): 1341.
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November 12, 2025
From the Classroom to the Career Office: Why Career Readiness Belongs in Every Discipline – Faculty Focus

Wrapping up a recent course, one of my students approached and asked to talk. It turns out she wasn’t there to review an assignment or clarify a grade. Instead, she was seeking my advice on her future career: what were my thoughts on job prospects for her major; what professional pathways made sense, given our rapidly changing world.

As the conversation touched on search strategies, market forces, and even the shifting nature of work itself, I was struck by how the moment represented a growing phenomenon in higher education: helping students succeed beyond the academic setting is a shared responsibility, particularly as the call for post-academic success continues to grow.

Dedicated career centers lead the way for student success beyond campus, but when students seek guidance on their future professional roles, chances are it will be an instructor to whom they turn. That’s good news for those of us committed to academic success. When students reach out to faculty for career advice, it’s an opportunity to deepen trust and strengthen learner confidence–principles that correlate with learning success. It also allows us to link learning with purpose, while helping us more deeply understand the evolution of our disciplines.

Integrating career readiness into our courses benefits us all. Here are some simple steps to get started:

Instructors Are Career Influencers—Whether We Know It or Not

Classroom instructors are the most consistent professional mentors that students encounter throughout their college years. A passing comment about your own career trajectory, or a few minutes spent discussing potential paths in your field, can expand a student’s sense of what’s possible, particularly for those whose backgrounds lack the types of professional networks that can impact professional success. Inviting professionals into the classroom–whether through alumni networks, or local industry—is an opportunity to provide students with professional roadmaps. Sharing examples of the different ways your discipline shows up in the world can likewise orient students towards a meaningful future in which they will likely change careers multiple times. To help guide conversations, invite students to explore so-called “clusters” of careers using tools such as the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network which provides data on growing fields and industries.

Relevance Drives Engagement

When students understand how their academic work connects to real-world applications, their engagement deepens. They’re more likely to push through a complex assignment when they see how it builds toward the type of skills they can apply to future employment. Not every lesson needs to turn into a job training session but connecting the “what” of our teaching to the “why” that students are so often seeking strengthens outcomes and can also improve student satisfaction. Studies indicate that students gain motivation when they can see how the skills they’re developing serve a purpose beyond the classroom, so canvassing students about their future career goals and integrating conversations and activities that help them map content to careers can be highly effective.

Every Discipline Includes Transferable Skills

Supporting students with future career goals means guiding them to recognize key competencies that develop across disciplines and that are prioritized across professional fields. Key among these are the skills of critical thinking, communication, teamwork, cultural fluency, and ethical decision-making. Students won’t always recognize these as in-demand skills unless we name them, so consistently referencing their utility is an impactful step. That might mean pointing out that a history paper builds research skills; a biology lab fosters analytical reasoning; and a group project in any discipline develops collaboration and leadership skills that are prized in the workplaces of today. By drawing attention to these connections, we help students value the breadth of what they’re learning while helping them understand how to showcase these skills to future employers.

Hybrid Skills Define the Modern Workforce

Today’s employers seek graduates who bring both depth and versatility, meaning team members who know the specifics of their field, but can also communicate, adapt, and think creatively. These hybrid profiles are in demand across sectors and instructors can support their students by embedding assignments that mirror real-world demands. Case studies, presentations, simulations, along with reflective writing, all offer chances to practice skills that matter in professional life. When we give students opportunities to apply knowledge in dynamic ways, we prepare them not only for jobs, but for the type of lifelong learning these professional positions will demand.

Helping students prepare for their careers doesn’t dilute academic rigor; it strengthens it by affirming that education matters in the world beyond academics. That day in the classroom, as I listened to my student’s questions about her future, I realized she wasn’t looking for certainty, but rather the opportunity to engage in the very skills we’ve always valued in teaching: critical questioning, reflection, and the ability to envision new ways to advance. Faculty are in a unique position to offer this type of guidance. Embracing and integrating career readiness into our teaching supports the pedagogical goals of the classroom while helping students succeed well beyond them.

Juli S. Charkes, EdD, is a former Director of a Center for Teaching and Learning where she led faculty development across 100 academic programs. She has been a classroom instructor for the past 14 years, teaching organizational leadership, communications, and media studies at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

References

Universities Address Workforce and career readiness. (n.d.-c). https://kaplan.com/about/trends-insights/universities-address-workforce-and-career-readiness

Pleschová, G., Sutherland, K. A., Felten, P., Forsyth, R., & Wright, M. C. (2025). Trust-building as inherent to academic development practice. International Journal for Academic Development, 30(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2025.2454704

The future of work is non-linear (or why you’ll have more than one career in your lifetime). World Economic Forum. (n.d.). https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/05/workers-multiple-careers-jobs-skills/

Fish, N., Bertone, S., & van Gramberg, B. (2025). Improving student engagement in employability development: recognising and reducing affective and behavioural barriers. Studies in Higher Education, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2025.2461271

Bauer-Wolf, J. (2023, November 30). Employers value a college degree but think students lack some skills, survey says. Higher Ed Dive. https://www.highereddive.com/news/employers-value-a-college-degree-but-think-students-lack-some-skills-surve/701051/

Mashek, D. (2022, June 23). Collaboration is a key skill. so why aren’t we teaching it? MIT Sloan Management Review. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/collaboration-is-a-key-skill-so-why-arent-we-teaching-it/

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November 7, 2025
From the Classroom to the Career Office: Why Career Readiness Belongs in Every Discipline – Faculty Focus

Wrapping up a recent course, one of my students approached and asked to talk. It turns out she wasn’t there to review an assignment or clarify a grade. Instead, she was seeking my advice on her future career: what were my thoughts on job prospects for her major; what professional pathways made sense, given our rapidly changing world.

As the conversation touched on search strategies, market forces, and even the shifting nature of work itself, I was struck by how the moment represented a growing phenomenon in higher education: helping students succeed beyond the academic setting is a shared responsibility, particularly as the call for post-academic success continues to grow.

Dedicated career centers lead the way for student success beyond campus, but when students seek guidance on their future professional roles, chances are it will be an instructor to whom they turn. That’s good news for those of us committed to academic success. When students reach out to faculty for career advice, it’s an opportunity to deepen trust and strengthen learner confidence–principles that correlate with learning success. It also allows us to link learning with purpose, while helping us more deeply understand the evolution of our disciplines.

Integrating career readiness into our courses benefits us all. Here are some simple steps to get started:

Instructors Are Career Influencers—Whether We Know It or Not

Classroom instructors are the most consistent professional mentors that students encounter throughout their college years. A passing comment about your own career trajectory, or a few minutes spent discussing potential paths in your field, can expand a student’s sense of what’s possible, particularly for those whose backgrounds lack the types of professional networks that can impact professional success. Inviting professionals into the classroom–whether through alumni networks, or local industry—is an opportunity to provide students with professional roadmaps. Sharing examples of the different ways your discipline shows up in the world can likewise orient students towards a meaningful future in which they will likely change careers multiple times. To help guide conversations, invite students to explore so-called “clusters” of careers using tools such as the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network which provides data on growing fields and industries.

Relevance Drives Engagement

When students understand how their academic work connects to real-world applications, their engagement deepens. They’re more likely to push through a complex assignment when they see how it builds toward the type of skills they can apply to future employment. Not every lesson needs to turn into a job training session but connecting the “what” of our teaching to the “why” that students are so often seeking strengthens outcomes and can also improve student satisfaction. Studies indicate that students gain motivation when they can see how the skills they’re developing serve a purpose beyond the classroom, so canvassing students about their future career goals and integrating conversations and activities that help them map content to careers can be highly effective.

Every Discipline Includes Transferable Skills

Supporting students with future career goals means guiding them to recognize key competencies that develop across disciplines and that are prioritized across professional fields. Key among these are the skills of critical thinking, communication, teamwork, cultural fluency, and ethical decision-making. Students won’t always recognize these as in-demand skills unless we name them, so consistently referencing their utility is an impactful step. That might mean pointing out that a history paper builds research skills; a biology lab fosters analytical reasoning; and a group project in any discipline develops collaboration and leadership skills that are prized in the workplaces of today. By drawing attention to these connections, we help students value the breadth of what they’re learning while helping them understand how to showcase these skills to future employers.

Hybrid Skills Define the Modern Workforce

Today’s employers seek graduates who bring both depth and versatility, meaning team members who know the specifics of their field, but can also communicate, adapt, and think creatively. These hybrid profiles are in demand across sectors and instructors can support their students by embedding assignments that mirror real-world demands. Case studies, presentations, simulations, along with reflective writing, all offer chances to practice skills that matter in professional life. When we give students opportunities to apply knowledge in dynamic ways, we prepare them not only for jobs, but for the type of lifelong learning these professional positions will demand.

Helping students prepare for their careers doesn’t dilute academic rigor; it strengthens it by affirming that education matters in the world beyond academics. That day in the classroom, as I listened to my student’s questions about her future, I realized she wasn’t looking for certainty, but rather the opportunity to engage in the very skills we’ve always valued in teaching: critical questioning, reflection, and the ability to envision new ways to advance. Faculty are in a unique position to offer this type of guidance. Embracing and integrating career readiness into our teaching supports the pedagogical goals of the classroom while helping students succeed well beyond them.

Juli S. Charkes, EdD, is a former Director of a Center for Teaching and Learning where she led faculty development across 100 academic programs. She has been a classroom instructor for the past 14 years, teaching organizational leadership, communications, and media studies at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

References

Universities Address Workforce and career readiness. (n.d.-c). https://kaplan.com/about/trends-insights/universities-address-workforce-and-career-readiness

Pleschová, G., Sutherland, K. A., Felten, P., Forsyth, R., & Wright, M. C. (2025). Trust-building as inherent to academic development practice. International Journal for Academic Development, 30(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2025.2454704

The future of work is non-linear (or why you’ll have more than one career in your lifetime). World Economic Forum. (n.d.). https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/05/workers-multiple-careers-jobs-skills/

Fish, N., Bertone, S., & van Gramberg, B. (2025). Improving student engagement in employability development: recognising and reducing affective and behavioural barriers. Studies in Higher Education, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2025.2461271

Bauer-Wolf, J. (2023, November 30). Employers value a college degree but think students lack some skills, survey says. Higher Ed Dive. https://www.highereddive.com/news/employers-value-a-college-degree-but-think-students-lack-some-skills-surve/701051/

Mashek, D. (2022, June 23). Collaboration is a key skill. so why aren’t we teaching it? MIT Sloan Management Review. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/collaboration-is-a-key-skill-so-why-arent-we-teaching-it/

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November 7, 2025
Empowering Students to Use Their Voice – Faculty Focus

Quality education must go beyond textbooks and lectures. It should connect students with current events and equip them with skills for real-world engagement. When teaching a theoretical framework, for example, educators should demonstrate to students how that framework applies in real-life scenarios (Jeffrey von Freymann 2025). Similarly, lessons on historical events should include the context and consequences of those moments, linking the past to the present in ways that resonate with students’ lived experiences. Results from the 2023 National Survey of Student Engagement indicate that students benefit from high-impact educational activities, reporting deeper learning and increased retention (NSSE 2023).

In today’s changing academic and political climate, many fields—including education and healthcare—are experiencing the effects of administrative shifts and funding uncertainties. Students are vulnerable to these changes and may feel the weight of decisions made beyond their control (Cynthia Vitters et al. 2024). I have discovered that some of my students are not sufficiently educated or engaged in political matters, resulting in their ignorance of the potential consequences these decisions could have on their future careers. Faculty must consider how these broader changes affect their students and the future of their education and careers. I believe the future of education may be impacted on a scale larger than the sum of our individual experiences.

Fortunately, students bring energy, big ideas, and a passion for change. Throughout history, many transformative movements in the U.S. were student-led—from the Civil Rights Movement to recent climate strikes. Faculty should empower students with knowledge and resources to continue this tradition. Civics education is common in specific higher education fields; however, students pursuing careers in healthcare may not have as much familiarity with the process. Faculty have an opportunity to empower students by equipping them with the tools and confidence to participate in public life. It begins with acknowledging the reality: that the political process can be confusing, overwhelming, and discouraging, especially when students are already stretched thin and inundated with grim news. Disengagement is understandable—but it’s not the only option. Future healthcare professionals have a duty to remain engaged in the political process in order to advocate for our patients and ensure the continued accessibility of healthcare services.

By integrating advocacy into the classroom, educators can normalize civic participation and demonstrate how they can contribute to meaningful change. Faculty should first assess their current attitudes and knowledge and then guide them to apply their energy constructively, participating in our civic processes. One effective method is through structured classroom projects that engage students through real advocacy processes. Educators can use established frameworks to guide this process and offer credible models. Three great models identified for the activity discussed below were from the Centers for Disease Control, the deBeaumont Foundation, the American Public Health Association, and the Association of Public Health Nurses (https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/clearwriting/docs/health-comm-playbook-508.pdf, https://www.phnurse.org/advocacy-toolkit, https://phern.communitycommons.org/advocacy/taking-action-advocacy-for-public-health/getting-started-advocacy/).

In a public health nursing course, I recently applied this method with nursing students over a duration of three weeks. Collaborating in small groups, the students selected a topic of interest, conducted research on the issue, and developed potential interventions. The topics chosen by the students were diverse, including vaccine policies, environmental safety, access to healthy food, Medicare funding, and the conflict in Gaza. The groups researched their topics to identify relevant data, current and proposed policies impacting the issue, and organizations currently involved. At this point, they presented their peers with an outline of their findings to begin testing their messaging on the issue at hand and receive constructive feedback. Next, they developed communication materials to promote their intervention and identified potential community partners with whom to form a coalition to achieve shared goals. Their communication options included letters to the editor, media pitches, and social media campaigns. These were designed to inform the public and build support.

Additionally, each group identified an elected official with the power to affect change and wrote a letter outlining the problem and recommended solutions. For extra credit, the student groups were encouraged to schedule a meeting with them or their staff to present their recommendations. Throughout the process, faculty mentored their progress and encouraged deeper engagement and growth. Students periodically paused to present their work to peer groups, and they used this real-time feedback to refine their advocacy and communication strategies. A structured framework gave them direction and confidence. This process teaches students the importance of communication and teamwork, and provides them with real-world experience in advocacy and civic action. In the future, I plan to include a meeting with legislative staff as a required part of this activity based on feedback from students who elected to do the extra credit. They benefited tremendously and reported increased confidence with the process.

Ultimately, teaching the civic process is not about politics—it’s about empowerment. By showing students how to engage thoughtfully, speak confidently, and act collaboratively, we are not only educating them—we are preparing them to shape the future.

Lyndsay Anderson, MSN, FNP-BC, PHN is a clinical faculty member at University of the Pacific. She is a nurse educator, clinician, and researcher with experience in oncology, public health, and nursing education. Lyndsay’s research has focused on reducing cancer disparities among Latina and African American populations and has co-authored numerous peer-reviewed publications in oncology and public health. She holds a Master of Science in Nursing from Georgetown University and a BSN from the University of Virginia. She is currently pursuing her Doctorate of Health Sciences from University of the Pacific.

Dr. Julia VanderMolen is a Professor for the Public Health program at Grand Valley State University and a Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor with the University of the Pacific, School of Health Sciences. Her research examines the benefits of assistive technology for individuals with disabilities in public health. She serves as a board member of the Disability Advocates of Kent County and is an active member of the Disability Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA). Her current research focuses on exploring the health and medical services available to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

References

APHN Public Health Policy Committee Association of Public Health Nurses. Public Health Policy Advocacy Guidebook and Toolkit. APHN Public Health Policy Committee Association of Public Health Nurses 2021. https://www.phnurse.org/advocacy-toolkit

Centers for Disease Control. “CDC Health Communication Playbook.” Centers for Disease Control. Atlanta, GA. 2025. https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/clearwriting/docs/health-comm-playbook-508.pdf

Hearne, Shelley., and Keshia Pollack Porter and Katrina Forrest. Strategic Skills for Public Health Practice: Policy Engagement. APHA Press, 2023.

National Survey of Student Engagement. (2022). Engagement Insights: Survey Findings on the Quality of Undergraduate Education– Annual Results 2021. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research. https://nsse.indiana.edu/nsse/survey-instruments/high-impact-practices.html

Public Health & Equity Resource Navigator. Take Action Guides: Getting Started with your Advocacy Journey. The American Public Health Association & The Alliance for the Public’s Health. Washington, D.C. 2025. https://phern.communitycommons.org/advocacy/taking-action-advocacy-for-public-health/getting-started-advocacy/

Vitters, Cynthia and Jake Braunsdorf, Joseph Lord, and Roy Mathew. “Significant risks facing higher education: Getting to the roots of risk.” Deloitte: Government & Public Services. Deloitte. December 18, 2024. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/articles-on-higher-education/top-risks-in-higher-education.html

von Freyman, Jeffrey. “How to Significantly Improve Student Engagement and Retained Learning in Higher Education.” Faculty Focus. 30 May 2025. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/how-to-significantly-improve-student-engagement-and-retained-learning-in-higher-education/

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October 22, 2025
The Possibility of Our Problems: Educating for the Futures Our Students Will Face – Faculty Focus
“Colleges are now closing at a pace of one per week. What happens to the students?” Jon Marcus asked in a recent Hechinger Report piece. It’s not a rhetorical question — and it doesn’t have an easy answer. As educators, we’ve read the headlines, seen the numbers, and felt the pressure. Undergraduate enrollment is down. Student confidence is eroding. The enrollment cliff looms.

But instead of asking when higher education will fail, we might ask: What if this is a market correction — not a collapse? What if the problem isn’t higher education itself, but how we’ve framed its value and how we’ve taught? What if this moment is less an ending and more a beginning?

In the face of uncertainty, it’s tempting to focus on control: measurable learning outcomes, career-ready skills, standardized assessments. But today’s students are entering a competitive job market — and a world defined by accelerating change, emerging technologies, and challenges we haven’t yet named. That means our teaching needs to prepare them what’s likely and for what’s possible — and even what’s unknowable.

Ronald Beghetto’s framework for “educating for unknowable futures” offers a helpful lens. He proposes three levels of preparation:
1. Educating for likely futures: equipping students with foundational skills and durable knowledge.
1. Educating for possible futures: helping students build agency, creativity, and adaptability.
1. Educating for unknowable futures: inviting students to grapple with uncertainty through reflection and imagination.
Each level requires a shift in how we think about learning and a new set of pedagogical commitments.

1. Educating for Likely Futures: Redesigning Assignments Around Students’ Real Lives

Career readiness remains a core concern. But often, our tools for building it are misaligned with students’ actual experiences. Take the classic business case method, for example: many cases center Fortune 500 CEOs or global crises, which can feel abstract or inaccessible to undergraduates, especially first-generation students.

That’s why I now write my own cases: short, specific, and grounded in contexts my students know. In one recent one, I explored a conflict between student-athletes and faculty at a nearby Division III college. For my mostly student-athlete class, this was familiar and therefore grounding. Their analysis shifted. So did their engagement.

Designing assignments that reflect students’ likely futures — their majors, their industries, their regions — signals that their lives are valid sites of learning. It builds relevance. And it reminds them that professional decision-making doesn’t start “out there.” It starts here.

2. Educating for Possible Futures: Using EdTech with Purpose

Students also need to develop adaptive skills: how to think critically, navigate ambiguity, and evaluate tools in evolving environments. EdTech is a perfect place to practice this.

Today’s education market is flooded with tools — over 370 vendors across over 40 market segments, according to Encoura. But quantity isn’t quality. Too often, we adopt tools based on novelty or institutional trends rather than instructional value.

To support students in building discernment, we must model it ourselves. That means asking: Does this tool solve a real problem in my class? Does it deliver on its promises? Does it support learning equitably and sustainably?

In other words, we must shift from passive adopters to intentional evaluators and invite students into that evaluative process. Helping them think about how technology shapes learning (and their own agency within it) equips them for any environment, not just the one we’ve built.

3. Educating for Unknowable Futures: Making Space for Reflection

Preparing students for the truly unknown requires something more radical: making space for performance, yes, but also for reflection.

In a recent MBA course on negotiation and conflict, I made a bold move: I assigned weekly reflection journals — raw, stream-of-consciousness entries that linked course themes to students’ lived experiences. Some students resisted at first. But by the end, many said it changed the way they approached class and life.

Reflection is often treated as an add-on, something optional or “soft.” But it’s essential. It helps students surface assumptions, interrogate choices, and practice metacognition. And in a world where knowledge and skills are constantly evolving, the ability to learn how to learn may be the most durable skill of all.

Possibility Thinking, in Practice

If our current moment is a reckoning, then our response must be one of responsibility. We cannot guarantee our students a particular future. But we can offer them the tools to shape one.

Beghetto calls this “agentic awareness” — a belief in one’s ability to influence outcomes. It’s a curriculum and a posture. And it’s something we can model by how we teach: with creativity, clarity, and curiosity.

So the next time you see another headline about higher ed’s collapse, ask yourself: What if we treated this as a moment to reimagine rather than as a crisis to survive?

That’s resilience, and it’s possibility thinking in action.

Three Small Shifts You Can Make This Semester

Now is the perfect time to start leaning into the possibility of our problems. To do so, try:
1. Redesigning one assignment to reflect your students’ actual career goals or lived experiences. Meeting students where they are will help them better envision where they’re headed.
1. Asking your classroom technology better questions. Push beyond features to real learning outcomes when you choose to invite EdTech into your classroom.
1. Making reflection part of the grade. Don’t treat it as busywork but as weighted, important meaning-making.
Higher education may be facing unprecedented disruption, but disruption doesn’t have to mean decline. In fact, the classroom may be one of the last places where we still have real influence over what comes next. Each lesson we design, each conversation we facilitate, each moment we create for reflection — these are acts of future-building.

Educating for unknowable futures doesn’t mean we need to predict what’s next. It means we help students learn to ask better questions, adapt with confidence, and recognize their own capacity to shape change. And it means we embrace that same mindset ourselves.

The future of higher education won’t be saved by sweeping reforms or silver-bullet technologies. It will be co-created — one thoughtful assignment, one intentional choice, one student at a time. And that work starts not in distant policy meetings, but right here, in our classrooms.

Laura Nicole Miller, DET, is an assistant professor in the Grenon School of Business at Assumption University, where she teaches organizational communication, marketing, and management. A first-generation college graduate and former EdTech executive, she studies how communication practices shape equity, trust, and student success in high-stakes environments.

References

Bauman, D. (2024, February 7). Colleges were already bracing for an ‘enrollment cliff.’ Now there might be a second one. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/colleges-were-already-bracing-for-an-enrollment-cliff-now-there-might-be-a-second-one

Beghetto, R. A. (2023). Broadening horizons of the possible in education. Possibility Studies & Society, 1(4), 414-426. https://doi.org/10.1177/27538699231182014

Binkley, C. (2023, March 10). Why more Americans are skipping college. PBS News. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/why-more-americans-are-skipping-college

Craft, A. (2015). Possibility thinking: From what is to what might be. In R. Wegerif, L. Li, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of research on teaching thinking (pp. 15–26). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315797021

Encoura. (2023). Higher education technology landscape research. https://www.encoura.org/eduventures-research/evolve-your-online-strategy/tech-landscape/

Fry, R., Braga, D., & Parker, K. (2024, May 23). Is college worth it? Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/05/23/is-college-worth-it-2/

Marcus, J. (2024, April 26). Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week. What happens to the students? The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/colleges-are-now-closing-at-a-pace-of-one-a-week-what-happens-to-the-students/

Miller, L. N. (2025). “D-III students deserve better”: strategic communication with college stakeholders. The CASE Journal, 21(3), 493-516. https://doi.org/10.1108/TCJ-06-2024-0184

Miller, L.N. (2025). We need to ask smarter questions of ed tech. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2025/07/30/we-need-ask-smarter-questions-ed-tech-opinion
Source link
October 10, 2025
The Possibility of Our Problems: Educating for the Futures Our Students Will Face – Faculty Focus
“Colleges are now closing at a pace of one per week. What happens to the students?” Jon Marcus asked in a recent Hechinger Report piece. It’s not a rhetorical question — and it doesn’t have an easy answer. As educators, we’ve read the headlines, seen the numbers, and felt the pressure. Undergraduate enrollment is down. Student confidence is eroding. The enrollment cliff looms.

But instead of asking when higher education will fail, we might ask: What if this is a market correction — not a collapse? What if the problem isn’t higher education itself, but how we’ve framed its value and how we’ve taught? What if this moment is less an ending and more a beginning?

In the face of uncertainty, it’s tempting to focus on control: measurable learning outcomes, career-ready skills, standardized assessments. But today’s students are entering a competitive job market — and a world defined by accelerating change, emerging technologies, and challenges we haven’t yet named. That means our teaching needs to prepare them what’s likely and for what’s possible — and even what’s unknowable.

Ronald Beghetto’s framework for “educating for unknowable futures” offers a helpful lens. He proposes three levels of preparation:
1. Educating for likely futures: equipping students with foundational skills and durable knowledge.
1. Educating for possible futures: helping students build agency, creativity, and adaptability.
1. Educating for unknowable futures: inviting students to grapple with uncertainty through reflection and imagination.
Each level requires a shift in how we think about learning and a new set of pedagogical commitments.

1. Educating for Likely Futures: Redesigning Assignments Around Students’ Real Lives

Career readiness remains a core concern. But often, our tools for building it are misaligned with students’ actual experiences. Take the classic business case method, for example: many cases center Fortune 500 CEOs or global crises, which can feel abstract or inaccessible to undergraduates, especially first-generation students.

That’s why I now write my own cases: short, specific, and grounded in contexts my students know. In one recent one, I explored a conflict between student-athletes and faculty at a nearby Division III college. For my mostly student-athlete class, this was familiar and therefore grounding. Their analysis shifted. So did their engagement.

Designing assignments that reflect students’ likely futures — their majors, their industries, their regions — signals that their lives are valid sites of learning. It builds relevance. And it reminds them that professional decision-making doesn’t start “out there.” It starts here.

2. Educating for Possible Futures: Using EdTech with Purpose

Students also need to develop adaptive skills: how to think critically, navigate ambiguity, and evaluate tools in evolving environments. EdTech is a perfect place to practice this.

Today’s education market is flooded with tools — over 370 vendors across over 40 market segments, according to Encoura. But quantity isn’t quality. Too often, we adopt tools based on novelty or institutional trends rather than instructional value.

To support students in building discernment, we must model it ourselves. That means asking: Does this tool solve a real problem in my class? Does it deliver on its promises? Does it support learning equitably and sustainably?

In other words, we must shift from passive adopters to intentional evaluators and invite students into that evaluative process. Helping them think about how technology shapes learning (and their own agency within it) equips them for any environment, not just the one we’ve built.

3. Educating for Unknowable Futures: Making Space for Reflection

Preparing students for the truly unknown requires something more radical: making space for performance, yes, but also for reflection.

In a recent MBA course on negotiation and conflict, I made a bold move: I assigned weekly reflection journals — raw, stream-of-consciousness entries that linked course themes to students’ lived experiences. Some students resisted at first. But by the end, many said it changed the way they approached class and life.

Reflection is often treated as an add-on, something optional or “soft.” But it’s essential. It helps students surface assumptions, interrogate choices, and practice metacognition. And in a world where knowledge and skills are constantly evolving, the ability to learn how to learn may be the most durable skill of all.

Possibility Thinking, in Practice

If our current moment is a reckoning, then our response must be one of responsibility. We cannot guarantee our students a particular future. But we can offer them the tools to shape one.

Beghetto calls this “agentic awareness” — a belief in one’s ability to influence outcomes. It’s a curriculum and a posture. And it’s something we can model by how we teach: with creativity, clarity, and curiosity.

So the next time you see another headline about higher ed’s collapse, ask yourself: What if we treated this as a moment to reimagine rather than as a crisis to survive?

That’s resilience, and it’s possibility thinking in action.

Three Small Shifts You Can Make This Semester

Now is the perfect time to start leaning into the possibility of our problems. To do so, try:
1. Redesigning one assignment to reflect your students’ actual career goals or lived experiences. Meeting students where they are will help them better envision where they’re headed.
1. Asking your classroom technology better questions. Push beyond features to real learning outcomes when you choose to invite EdTech into your classroom.
1. Making reflection part of the grade. Don’t treat it as busywork but as weighted, important meaning-making.
Higher education may be facing unprecedented disruption, but disruption doesn’t have to mean decline. In fact, the classroom may be one of the last places where we still have real influence over what comes next. Each lesson we design, each conversation we facilitate, each moment we create for reflection — these are acts of future-building.

Educating for unknowable futures doesn’t mean we need to predict what’s next. It means we help students learn to ask better questions, adapt with confidence, and recognize their own capacity to shape change. And it means we embrace that same mindset ourselves.

The future of higher education won’t be saved by sweeping reforms or silver-bullet technologies. It will be co-created — one thoughtful assignment, one intentional choice, one student at a time. And that work starts not in distant policy meetings, but right here, in our classrooms.

Laura Nicole Miller, DET, is an assistant professor in the Grenon School of Business at Assumption University, where she teaches organizational communication, marketing, and management. A first-generation college graduate and former EdTech executive, she studies how communication practices shape equity, trust, and student success in high-stakes environments.

References

Bauman, D. (2024, February 7). Colleges were already bracing for an ‘enrollment cliff.’ Now there might be a second one. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/colleges-were-already-bracing-for-an-enrollment-cliff-now-there-might-be-a-second-one

Beghetto, R. A. (2023). Broadening horizons of the possible in education. Possibility Studies & Society, 1(4), 414-426. https://doi.org/10.1177/27538699231182014

Binkley, C. (2023, March 10). Why more Americans are skipping college. PBS News. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/why-more-americans-are-skipping-college

Craft, A. (2015). Possibility thinking: From what is to what might be. In R. Wegerif, L. Li, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of research on teaching thinking (pp. 15–26). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315797021

Encoura. (2023). Higher education technology landscape research. https://www.encoura.org/eduventures-research/evolve-your-online-strategy/tech-landscape/

Fry, R., Braga, D., & Parker, K. (2024, May 23). Is college worth it? Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/05/23/is-college-worth-it-2/

Marcus, J. (2024, April 26). Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week. What happens to the students? The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/colleges-are-now-closing-at-a-pace-of-one-a-week-what-happens-to-the-students/

Miller, L. N. (2025). “D-III students deserve better”: strategic communication with college stakeholders. The CASE Journal, 21(3), 493-516. https://doi.org/10.1108/TCJ-06-2024-0184

Miller, L.N. (2025). We need to ask smarter questions of ed tech. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2025/07/30/we-need-ask-smarter-questions-ed-tech-opinion
Source link
October 10, 2025
General Education for Working Learners in the Age of AI – Faculty Focus

Reams have been written about the challenges with general education at US colleges and universities. Students often view general education requirements (gen eds) as “hurdles” to overcome on their way to the learning that matters to them. Campuses invest enormous time and energy revising their gen ed programs of study to create the kinds of interconnected learning experiences that produce broadly educated degree completers. When the vision of gen ed is realized for learners, they learn the habits of mind that result in the durable skills employers are looking for – critical thinking, problem solving, communication, and curiosity. Gen ed is great, so why is it discussed as a “hurdle.”

Sadly, students often trudge through gen ed courses, without realizing the intended benefits. Among college provosts (90% of whom are proponents of gen ed) only 32 percent believe that students at their colleges understand the purpose of general education requirements. There is an incredible disconnect between this well-intentioned structure and the lived experiences of most learners. What’s the root cause of the disconnect? Relevance. “Why am I doing this?” is a question that has reverberated from the minds of learners for decades. The sentiment is especially cacophonous in online education. At least in a face-to-face classroom, a student can meet a new friend or connect with a professor. The only silver lining most online gen ed learners can find is an opportunity to practice their grit and perseverance to overcome the hurdle and get to the relevant coursework.

A New Way Forward

What if there was a different way? Before AI, it would seem impossible to improve the relevance of general education coursework for every individual learner. But a new reality is upon us. Imagine the following scenario as the new future of general education for working adult learners.

Meet Tara. Tara has been working full-time at Dunkin’ Donuts for five years. She is now a manager and has acquired significant competencies related to managing her teams, hiring people, training new employees, and managing difficult customer situations. She has been gradually trying to finish her bachelor’s degree in business administration, taking online courses, and squeezing in her homework around caring for a family and managing employees.

Currently, she is in a general psychology course, and although she finds the concepts interesting, she is grinding her way through online discussion boards to finish her degree. Tara is curious, capable, and committed, but she is not looking forward to this course (or any of her general education courses).

A New Approach

Let’s imagine that Tara had been provided with a different option- an option that recognizes her role and uses AI to individualize her general education competencies. First, her employer offers to pay for a portion of her education as a benefit of her employment, a practice that actually saves the employer money. The employer also agrees to provide a mentor for Tara who will meet with her every 2 weeks to review her goals, monitor academic progress, address concerns, and help her see the connections between her learning and their business operations. The mentor has access to a shared platform that is also accessible and regularly updated by faculty and advisors at the educational institution.

Tara’s first assignment in general psychology reads as follows:

“Hi Tara! Welcome to psychology. In this course you are going to learn many valuable concepts, theories, and frameworks, and you are going to be asked to consider which theories most align with your own way of being in the world. The best part of this course is that you get to make connections between the concepts you are learning and family and/or work life. That means that as a working learner, your burden will feel lighter because things you are experiencing at work can be used as assignments for class. How does that work? Let’s dive in.

First, open your institutional instance of generative AI. Grab the syllabus for this course and drop it into the chat bot. Select the “Learning Designer” persona and paste in the following prompt for the bot.

Please design a semester-long work-based learning experience to teach me the psychology concepts and learning outcomes that are described in the attached syllabus. [INSERT YOUR JOB HERE Ex: I work a customer service job in the fast-food industry, and I manage a team of employees]. Using the concepts and learning outcomes described in the attached syllabus document, generate a list of 20 tasks that I could accomplish in my job that would show my understanding of the psychology learning outcomes described in the syllabus.

Tara provides the prompt to AI and receives the following list of tasks:

1. Identifying Customer Needs: Use psychological concepts to identify and understand customer needs and preferences.

2. Effective Communication: Apply principles of effective communication to resolve customer inquiries and complaints.

3. Empathy in Practice: Demonstrate empathy by actively listening and responding to customer concerns, showing understanding of their emotions.

4. Problem Solving: Use critical thinking skills to analyze customer issues and develop appropriate solutions.

5. Feedback Analysis: Evaluate customer feedback to identify patterns in behavior and make informed decisions for service improvement.

6. Behavioral Observation: Observe and interpret body language and verbal cues to better understand customer satisfaction and needs.

7. Conflict Resolution: Implement conflict resolution techniques to manage and resolve disputes amicably.

8. Cultural Sensitivity: Show awareness of cultural differences when interacting with diverse customers, adapting communication styles as needed.

9. Stress Management: Apply stress management strategies to maintain composure and effectiveness during high-pressure interactions…. Etc.

The assignment instructions continue, and Tara creates a work plan for herself for the semester, choosing a number of the AI generated tasks and planning to submit one as an assignment every 1-2 weeks as directed in her coursework. Tara reads that she will be asked to make connections between the theories she is learning about in her coursework and the tasks she is able to complete and submit from her workplace. Not all the tasks are possible for her with her role, but from a list of 20, she is easily able to choose 8.

Now, this seemingly unrelated general education course feels relevant to Tara’s work life. She is not being asked to manufacture responses to hypothetical scenarios on weekly discussion boards. She is being asked to use the knowledge and skills she has developed at work to scaffold new information related to the field of psychology. Generative AI provides an opportunity for any learner to do the same task with results that are individualized to them.

If you’re interested in how the prompt differs for another student, Tim uses the same prompt but adjusts it for his job as a certified nursing assistant in a nursing home. The tasks generated for Tim are as follows:

Based on the psychology syllabus you provided, here are 20 tasks that you could accomplish in your role as a certified nursing assistant (CNA) to demonstrate your understanding of psychology concepts and learning outcomes:

1. Identifying Behavioral Patterns: Observe and document common behavioral patterns among residents to identify psychological principles at work.

2. Reflective Journaling: Maintain a reflective journal where you connect daily experiences at the nursing home with psychological concepts such as mental processes or social behavior.

3. Empirical Analysis: Analyze case studies or specific situations from work to draw logical conclusions about behavior and mental processes.

4. Research Evaluation: Evaluate existing psychological research or data related to elder care practices and suggest ways to improve care based on findings.

5. Ethics in Practice: Discuss or present how ethical principles guide your behavior and decision-making process in patient care.

6. Collaboration Exercise: Work effectively with other CNAs or healthcare professionals to develop a care plan for a resident, using psychological insights.

7. Communication Skills: Demonstrate effective communication and listening skills in resident interactions, informed by psychological theories of communication.

8. Cultural Sensitivity: Recognize and respect the cultural backgrounds of residents, integrating psychological concepts of diversity. Etc.

Notice that for Tara and Tim, completing any of these tasks without any other coursework, reading, video lectures, tutorials, or information would be a challenge. It would also be a challenge to ask AI to complete the assignments given that Tara and Tim will also be asked to discuss these tasks with their workplace-based mentor who will verify completion in the platform they share with the university. The grades in the course honor the on-the-job learning with at least a third of the points dedicated to the tasks Tara and Tim can accomplish at their place of employment. These assignments are not “additional” but are a core part of the curriculum.

There are guiding questions and ideas for Tara and Tim to discuss with the mentors provided by their employer. At these mentor meetings, Tara and Tim are asked to share the work-based tasks they completed with their mentors and solicit feedback from the work-based mentor.

For example, Tim describes how he applied empathy and support to a resident, showcasing his understanding of psychological needs and processes, and making a connection to a video lecture he was assigned in his coursework. Tim’s mentor uses the shared online learning platform to validate that Tim is demonstrating empathy and support in the workplace and can reflect on that competency as a skill he is aware of developing.

Tara describes how she uses psychological motivation techniques with her team of employees. She is making connections between theory and practice and asking thoughtful questions about her observations of the employees she manages.

Employers are just as invested in developing and retaining great employees as educational institutions. When leaders in these spaces work together, the results are incredibly impactful for working learners.

The Faculty Experience

Faculty are recognizing that there is little need for them to deliver content aside from providing clarifications, feedback, examples, and guidance to students to connect them with resources that meet their needs. Tim and Tara could easily be in the same section of general psychology, taught by the same instructor and submitting similar assignments but with different contexts. The faculty instructor spends most of their time meeting one on one or in small groups with students rather than delivering content for synchronous class meetings.

In this scenario, it will be essential to clearly identify exactly what competencies learners are expected to master through the general psychology course. Clear articulation of the competencies will predict the types of outputs learners receive.

Additionally, the instructor may want to include an approval step to ensure that the AI generated tasks selected by the learner are appropriate for their learning and for the people with whom they interact. Clear guidance around what they are ethically permitted to do (i.e., don’t provide counseling, legal or medical advice if you’re not licensed to do so) may be necessary.

With the reduction in time spent delivering in-person instruction, instructors can provide great value to learners with brief, targeted, 15-minute 1 on 1 meetings to review their work, respond to questions, and provide feedback. Faculty will also quickly realize where course materials (videos, exercises, prompts) need to be bolstered when they encounter common issues among students.

Generative AI is changing education as we speak. Embracing the power of AI to individualize general education curriculum could have a significant impact on retention and completion while also solving the public perception that general education is irrelevant. Imagine a reality where graduates are reporting that the most helpful courses in their degrees were the general education courses where they learned to practice the kinds of durable skills prized by today’s employers.

Dr. Erin Crisp, EdD, serves as the AVP for Learner Success and Workforce Pathways in the University of Tennessee System. Crisp has enjoyed a variety of roles in K-12 and postsecondary education related to teaching, academic innovation, and instructional design. Her ideas have been published in Inside Higher Ed, EDUCAUSE Review, Tech Trends, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Atlantic. Her spouse, three adult sons, and two dogs are a continuous source of joy second only to living in Knoxville, Tennessee where opportunities for hiking abound and the Volunteer spirit is strong.

Source link

July 21, 2025
General Education for Working Learners in the Age of AI – Faculty Focus

Reams have been written about the challenges with general education at US colleges and universities. Students often view general education requirements (gen eds) as “hurdles” to overcome on their way to the learning that matters to them. Campuses invest enormous time and energy revising their gen ed programs of study to create the kinds of interconnected learning experiences that produce broadly educated degree completers. When the vision of gen ed is realized for learners, they learn the habits of mind that result in the durable skills employers are looking for – critical thinking, problem solving, communication, and curiosity. Gen ed is great, so why is it discussed as a “hurdle.”

Sadly, students often trudge through gen ed courses, without realizing the intended benefits. Among college provosts (90% of whom are proponents of gen ed) only 32 percent believe that students at their colleges understand the purpose of general education requirements. There is an incredible disconnect between this well-intentioned structure and the lived experiences of most learners. What’s the root cause of the disconnect? Relevance. “Why am I doing this?” is a question that has reverberated from the minds of learners for decades. The sentiment is especially cacophonous in online education. At least in a face-to-face classroom, a student can meet a new friend or connect with a professor. The only silver lining most online gen ed learners can find is an opportunity to practice their grit and perseverance to overcome the hurdle and get to the relevant coursework.

A New Way Forward

What if there was a different way? Before AI, it would seem impossible to improve the relevance of general education coursework for every individual learner. But a new reality is upon us. Imagine the following scenario as the new future of general education for working adult learners.

Meet Tara. Tara has been working full-time at Dunkin’ Donuts for five years. She is now a manager and has acquired significant competencies related to managing her teams, hiring people, training new employees, and managing difficult customer situations. She has been gradually trying to finish her bachelor’s degree in business administration, taking online courses, and squeezing in her homework around caring for a family and managing employees.

Currently, she is in a general psychology course, and although she finds the concepts interesting, she is grinding her way through online discussion boards to finish her degree. Tara is curious, capable, and committed, but she is not looking forward to this course (or any of her general education courses).

A New Approach

Let’s imagine that Tara had been provided with a different option- an option that recognizes her role and uses AI to individualize her general education competencies. First, her employer offers to pay for a portion of her education as a benefit of her employment, a practice that actually saves the employer money. The employer also agrees to provide a mentor for Tara who will meet with her every 2 weeks to review her goals, monitor academic progress, address concerns, and help her see the connections between her learning and their business operations. The mentor has access to a shared platform that is also accessible and regularly updated by faculty and advisors at the educational institution.

Tara’s first assignment in general psychology reads as follows:

“Hi Tara! Welcome to psychology. In this course you are going to learn many valuable concepts, theories, and frameworks, and you are going to be asked to consider which theories most align with your own way of being in the world. The best part of this course is that you get to make connections between the concepts you are learning and family and/or work life. That means that as a working learner, your burden will feel lighter because things you are experiencing at work can be used as assignments for class. How does that work? Let’s dive in.

First, open your institutional instance of generative AI. Grab the syllabus for this course and drop it into the chat bot. Select the “Learning Designer” persona and paste in the following prompt for the bot.

Please design a semester-long work-based learning experience to teach me the psychology concepts and learning outcomes that are described in the attached syllabus. [INSERT YOUR JOB HERE Ex: I work a customer service job in the fast-food industry, and I manage a team of employees]. Using the concepts and learning outcomes described in the attached syllabus document, generate a list of 20 tasks that I could accomplish in my job that would show my understanding of the psychology learning outcomes described in the syllabus.

Tara provides the prompt to AI and receives the following list of tasks:

1. Identifying Customer Needs: Use psychological concepts to identify and understand customer needs and preferences.

2. Effective Communication: Apply principles of effective communication to resolve customer inquiries and complaints.

3. Empathy in Practice: Demonstrate empathy by actively listening and responding to customer concerns, showing understanding of their emotions.

4. Problem Solving: Use critical thinking skills to analyze customer issues and develop appropriate solutions.

5. Feedback Analysis: Evaluate customer feedback to identify patterns in behavior and make informed decisions for service improvement.

6. Behavioral Observation: Observe and interpret body language and verbal cues to better understand customer satisfaction and needs.

7. Conflict Resolution: Implement conflict resolution techniques to manage and resolve disputes amicably.

8. Cultural Sensitivity: Show awareness of cultural differences when interacting with diverse customers, adapting communication styles as needed.

9. Stress Management: Apply stress management strategies to maintain composure and effectiveness during high-pressure interactions…. Etc.

The assignment instructions continue, and Tara creates a work plan for herself for the semester, choosing a number of the AI generated tasks and planning to submit one as an assignment every 1-2 weeks as directed in her coursework. Tara reads that she will be asked to make connections between the theories she is learning about in her coursework and the tasks she is able to complete and submit from her workplace. Not all the tasks are possible for her with her role, but from a list of 20, she is easily able to choose 8.

Now, this seemingly unrelated general education course feels relevant to Tara’s work life. She is not being asked to manufacture responses to hypothetical scenarios on weekly discussion boards. She is being asked to use the knowledge and skills she has developed at work to scaffold new information related to the field of psychology. Generative AI provides an opportunity for any learner to do the same task with results that are individualized to them.

If you’re interested in how the prompt differs for another student, Tim uses the same prompt but adjusts it for his job as a certified nursing assistant in a nursing home. The tasks generated for Tim are as follows:

Based on the psychology syllabus you provided, here are 20 tasks that you could accomplish in your role as a certified nursing assistant (CNA) to demonstrate your understanding of psychology concepts and learning outcomes:

1. Identifying Behavioral Patterns: Observe and document common behavioral patterns among residents to identify psychological principles at work.

2. Reflective Journaling: Maintain a reflective journal where you connect daily experiences at the nursing home with psychological concepts such as mental processes or social behavior.

3. Empirical Analysis: Analyze case studies or specific situations from work to draw logical conclusions about behavior and mental processes.

4. Research Evaluation: Evaluate existing psychological research or data related to elder care practices and suggest ways to improve care based on findings.

5. Ethics in Practice: Discuss or present how ethical principles guide your behavior and decision-making process in patient care.

6. Collaboration Exercise: Work effectively with other CNAs or healthcare professionals to develop a care plan for a resident, using psychological insights.

7. Communication Skills: Demonstrate effective communication and listening skills in resident interactions, informed by psychological theories of communication.

8. Cultural Sensitivity: Recognize and respect the cultural backgrounds of residents, integrating psychological concepts of diversity. Etc.

Notice that for Tara and Tim, completing any of these tasks without any other coursework, reading, video lectures, tutorials, or information would be a challenge. It would also be a challenge to ask AI to complete the assignments given that Tara and Tim will also be asked to discuss these tasks with their workplace-based mentor who will verify completion in the platform they share with the university. The grades in the course honor the on-the-job learning with at least a third of the points dedicated to the tasks Tara and Tim can accomplish at their place of employment. These assignments are not “additional” but are a core part of the curriculum.

There are guiding questions and ideas for Tara and Tim to discuss with the mentors provided by their employer. At these mentor meetings, Tara and Tim are asked to share the work-based tasks they completed with their mentors and solicit feedback from the work-based mentor.

For example, Tim describes how he applied empathy and support to a resident, showcasing his understanding of psychological needs and processes, and making a connection to a video lecture he was assigned in his coursework. Tim’s mentor uses the shared online learning platform to validate that Tim is demonstrating empathy and support in the workplace and can reflect on that competency as a skill he is aware of developing.

Tara describes how she uses psychological motivation techniques with her team of employees. She is making connections between theory and practice and asking thoughtful questions about her observations of the employees she manages.

Employers are just as invested in developing and retaining great employees as educational institutions. When leaders in these spaces work together, the results are incredibly impactful for working learners.

The Faculty Experience

Faculty are recognizing that there is little need for them to deliver content aside from providing clarifications, feedback, examples, and guidance to students to connect them with resources that meet their needs. Tim and Tara could easily be in the same section of general psychology, taught by the same instructor and submitting similar assignments but with different contexts. The faculty instructor spends most of their time meeting one on one or in small groups with students rather than delivering content for synchronous class meetings.

In this scenario, it will be essential to clearly identify exactly what competencies learners are expected to master through the general psychology course. Clear articulation of the competencies will predict the types of outputs learners receive.

Additionally, the instructor may want to include an approval step to ensure that the AI generated tasks selected by the learner are appropriate for their learning and for the people with whom they interact. Clear guidance around what they are ethically permitted to do (i.e., don’t provide counseling, legal or medical advice if you’re not licensed to do so) may be necessary.

With the reduction in time spent delivering in-person instruction, instructors can provide great value to learners with brief, targeted, 15-minute 1 on 1 meetings to review their work, respond to questions, and provide feedback. Faculty will also quickly realize where course materials (videos, exercises, prompts) need to be bolstered when they encounter common issues among students.

Generative AI is changing education as we speak. Embracing the power of AI to individualize general education curriculum could have a significant impact on retention and completion while also solving the public perception that general education is irrelevant. Imagine a reality where graduates are reporting that the most helpful courses in their degrees were the general education courses where they learned to practice the kinds of durable skills prized by today’s employers.

Dr. Erin Crisp, EdD, serves as the AVP for Learner Success and Workforce Pathways in the University of Tennessee System. Crisp has enjoyed a variety of roles in K-12 and postsecondary education related to teaching, academic innovation, and instructional design. Her ideas have been published in Inside Higher Ed, EDUCAUSE Review, Tech Trends, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Atlantic. Her spouse, three adult sons, and two dogs are a continuous source of joy second only to living in Knoxville, Tennessee where opportunities for hiking abound and the Volunteer spirit is strong.

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July 21, 2025
Galvanizing Student Voters: Lessons from the Inaugural Semester of “Plattsburgh Votes” at SUNY Plattsburgh – Faculty Focus

The United States typically sees an uptick in the general public’s interest in civic issues during presidential election years. According to the Pew Research Center, Americans more closely follow the news during such years, and the 2024 election cycle was no exception to what Pew calls the “typical election year surge” (Younis 2020).

On college campuses, this trend can be palpable as well, with students, faculty, and staff feeling more inclined to get involved in civic affairs in some way. Yet it can be difficult to know how to do so, especially on campuses where there is not already a robust civic participation infrastructure.

This article offers a retrospective on our incipient effort in fall 2024 at SUNY Plattsburgh to grow an organization – dubbed simply Plattsburgh Votes – to educate students (in a nonpartisan manner) about voting and to ultimately boost turnout. This is intended to provide guidance for others seeking to galvanize student voting and to create a foundational civic infrastructure on their own campuses for future election cycles. It outlines our approach to conceptualizing student voter engagement, details some key organizational support that is widely accessible to campuses, and reflects on the relative success of different methods of outreach to students.

Understanding the Student Voter Gap

The perception that the latest cohort of young adults is somehow less civically-inclined or interested in politics and current events is, ironically, a trope that recurs with each successive generation. Survey data, however, seem to contradict this notion for members of both the Millennial Generation and Generation Z. According to the American National Election Survey (a reputable source of data widely utilized by political scientists) for instance, young voters (defined as people aged 18-29) in fact show higher levels of interest in elections and public affairs since the turn of the millennium compared to what they reported on surveys conducted between 1976 and 2000 (Holbein and Hillygus 2020, 9).

In this vein, when conceptualizing Plattsburgh Votes, my collaborator Dr. Daniel Lake (Associate Professor of Political Science) and I channeled the framework for understanding young voters’ behavior offered by political scientists John Holbein and Sunshine Hillygus. Hillygus and Holbein note that while young people indeed exhibit a threshold level of interest in elections and civic affairs, there is still a disconnect between these attitudes and their rates of actual voting. Further, many of them intend to vote, but simply do not manage to – a gap that reaches 30% in some ANES data. As the authors summarize the situation, “young people are not turned off by politics…and yet they are not voting in US elections” (Holbein and Hillygus 2020, 8).

To explain the disconnect, they point to what behavioral scientists call “noncognitive skills” as the key impediment to voting among young people. The definition of noncognitive skills varies by context, but they generally refer to “patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior” rather than cognitive aptitudes like reasoning, understanding, and problem solving” (Bjorklund-Young 2016). Noncognitive skills are critical in what Hillygus and Holbein call “follow through” for young people in navigating the practical obstacles and time costs associated with voting, which can be formidable for those unfamiliar with the system (Holbein and Hillygus 2020, 14).

Our voter education efforts at SUNY Plattsburgh were therefore oriented toward ameliorating some of these practical barriers to voting, and in the process, helping reinforce the cultivation of the noncognitive skills that students need in order to be civically engaged.

Helping Students Navigate Location-Based Voting Decisions

One reality that became apparent very quickly is that students largely do not have difficulty registering to vote in some capacity before they arrive at college. Our on-the-ground experience echoed the data for our campus tabulated by the National Study of Voting, Learning, and Engagement (NSLVE) project at Tufts University, which is available for most campuses in the United States (National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement 2025). Our latest NSLVE data indicated a registration rate above 70 percent even during the 2022 midterm election cycle. Whether this is due to efforts by K-12 institutions, the success of “motor voter” laws that enable registration when applying for a driver license or other ID, or some other factor, a large majority of the students we contacted through various outreach efforts indeed reported that they were already registered to vote. This of course has implications for how we address our practical guidance: if the majority of them are successfully registered, what is it that they still need help with?

Our experience with Plattsburgh Votes indicates that possibly the most significant remaining hurdle is young people’s relative lack of awareness that voting is a location-specific activity. Perhaps the most important work conducted by our organization involved the tabling efforts, class visits, and digital outreach geared specifically toward helping students make proactive decisions about where they wanted to vote (using either their home or college address), to check where they were indeed registered, and to request absentee ballots. Yet judging by the volume of students who were still unaware that these options required decisive action before a deadline, it is clear that earlier and more emphatic efforts are necessary to help students actually follow through on their intentions.

Peer-to-Peer Outreach: What Worked—and What Didn’t

Another significant takeaway from the fall 2024 initiative concerns the importance of peer influence in student voter education. As Dr. Allison Rank, a political scientist, veteran organizer, and director of SUNY Oswego’s robust “Vote Oswego” initiative emphasized in guidance to our group, students are more receptive to information delivered face-to-face by a peer than from faculty or another authority figure in any medium. Thanks to our submission of an action plan with the All-In Democracy Challenge – which “outline[s] a campus’ landscape, leadership team, goals, strategies and tactics, and evaluation processes” for encouraging voter participation – we were consequently eligible to apply for and receive a mini-grant from All-In that was used to hire three student interns (ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge 2025). Using collectively generated presentations and educational material, these interns took the lead in delivering our in-person educational outreach efforts during the fall 2024 semester.

Yet we learned quickly that in-person outreach efforts led by student peers still must be strategically responsive to the realities of how students apportion their time and attention. Informational classroom visits by student advocates can be especially effective because students can be coached through a process like (re-)registering or requesting a ballot on the spot, minimizing the need for subsequent steps to be completed on their own. To that end, our group likewise concluded that it behooves organizers to focus classroom visits on one discrete process (e.g. “requesting a ballot to vote by mail”) rather than delivering a presentation that covers all relevant aspects of voting comprehensively.

Other forms of outreach were less successful, however. For instance, the student interns reported dismal attendance at the “voting office hours” that they held in common areas of the college residence buildings. While it is possible that our method of publicizing their availability through emails from the residence life director was suboptimal in garnering student attention, the experience also seemed to indicate significant reluctance on the part of students to plan in advance to seek out help and proactively ask questions. Instead, approaches in which the voter education organization’s representatives initiate the contact seem more promising.

The Untapped Power of Pledges

Finally, one tactic which Plattsburgh Votes did not have the time or resources to pursue extensively in fall 2024 was securing pledges from students to take particular voting actions.

Both research as well as conventional wisdom in grassroots organizing holds that people are generally more likely to follow through on an action when they have pledged to take it. Political science researchers testing whether pledging to vote affected voter turnout in fact found specifically that first-time young voters were likeliest to follow through and vote when they pledged to (Costa, Schaffner, and Prevost 2018). It seems promising, then, for both our organization and any others engaging in student voter education to brainstorm methods of soliciting pledges from students and then following up to remind them of their pledges as deadlines approach.

The campus-specific data on 2024 voter turnout from NSLVE is not yet available. Preliminary reports from the CIRCLE organization at Tufts (which administers the program) estimates that youth turnout in 2024 was down from 2020 to a rate of around 42%, but was stronger in battleground states like Pennsylvania (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement 2025).We are confident that Plattsburgh Votes was able to have some impact on closing the gap between registration rate and actual voter turnout, but the precise magnitude remains to be seen. Regardless, it is clear that continued effort on campuses is necessary. The efforts must find creative, contextually-sensitive ways to account for the role that “noncognitive skills” play in affecting voting behavior and help students with the procedural aspects of voting so that they can successfully follow through on their intentions.

Dr. Ben Medeiros is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at SUNY Plattsburgh. His teaching and research focus on political communication, media law, and digital media culture. Medeiros is on the editorial board of the journal Communication & Democracy and the author of the book Reputation Management Online: America’s ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ (Routledge/National Communication Association, 2022).

References

ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge. “Campus Action Plan Development.” ALL IN Challenge. Accessed June 18, 2025. https://allinchallenge.org/resources/action-plans/.

Bjorklund-Young, Alanna. What Do We Know About Developing Students’ Non-cognitive Skills? Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, June 2016. https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/e7ed674e-6fab-4339-95e2-50c0d78e6833/content.

Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. “The Youth Vote in 2024.” CIRCLE. Accessed June 18, 2025. https://circle.tufts.edu/2024-election.

Costa, Mia, Brian F. Schaffner, and Alicia Prevost. “Walking the Walk? Experiments on the Effect of Pledging to Vote on Youth Turnout.” PLoS One 13, no. 5 (May 29, 2018): e0197066. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197066.

Holbein, John B., and D. Sunshine Hillygus. Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Civic Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement. “About NSLVE.” National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement. Accessed June 18, 2025. https://nslve.tufts.edu/about-us.

Younis, Mohamed. “In U.S., Attention to Politics Shows Typical Election Year Surge.” Gallup. September 23, 2020. https://news.gallup.com/poll/320738/attention-politics-shows-typical-election-year-surge.aspx.

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July 7, 2025
Galvanizing Student Voters: Lessons from the Inaugural Semester of “Plattsburgh Votes” at SUNY Plattsburgh – Faculty Focus

The United States typically sees an uptick in the general public’s interest in civic issues during presidential election years. According to the Pew Research Center, Americans more closely follow the news during such years, and the 2024 election cycle was no exception to what Pew calls the “typical election year surge” (Younis 2020).

On college campuses, this trend can be palpable as well, with students, faculty, and staff feeling more inclined to get involved in civic affairs in some way. Yet it can be difficult to know how to do so, especially on campuses where there is not already a robust civic participation infrastructure.

This article offers a retrospective on our incipient effort in fall 2024 at SUNY Plattsburgh to grow an organization – dubbed simply Plattsburgh Votes – to educate students (in a nonpartisan manner) about voting and to ultimately boost turnout. This is intended to provide guidance for others seeking to galvanize student voting and to create a foundational civic infrastructure on their own campuses for future election cycles. It outlines our approach to conceptualizing student voter engagement, details some key organizational support that is widely accessible to campuses, and reflects on the relative success of different methods of outreach to students.

Understanding the Student Voter Gap

The perception that the latest cohort of young adults is somehow less civically-inclined or interested in politics and current events is, ironically, a trope that recurs with each successive generation. Survey data, however, seem to contradict this notion for members of both the Millennial Generation and Generation Z. According to the American National Election Survey (a reputable source of data widely utilized by political scientists) for instance, young voters (defined as people aged 18-29) in fact show higher levels of interest in elections and public affairs since the turn of the millennium compared to what they reported on surveys conducted between 1976 and 2000 (Holbein and Hillygus 2020, 9).

In this vein, when conceptualizing Plattsburgh Votes, my collaborator Dr. Daniel Lake (Associate Professor of Political Science) and I channeled the framework for understanding young voters’ behavior offered by political scientists John Holbein and Sunshine Hillygus. Hillygus and Holbein note that while young people indeed exhibit a threshold level of interest in elections and civic affairs, there is still a disconnect between these attitudes and their rates of actual voting. Further, many of them intend to vote, but simply do not manage to – a gap that reaches 30% in some ANES data. As the authors summarize the situation, “young people are not turned off by politics…and yet they are not voting in US elections” (Holbein and Hillygus 2020, 8).

To explain the disconnect, they point to what behavioral scientists call “noncognitive skills” as the key impediment to voting among young people. The definition of noncognitive skills varies by context, but they generally refer to “patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior” rather than cognitive aptitudes like reasoning, understanding, and problem solving” (Bjorklund-Young 2016). Noncognitive skills are critical in what Hillygus and Holbein call “follow through” for young people in navigating the practical obstacles and time costs associated with voting, which can be formidable for those unfamiliar with the system (Holbein and Hillygus 2020, 14).

Our voter education efforts at SUNY Plattsburgh were therefore oriented toward ameliorating some of these practical barriers to voting, and in the process, helping reinforce the cultivation of the noncognitive skills that students need in order to be civically engaged.

Helping Students Navigate Location-Based Voting Decisions

One reality that became apparent very quickly is that students largely do not have difficulty registering to vote in some capacity before they arrive at college. Our on-the-ground experience echoed the data for our campus tabulated by the National Study of Voting, Learning, and Engagement (NSLVE) project at Tufts University, which is available for most campuses in the United States (National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement 2025). Our latest NSLVE data indicated a registration rate above 70 percent even during the 2022 midterm election cycle. Whether this is due to efforts by K-12 institutions, the success of “motor voter” laws that enable registration when applying for a driver license or other ID, or some other factor, a large majority of the students we contacted through various outreach efforts indeed reported that they were already registered to vote. This of course has implications for how we address our practical guidance: if the majority of them are successfully registered, what is it that they still need help with?

Our experience with Plattsburgh Votes indicates that possibly the most significant remaining hurdle is young people’s relative lack of awareness that voting is a location-specific activity. Perhaps the most important work conducted by our organization involved the tabling efforts, class visits, and digital outreach geared specifically toward helping students make proactive decisions about where they wanted to vote (using either their home or college address), to check where they were indeed registered, and to request absentee ballots. Yet judging by the volume of students who were still unaware that these options required decisive action before a deadline, it is clear that earlier and more emphatic efforts are necessary to help students actually follow through on their intentions.

Peer-to-Peer Outreach: What Worked—and What Didn’t

Another significant takeaway from the fall 2024 initiative concerns the importance of peer influence in student voter education. As Dr. Allison Rank, a political scientist, veteran organizer, and director of SUNY Oswego’s robust “Vote Oswego” initiative emphasized in guidance to our group, students are more receptive to information delivered face-to-face by a peer than from faculty or another authority figure in any medium. Thanks to our submission of an action plan with the All-In Democracy Challenge – which “outline[s] a campus’ landscape, leadership team, goals, strategies and tactics, and evaluation processes” for encouraging voter participation – we were consequently eligible to apply for and receive a mini-grant from All-In that was used to hire three student interns (ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge 2025). Using collectively generated presentations and educational material, these interns took the lead in delivering our in-person educational outreach efforts during the fall 2024 semester.

Yet we learned quickly that in-person outreach efforts led by student peers still must be strategically responsive to the realities of how students apportion their time and attention. Informational classroom visits by student advocates can be especially effective because students can be coached through a process like (re-)registering or requesting a ballot on the spot, minimizing the need for subsequent steps to be completed on their own. To that end, our group likewise concluded that it behooves organizers to focus classroom visits on one discrete process (e.g. “requesting a ballot to vote by mail”) rather than delivering a presentation that covers all relevant aspects of voting comprehensively.

Other forms of outreach were less successful, however. For instance, the student interns reported dismal attendance at the “voting office hours” that they held in common areas of the college residence buildings. While it is possible that our method of publicizing their availability through emails from the residence life director was suboptimal in garnering student attention, the experience also seemed to indicate significant reluctance on the part of students to plan in advance to seek out help and proactively ask questions. Instead, approaches in which the voter education organization’s representatives initiate the contact seem more promising.

The Untapped Power of Pledges

Finally, one tactic which Plattsburgh Votes did not have the time or resources to pursue extensively in fall 2024 was securing pledges from students to take particular voting actions.

Both research as well as conventional wisdom in grassroots organizing holds that people are generally more likely to follow through on an action when they have pledged to take it. Political science researchers testing whether pledging to vote affected voter turnout in fact found specifically that first-time young voters were likeliest to follow through and vote when they pledged to (Costa, Schaffner, and Prevost 2018). It seems promising, then, for both our organization and any others engaging in student voter education to brainstorm methods of soliciting pledges from students and then following up to remind them of their pledges as deadlines approach.

The campus-specific data on 2024 voter turnout from NSLVE is not yet available. Preliminary reports from the CIRCLE organization at Tufts (which administers the program) estimates that youth turnout in 2024 was down from 2020 to a rate of around 42%, but was stronger in battleground states like Pennsylvania (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement 2025).We are confident that Plattsburgh Votes was able to have some impact on closing the gap between registration rate and actual voter turnout, but the precise magnitude remains to be seen. Regardless, it is clear that continued effort on campuses is necessary. The efforts must find creative, contextually-sensitive ways to account for the role that “noncognitive skills” play in affecting voting behavior and help students with the procedural aspects of voting so that they can successfully follow through on their intentions.

Dr. Ben Medeiros is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at SUNY Plattsburgh. His teaching and research focus on political communication, media law, and digital media culture. Medeiros is on the editorial board of the journal Communication & Democracy and the author of the book Reputation Management Online: America’s ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ (Routledge/National Communication Association, 2022).

References

ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge. “Campus Action Plan Development.” ALL IN Challenge. Accessed June 18, 2025. https://allinchallenge.org/resources/action-plans/.

Bjorklund-Young, Alanna. What Do We Know About Developing Students’ Non-cognitive Skills? Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, June 2016. https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/e7ed674e-6fab-4339-95e2-50c0d78e6833/content.

Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. “The Youth Vote in 2024.” CIRCLE. Accessed June 18, 2025. https://circle.tufts.edu/2024-election.

Costa, Mia, Brian F. Schaffner, and Alicia Prevost. “Walking the Walk? Experiments on the Effect of Pledging to Vote on Youth Turnout.” PLoS One 13, no. 5 (May 29, 2018): e0197066. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197066.

Holbein, John B., and D. Sunshine Hillygus. Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Civic Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement. “About NSLVE.” National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement. Accessed June 18, 2025. https://nslve.tufts.edu/about-us.

Younis, Mohamed. “In U.S., Attention to Politics Shows Typical Election Year Surge.” Gallup. September 23, 2020. https://news.gallup.com/poll/320738/attention-politics-shows-typical-election-year-surge.aspx.

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July 7, 2025