Orientation Course
[The Freshman Seminar revisited]
Virginia Gordon's brief history of special courses for freshmen reminds us that these courses, self-consciously designed to orient new students into academia, began about 100 years ago. [Virginia P. Gordon, Origin and Purpose of the Freshman Seminar, in "The Freshman year Experience," by Upcraft and Gardener, 1989, Josey-Bass, San Francisco, CA] However, the gradual transition of colleges and universities into research centers reduced the incentive for the academic faculties to involve themselves with undergraduate education and with freshmen in particular. Freshman Seminars nearly died out. But for a variety of reasons the need to intervene in students' transition from high school to college is once again recognized on most campuses.
It is especially recognized by the teaching faculty who encounter first or second year students in the class room. The teachers who discover the transition problem, however, do not always consider themselves well-suited or equipped to become involved in solving it. There is a certain logic in this position. One habit of mind in paarticular that reflective and experienced teachers look for in students is the ability to learn on their own, and it is just this lack of experience in learning on their own that is at the heart of academic transition problems. The average college teacher, however, has not made a careful study of how people come to be able to learn on their own. It is a problem of pedagogy and few of us who teach college have much formal training in practical cognitive processes. Many teaching faculty feel that transition problems are best left to others. It is unfortunate that they take that position. New college students in particular need caring and experienced classroom teachers with a passion for their discipline
. It would seem, then, that everyone would profit if more of the regular teaching faculty, particularly the more experienced, were to become involved in some aspect of helping freshmen through the transition. Some colleges have gotten them to do so by making the orientation course attractive to experienced teachers through a fairly simple expedient. Student activities designed to inculcate the desired academic traits and skills are incorporated into an academic course, often called the Freshman Seminar.
[Involving the Teaching Faculty]
Freshman Seminars that teach content material appeal to many teachers who are reluctant to take on other formats designed to cope with the transition problem. Even without formal training in cognitive science, many teaching faculty believe, based on their experience, that academic skills can be neither taught nor learned free of some substantial content. This belief, combined with some uncertainty as to what to do in a content-free classroom, discourages many experienced teachers from involving themselves in orientation courses.
They further suspect, again, from experience, that courses that are optional or ungraded do not hold the fascination for the new college student that they might for the more mature and focused graduate student. It is indeed difficult to get new students (to say nothing of administration and faculty) to take seriously those orientation courses that are ungraded or carry no credit. It would appear that the kind of orientation course that would combine all the desirable academic elements would be the Freshman Seminar. Ideally, such a course would do the following:
1) Involve experienced and talented faculty teaching topics that are dear to their hearts.
2) Carry credit and be graded so that all take it seriously.
3) Incorporate as intrinsic elements, coaching in, and practice with, those academic skills essential for a successful college experience.
As described, the Freshman Seminar would not try to introduce the new student to every aspect of college life. Success in the transition to the academic rigors of college while learning the content of the seminar would constitute in itself a considerable accomplishment. Well-delineated academic goals make the Freshman Seminar appealing to experienced faculty, even if it means that they themselves have to learn some new things. Trying to incorporate all aspects of transition to college, including the many and important implications of a new social environment, reduces the appeal of the Freshman Seminar for the teaching faculty.
Considering the extent of the needs of new students on many college campuses, it may well be that all of those needs can no longer be met in a single orientation course. "Divide and conquer" might be the appropriate approach. If attention can be focused for the moment on just the academic problems, it would appear that three pressing needs can be satisfied most economically by means of a Freshman Seminar, if it can be made a serious component of the academic curriculum:
1) The experience of teaching faculty is brought to bear on a serious campus problem.
2) Freshmen get early experience dealing with academic matters in a serious way, with the help of an expert.
3) Academic credit accrues for both student and teacher.
[Some Restraints]
In order to achieve all of the goals outlined, certain requirements and restraints must be put on the Freshman Seminar as here understood. If practice and coaching in higher order learning skills is to be substantial, the "requirement" that a considerable amount of material be "covered" must be abandoned. For this reason the Freshman Seminar should not be a survey course, or attempt to substitute for one. It should not, at least in content, be a prerequisite for subsequent courses. Being relieved of the need to cover material, both teacher and student can allow themselves the luxury of time: time to read, write, and talk about something until students themselves begin to feel they are experts on the topic.
If language development is to be a prime goal, and it clearly should be, the Freshman Seminar must be small enough to allow the teacher to know each student by name, to talk to and listen to each student, and to coach each in speaking and writing. To encourage and develop these same skills outside the environs of the classroom, assignments and small group activities that bring students into contact with the library and other support organizations are important.
With respect to the latter requirement, some of these activities would be content related, but others would not. In all cases, speaking and writing are essential, for even if the assignment is not content related, speaking and writing encourage students in integrative thinking - applying their developing skills in a variety of apparently unrelated situations.
Combining content and higher order learning skills in one course requires two essential elements:
1) The syllabus must reflect both goals in detail.
2) The teachers themselves must be educated to conduct the course in a way that develops academic skills.
The second point is particularly critical. It is a matter more of pedagogy than of good intention. Referential writing, for example, must be coached and not just assigned. Study groups must be set up and monitored and not just suggested. Faculty development is a requirement if academic skills are to be developed in a content seminar.
This kind of seminar has not been popular on all campuses (See A National Report by Betsy Barefoot in The Keystone, Spring, 1993). The obvious emphasis is on academic skills developed through academic content, and many campuses find that their freshman have more general coping problems. While the Freshman Seminar provides sufficiently close contact between teacher and students to encourage advising and counseling as needed, it is too much to expect that it could adequately deal with all the social and personal aspects of transition. As suggested above, perhaps the problem has grown sufficiently serious that the academic and nonacademic aspects of transition need to be defined and addressed separately.
[Something for Nothing]
A notable advantage of addressing academic transition separately is that, with some imagination, it can be done almost cost-free. If credit accrues for both student and faculty in the Freshman Seminar, neither sees it as an added burden or an overload. If the course, successfully completed, is now accepted as a distribution requirement in the sciences, social sciences, or humanities, no new faculty are needed, only a redistribution of their efforts.
These very advantages, however, open the Freshman Seminar to abuse. Merely renaming existing distribution courses as "freshman seminars" will not do. Developing skill in college learning is difficult work, as is the coaching required to bring it off. To be a true orientation course, the Freshman Seminar demands bold thinking and considerable effort on the part of administration and faculty as well as students. Preparing the teaching faculty to coach students in the processes of learning is often a major sticking point. The first step might be to offer them a course they would very much like to teach.
Robert N. Leamnson, Ph.D.
Professor, Biology
Director, Multidisciplinary Studies
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
N. Dartmouth, MA 02747
rleamnson@umassd.edu
[This article appeared originally in the Fall 1995 issue of Keystone, a publication of Wadsworth Publishing, an ITP company]
See also Learning Your Way
Through College
