Research Findings

Overview of Findings from the First Year of the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education (PDF)

In our analysis of data from 3,081 students at 19 institutions in the first round of the study we found that, on the whole, students changed very little on the outcomes that we measured over their first year in college. Despite the fact that students generally did not change much, we also identified a set of teaching practices and conditions that predict student growth on a wide variety of outcomes. This would seem to suggest that across the institutions in the study, these effective teaching practices and institutional conditions are not prevalent enough to produce widespread change. Indeed, the data from the first year of the study indicate that most of our students are only experiencing moderate levels of these important practices and conditions. Thus, one possible way to improve student growth on the outcomes is to expand the degree to which students encounter these supportive conditions and practices.

High-Impact Practices and Experiences from the Wabash National Study (PDF)

In our research thus far, we have found that four broad categories of teaching practices and institutional conditions predict growth on a wide variety of student outcomes including leadership, openness to diversity and challenge, political and social involvement, and positive attitude toward literacy. These categories of high-impact teaching practices and institutional conditions were derived from Wabash National Study questions in the Student Experiences Survey and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). In this document, we provide more detail on the types of high-impact experiences in these four categories. We believe that we can improve the impact of our institutions by helping students experience more of these good teaching practices and supportive institutional conditions.