Academic Rigor

Academic rigor is not:

A logistically difficult course with rigid policies, where the level of intellectual difficulty is arbitrary.

It requires busywork.

Grading with a bell curve. (Supiano, 2021)

Academic Rigor is:

An intellectually difficult course that challenges students' assumptions, spurs their motivation, requires their effort, and increases their skills, where the level of intellectual difficulty is purposeful and aligns with the course learning outcomes.

It pushes students to learn. It is related to the amount of reading that students complete, and challenges in class and in exams and assignments. (Culver et al., 2021)

Challenges students face:

inadequate preparation in foundation knowledge. Students entering colleges with various degrees of knowledge in subject areas. Support, training, tutoring, and corresponding policies will help students meet the pre-requirement for certain coursework activities. (Supiano, 2022)
family care duties or job duties that limit their availability for study time. Flexibility of due dates within a boundary will be much appreciated by most students. (Skufca & O'connell, 2020)

Strategies to strengthen academic rigor:

Redefine rigor as necessary for, not opposing to inclusive teaching
remove barriers for inequities in learning;
challenge students with purposeful and transparent teaching, nor hard for the sake of being hard, and not busy work;
Provide flexible policies while maintain the level of academic rigor;
Provide support to help students meet the challenge, not lower the standards for the challenge.

Citation:

Culver, K.C., Braxton, J.M., and Pascarella, E.T. (2021). What we talk about when we talk about rigor: examining conceptions of academic rigor. The Journal of Higher Education. 2021, Vol. 92, No. 7, 1140-1163.

Skufca, L. and O'connell, I.H. (2020). Staying the Course: How Dual Responsibilities Create Challenges for Student Caregivers. Washington, DC: AARP Research, September 2020. https://doi.org/10.26419/res.00415.001

Supiano, B. (2022, March 29). The redefinition of rigor: The pandemic has amplified the debate over how professors should challenge their students. What's it really about? The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 11/30/2022, from https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-redefinition-of-rigor?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_3977178_nl_Academe-Today_date_20220330&cid=at&source=ams&sourceid=

Page author: Tianhong Shi

Citation: Mandernach, B. J., Ford, D., Xu, Y. & Shi, T. (2022). Post-pandemic teaching and learning: Revisiting common practices. https://sites.google.com/view/revisitingcommonpractices

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