The latest installment of Great Conversations has been released, titled Teaching for Lifelong Student Success. The video features Dr. George Kuh, who discusses strategies for developing students into lifelong learners.
Kuh is the Founding Director, Senior Scholar and Co-principal Investigator at the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, an adjunct research professor of education policy at the University of Illinois, and Chancellor’s Professor of Higher Education Emeritus at Indiana University. He is a highly-regarded scholar who has contributed to our understanding of High-Impact Educational Practices and conditions that help create student success.
In his conversation Kuh discusses the largest challenge facing higher education today: growing skepticism that it is important. The solution, he believes, begins in the classroom.
“The need to be a life-long learner has never been more important,” Kuh said. “Content of a course is becoming less important than the proficiencies that students walk away with. What kinds of learning experiences will prepare students to learn on their own? To work in a job that doesn’t exist today?”
Developing into a life-long learner means understanding the importance of learning in the classroom. “None of this matters if we aren’t asking students to reflect in deep meaningful ways over the studies,” Kuh said. “What this has meant to them, how they are different now, what they can do that they couldn’t do before.”
“That’s the most important thing that can come out of the educational experience,” Kuh said. “Can this person hold their own in an ever-changing world and continue to grow and learn over time?”
Great Conversations is a video series of faculty-curated conversations with scholars and researchers. To watch videos in the series, visit https://teaching.iu.edu/greatconversations/ or search “Great Conversations” in ProfessorPedia.