Using the Classroom to Cultivate Student Support for Participation in Campus Life: The Call for Civic Education Interventions

Abstract

Extracurricular campus activities mirror the effects of associational life on political participation (Kuh 1995; Pascarella, Ethington, and Smart 1988; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). As encouraging student participation in such activities can be difficult (Kuh, Schuh, Whitt, Andreas, Lyons, Strange, Krehbiel, and MacKay 1991), this project describes an effort to promote peer enhancement of campus life. Students in a persuasion course developed a campaign to increase participation on campus. Pre- and postsemester questionnaires, as well as focus groups, reveal that students anticipated participating in more campus and community activities, and their attitudes toward the purpose of college broadened. Self-efficacy regarding several political tasks also improved. Students in a control group experienced no similar changes, suggesting that classroom activities can address current college students' political apathy. The conclusion calls for political scientists, who are the most familiar with declining political participation and the ameliorating effects of associational life, to initiate interdisciplinary interventions with the potential to reach the most alienated college students.

Keywords:

• associational life
• college experiences
• college students
• extracurricular activities
• political efficacy
• political participation
• youth

The author wishes to thank University at Albany's Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Jeanette Altarriba and Associate Vice President for Student Affairs Christine Bouchard for their support and advice as this project developed, as well as undergraduate research assistant Melissa Nappi for offering her data management and data entry skills.

Notes

T = Treatment; C = Control.

∘p < .10; ∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ∗∗∗p < .001.

Question: Indicate how likely you will be to participate in the following activities in the future.

T = Treatment; C = Control.

∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ∗∗∗p < .001.

Question: Indicate how important it is for a college education to prepare students like yourself for success in the following endeavors.

T = Treatment; C = Control.

∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ∗∗∗p < .001.

Question: Indicate how likely you will be to participate in the following activities in the future.

T = Treatment; C = Control.

∘p < .10; ∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ∗∗∗p < .001.

Question: Indicate how capable you feel of accomplishing the following tasks.

The author's personal experience teaching courses to communication majors has underscored most students' negative, visceral reactions to the term “politics.” Indeed the surest way to cut class size is to include it in a course title. Enrollments in her PiPR course, for example, nearly double that of her course entitled Political Campaign Communication.

Students were debriefed regarding the purposeful design of the project at the end of the semester. In fact, the debriefing provided a teachable moment, as students had spent the semester learning how to apply the same theories and research findings to their own persuasive intervention.

These questions were derived, with slight modifications, from The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) conducted by the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University, Bloomington and from the College Student Survey (CSS) conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. These survey instruments can be accessed, respectively, at: http://nsse.iub.edu/html/survey_instruments_2005.cfm and http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/css_survey.html.

Questions used in the American National Election Studies can be accessed at: http://www.umich.edu/~nes/resources/questions/questions.htm.

Colby et al. (2003, 119) recognize that higher education institutions can and should play a similar role in cultivating the cultural identities, and thus long-term behavior, of their graduates.