This study estimates the effects of a deep approaches to learning scale and its subscales on measures of students' critical thinking, need for cognition, and positive attitudes toward literacy, controlling for pre-college scores for the outcomes and other covariates. Results suggest reflection is critical to making gains across the outcomes.

Informal (and sometimes formal) assessments in higher education often ask students how their skills or attitudes have changed as the result of engaging in a particular course or program; however, it is unclear to what extent these self-reports are accurate. Using a longitudinal sample of over 3,000 college students, we found that students were…

This study investigated the relative freshman-year cognitive impacts of 2 historically black and 16 predominantly white colleges on black students. Of these institutions, 5 were 2-year institutions and the rest were 4-year colleges. The data were taken from a pool of 2,416 freshmen students who participated in the National Study of Student…