Engaging and retaining students in productive learning

This chapter brings together 40 years of experience and research on how best to engage and retain students in productive learning. It provides empirical data which show that it is the total university or college experience, not just what happens in the traditional classroom, that accounts for effective student engagement, retention, and success. Proven strategies and resources for optimizing the quality of student aspiration building, transition and retention are identified, and the critical importance of high quality, aligned student administration, infrastructure, cocurricular, student preparation, and support systems is noted. The chapter argues that it is no good to have highly satisfied, rigorously assessed, well supported, and highly engaged students with high levels of retention if what they are learning is irrelevant and leaves them ill-equipped to successfully navigate the many social, cultural, economic, vocational, and environmental sustainability challenges now being faced by the world. The stakes are high for universities and colleges in the coming decades of the twenty-first century. Those that will flourish will have a clear moral purpose" the development of work ready plus graduates who are emotionally intelligent, sustainability literate, change implementation savvy, inventive, and ethically robust. And they will use the total university experience to make this happen.