A Revision Focused on Research-Based Strategies to Help Students Succeed

While retaining many of the hallmark features that characterize the Gardner/Barefoot text, we have added new areas of emphasis grounded in the latest research on student success.

  1. A focus on high-impact practices. An exciting new aspect of the twelfth edition is the inclusion of strategies for using “high-impact practices”—ten educational activities that have been shown to increase student learning, retention, and engagement throughout the undergraduate years.2 The first chapter of the book introduces the concept of high-impact practices (HIP) for students, lists and describes them, and discusses their benefits. New annotations in each chapter of the Instructor’s Annotated Edition feature suggestions for utilizing one or more HIPs in the context of chapter content. This new category of instructor’s annotations is denoted with the heading “HIGH-IMPACT PRACTICE.” Also, a special icon image identifies content in the features and narrative of the student edition that relates to HIPs. For instance, readers will see the HIP icon adjacent to the Your Turn: Work Together and Your Turn: Write and Reflect activities, and with content coverage related to writing, collaboration, diversity, global learning, or service learning. Furthermore, icons placed within the table of contents and the list of Your Turn features show you where to find HIP material.
  2. An emphasis on motivation and the importance of the choices students make. Through the narrative and special features, the new edition helps students see how good choices bring them closer to their goals, guides them in understanding how being resilient involves bouncing back from poor choices and making increasingly smarter ones, and motivates them to make these smarter decisions. Each chapter includes a Your Turn: Stay Motivated feature, a Your Turn: Make Good Choices feature, and an ending exercise that invites students to Reflect on Choices through writing. Collegiate success is often determined by both large and small choices that students make in the first term of college, and we want students to be aware of how their choices can dramatically change the outcomes of their college experience.
  3. Updates across all chapters, with extensive revisions to fundamental coverage in one chapter in each major part. In Chapter 15, Majors and Careers, offers effective guidance on and tools for exploring different careers and industries in today’s job market and economy.
  4. Assistance for using peer leaders in college success courses. As many colleges and universities now recognize the importance of upper-level students as coteachers or peer leaders for the first-year seminar, the Instructor’s Annotated Edition now includes special annotations for and about them. Each chapter includes suggestions that peer leaders (or the instructor of record) can use in designing special activities that can be led by peer leaders. The Use Your Resources section includes peer leaders as valuable sources for student support.
  5. An increased focus on four-year higher education. With the publication of a new edition of Your College Experience specifically developed for students attending two-year and community colleges, the twelfth edition now focuses more intentionally on the particular issues of students in baccalaureate colleges and universities. Given that students attending open-enrollment institutions are becoming increasingly broad and diverse, the twelfth edition provides support, information, and guidance appropriate for students at all higher education institutions.

The twelfth edition continues the Gardner and Barefoot tradition of helping students self-assess their strengths, practice goal setting, focus on purpose and motivation, and maintain their engagement in this course. A section on goal setting in Chapter 1 gets students thinking immediately about this important skill. Assess Your Strengths and Set Goals boxes early in each chapter ask students to set goals, and Reflect on Choices and Apply What You Have Learned exercises at the end of each chapter ask students to think back on how the chapter relates to choices they make and to apply what they have learned in the chapter to current and future academic work.

The following features return in the twelfth edition, with many exciting enhancements:

Chapter-opening profiles help students see themselves in the text. Each chapter of the text opens with the story of a recent first-year student who has used the strategies presented in the chapter to succeed in college. The profiled students come from diverse backgrounds and attend diverse colleges and universities around the country.

Thought-provoking photographs and cartoons in every chapter—many of them new to this edition—with carefully written titles and captions reinforce concepts in the narrative and encourage critical thinking. For instance, in the Time Management chapter, a captioned photo of NFL coach Pete Carroll and his players encourages students to “Set Priorities like the Pros.” In the communication chapter, a new photo of Ellen DeGeneres hosting the Academy Awards provides a great example of audience interaction, and its caption discusses how the comedy icon used to be scared to speak before an audience. In the careers chapter, a new photo of a career fair for military veterans emphasizes the importance of making professional connections.

Your Turn collaborative learning activities foster peer-to-peer communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. These activities can be used in class, as homework, or as group activities to strengthen the bond between students and their college communities. They are organized into four types based on what students are asked to do or to consider: Work Together, Write and Reflect, Make Good Choices, and Stay Motivated.

Is This You? boxes speak directly to students in circumstances that are commonly found among students taking first-year experience courses. Look for these special messages to first-generation college students, returning students, veterans, students with children, and student athletes. They also cover common first-year issues that many students encounter, such as being disappointed in a class, weight gain, financial problems, and the clash of new ideas with old beliefs. The feature directs students to specific content within the chapter. Here is a list of these features:

Coverage of technology and learning. The link between technology and learning is highlighted in every chapter of the twelfth edition with a Tech Tip feature. These features introduce critical technology skills that span the classroom and real life. All Tech Tip features have been extensively revised for the new edition, with titles such as Get Digitally Organized (Chapter 2). Models (including digital models) let students see principles in action. Because many students learn best by example, full-size models—more than in any competing book—show realistic examples of strategies for academic success such as using time-management tools, annotating a textbook, using mind maps, and taking notes in various formats. Digital models are included to reflect the tools today’s students use in their everyday lives.

Expanded examples from across the curriculum. The text now includes more concrete scenarios, pages, exercises, and problems from STEM, humanities, and social science courses.

Use Your Resources boxes connect students to their campus, faculty, and other students. To help students take more control of their own success, every chapter includes a quick overview of additional resources for support, including learning-assistance centers, books, Web sites, and fellow students—with a prompt for students to add their own ideas.

Skills-based practice exercises provide hands-on, point-of-use reinforcement of major concepts. Students use these exercises to practice skills that they can then apply to other academic courses. For instance, the Time Management chapter includes a tool for students to conduct a Procrastination Self-Assessment, and the test-taking chapter includes a new Test Anxiety Quiz.

Retention Strategies in every chapter of the Instructor’s Annotated Edition offer best practices from John Gardner and Betsy Barefoot to help students persist in the first year. In addition, a 16-page insert at the beginning of the Instructor’s Annotated Edition includes chapter-specific exercises and activities designed as retention strategies to support writing, critical thinking, working in groups, planning, reflecting, and taking action.