“I Never Would Have Talked to This Person”: The Power of an Assignment to Encourage Engagement

Abstract

First-Year Seminars (FYS) are a high-impact practice (Keup & Young, 2018; Skipper, 2017). However, outcomes of pedagogical approaches linked to those seminars have not been as well researched. An expectation of Christian higher education is to consider what kind of spiritual and personal formation is happening through classroom assignments and practices (Smith, 2021a). This qualitative study explored the impact of an assignment in which first-year students interacted in structured conversations outside of class for 10 weeks of the fall semester. Students reflected on their experiences by responding to prompts at the midpoint and end of the semester, and the researcher conducted a qualitative analysis of the responses with a focus on the question: “Have our teaching practices nudged students toward genuine engagement with the people around them?” The most common themes revealed that structured conversations functioned as a formative relational practice, which moved students to engage in meaningful ways with people with whom they previously thought they would have nothing in common.