Freshman Seminars: A Review of Research-Based Outcomes

Betsy Barefoot, Ed.D., Co-Director
National Resource Center for The Freshman Year Experience
& Students in Transition

Currently, on approximately 70% of the nation's college and university campuses, freshman seminars are being implemented in an attempt to ease the transition of students into the college environment and to increase the likelihood that admitted students will achieve "success" as define by each institution.

Assessment has become a fact of academic life, but it plays a special role with respect to the freshman seminar. Because freshman seminars represent what some educators regard as a non-traditional curriculum reform (even though they have existed since 1882), they have been studied and evaluated more often than has been the practice for any other course in the higher education curriculum.

What this assessment has found is that freshman seminars, with few exceptions, result in significantly improved rates of student retention, graduation, and improved grade point averages. In-depth study at the University of South Carolina find that these outcomes are likely the result of the coming together of course "process" and "content." The critical processes in the freshman seminar are the creation of a support group and the facilitation of high levels of interaction between students themselves and between students and faculty. The content of the seminar focuses on helping students manage the freedoms and responsibilities inherent in college life and assisting them in the formulation of realistic future goals.

In 1993, the National Resource Center for The Freshman Year Experience compiled 35 synopses of research conducted on the freshman seminar at campuses of all sizes and types. Since that time, the Center has accumulated additional evidence from many other institutions which continues to indicate a positive correlation between participation in the freshman seminar and many desirable experiential outcomes for both students and faculty. The outcomes include, but are not limited to, the following:

Recent research at the University of South Carolina has found that, in addition to all the above outcomes, freshman seminar participants reported changes in patterns of secual decision-making. Specifically, as a result of the four-session course unit, "Sex and the College Student," males reported higher levels of abstinence and females, more frequent condom use than a comparison group of non-participants.

Other research at North Adams State College in Massachusetts indicates that the mid-semester grade in the freshman seminar is a powerful predictor of students who will be retained to the sophomore year. Students who have earned a mid-semester C grade or lower in the freshman seminar are significantly less likely to persist than students earning As and Bs.

Freshman seminars continue to be used as laboratories within which to research and report the effectiveness of innovative teaching strategies. Evidence is building that such courses can and do work to increase the likelihood that participating students will be more successful in and beyond the first college year.