How many college students use sparknotes

Reflecting a lack of research evidence, this list includes no purely interpersonal competencies. These eight competencies have been studied using a range of methods, and the committee identified them based on correlational and experimental research. However, the committee judged the strength of the evidence related to each competency based exclusively on research that has developed and tested them through interventions using random assignment.

Conclusion: The limited intervention studies conducted to date have generated promising evidence that the competencies of sense of belonging, growth mindset, and utility goals and values are related to college success and are malleable in response to interventions.

Available intervention studies provide more modest evidence that five other competencies are similarly related to college success and malleable, yielding a total of eight identified competencies:.

Interventions that often required very little time and money to implement have helped students develop these eight competencies. Some of these interventions have been particularly effective for underrepresented student groups that are most at risk for academic failure. Conclusion: Notably, evidence shows that low-cost interventions aimed at developing sense of belonging, growth mindset, and utility goals and values have sometimes generated the largest benefits for underrepresented student groups that are most at risk for academic failure.

Although encouraging, this evidence is limited and recent, and further research is needed to replicate and extend it. Research focused on supporting the college success of underrepresented student groups should be a priority.

Certain competencies, and the problems they might help address or solve, may be more salient or useful for certain groups of students than others. Underrepresented minority students, for example, may bring to college such competencies as a strong racial or cultural identity that may help them navigate academic or social environments.

More research also is needed to examine how particular educational and cultural contexts currently influence the development of motivation, intrinsic goals and interest, and other intra- and interpersonal competencies among underrepresented groups minority students, first-generation college students, students from low-income families, and women.

Conclusion: Certain competencies develop and function differently for different groups and within different cultural and educational contexts. For example, although a strong sense of belonging in college is an important factor for success among underrepresented student groups, members of these groups may find it difficult to develop this competency if they experience campus environments that are discriminatory, negative, or unwelcoming.

The committee reviewed the nature and quality of existing competency assessments, focusing particularly on the eight identified competencies, together with research and professional standards related to the overall process of developing, validating, and implementing assessments, and interpreting, evaluating, and using the assessment results.

The test development practices used to create assessments of cognitive knowledge and skills that meet these professional standards are equally applicable to intra- and interpersonal competency assessments. The committee examined the assessments used in the intervention studies targeting the eight identified competencies and commissioned a literature search on measurement of these competencies.

Drawing on both sources, the committee also identified and closely analyzed a small sample of established assessment instruments targeting one or more of the eight competencies. Overall, the review revealed that self-report methods, with their known limitations, predominated in the assessments of the eight competencies.

Analysis of the quality of the assessments used in the intervention studies revealed spotty attention to reliability and almost no reported evidence of validity or fairness. However, more evidence of assessment quality was found for some established assessment instruments used in higher education research, particularly those that have received funding for assessment research and development.

These instruments provide evidence on reliability and validity but lack evidence on fairness. Assessments developed by professional testing companies provide even more evidence of quality, including fairness data; however, these assessments target a wider range of competencies, only partially addressing some of the eight competencies.

Conclusion: Most current assessments of the eight identified competencies are uneven in quality, providing only limited evidence to date that they meet professional standards of reliability, validity, and fairness.

Developers of all types of assessments, whether they aim to measure cognitive, intrapersonal, or interpersonal competencies, must exercise particular care when an assessment will serve a high-stakes purpose.

Assessments are considered high stakes when their results carry serious consequences for individuals or institutions. Conclusion: The development and validation of assessments of intra- and interpersonal competencies for high-stakes purposes is a rigorous, time-consuming, and expensive process that depends critically on expertise in assessment and psychometrics.

Validity, reliability, and fairness are essential considerations in evaluating assessment quality. Researchers and practitioners in higher education also use assessments for low-stakes purposes, such as to evaluate the quality of interventions, policies, and instructional practices or simply to monitor student change over time.

When used for these low-stakes purposes, assessments need not meet the high evidentiary requirements of individual high-stakes student assessments, such as college admissions tests.

At the same time, even when assessments are not used for high-stakes purposes, they need to be sensitive to the competencies they are intended to measure. Conclusion: Even low-stakes uses of intra- and interpersonal competency assessments require attention to validity, reliability, and fairness, although they need not meet the high evidentiary requirements of high-stakes assessments.

After reviewing both general principles for assessment development and use and recent research on measurement of the eight identified competencies, the committee concluded that defining each competency clearly and comprehensively is a critical first step in developing high-quality assessments. Clear definitions are especially important in light of the wide variety of terms used for these competencies.

For example, conscientiousness, grit, and persistence are closely related constructs, despite being named differently. In fact, assessments of all of these constructs may contain very similar. Conversely, assessments bearing the same name may in fact comprise items measuring different competencies. Conclusion: High-quality assessment begins with a clear definition of the competency to be measured, and identifies how the assessment will be used and what kinds of inferences it will support.

Competency definitions guide assessment development and selection by making it possible to evaluate how well the assessment represents the competency it is intended to measure, thereby supporting appropriate inferences about the construct for particular uses. High-quality assessments avoid construct underrepresentation, represent the breadth and depth of the competency, and minimize any distortions caused by competency-irrelevant influences.

Self-report measures, such as those frequently used to assess the eight identified competencies, have several limitations.

First, individuals responding to both high- and low-stakes assessments may be motivated to present themselves in a favorable light. In addition, people often express themselves on a response scale in habitual or characteristic ways, such as tending to mark the extremes e.

Because self-report measures are widely used, these limitations affect a broad swath of current intra- and interpersonal competency assessments. Recent research has identified various methods that can mitigate these limitations. For example, the use of forced-choice and ranking methods for collecting self-evaluations avoids response-style bias by circumventing traditional rating scales altogether.

The use of anchoring vignettes also addresses response-style bias by having raters make use of detailed objective anchors, and may potentially deal with reference group effects as well. Other nontraditional measures include situational judgment tests, as well as games or simulations, which avoid many of the documented limitations of self-ratings.

Further research is needed to develop, extend, and refine these and other promising new approaches. Conclusion: Most existing assessments of the eight identified competencies, as well as many existing assessments of other intra- and interpersonal competencies, use self-report measures, which have well-.

These limitations may constrain or preclude certain uses of the results. Innovative approaches for assessing intra- and interpersonal competencies can address these limitations. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing make clear that fairness to all individuals for whom an assessment is intended should be a driving concern throughout the development, validation, and use of all types of assessments.

Assessment development should minimize construct-irrelevant characteristics that would interfere with the ability of some individuals or subgroups to show their standing on a competency or lead to individual or subgroup differences in the meaning of test scores.

Whenever differences in subgroup scores are observed, follow-up research may be needed to examine the reasons, the potential sources of bias, and the comparability of score interpretations across individuals and subgroups in light of the intended uses of the assessment results. The committee applied these fairness principles in its review of current assessments of the eight identified competencies:. Conclusion: Despite the ever-increasing diversity of undergraduate student populations, attention to fairness for diverse populations is often inadequate in the development, validation, and use of current assessments of the eight identified competencies.

Because these fairness principles apply broadly to all types of assessments, the committee recommends:. Self-, peer, or instructor ratings of such an intrapersonal competency as conscientiousness or such an interpersonal competency as teamwork may vary depending on local norms e. In ad-. For example, an intervention intended to develop sense of belonging may be effective only for underrepresented student groups. Conclusion: Appropriate interpretation of the results of intra- and interpersonal competency assessments requires consideration of contextual factors such as student background, college climate, and department or discipline.

Implementing this recommendation will require that higher education researchers use appropriate statistical analyses that incorporate data on context when examining assessment results. Since attending both a two-year and four-year college, I have made some stunning realizations. The one that bothers me the most is the hard truth that few students actually bother reading their assigned texts.

They carry around the books and shuffle through them during class, but when their professors are not standing over them, they brag about using a terrible website called SparkNotes to cheat on their homework.

I realize that I sound like a Debby-do-right, but even English majors are using this website instead of reading for pleasure like prior literature and English majors did. Last semester I had an English professor who was constantly talking about his absurd family stories and his tenure. One day he asked what he was doing wrong, because he felt he was not doing everything he could to make the class blossom. I was the only one who raised my hand, and I told him that he did not assign enough readings, as he was only assigning 20 pages per week.

Even then, students were failing his reading quizzes weekly and you could tell by just looking at him that he was burned out. Everyone in that class looked at me with devilish eyes, but they were surprised to hear him say that he assigns enough reading as-is. In a previous article I tried to dissect why so many high school and college students despise reading, and I pointed out that Shakespeare and Poe probably scare off reluctant readers.

Is it really that difficult to read a few chapters a day? I know a lot of college students have jobs and are taking the maximum amount of credits, but we all knew what we were getting into when we listened to our professors read the syllabus aloud on the first day of classes.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online is another great resource, and it offers 6 suggestions for "general discussions" of the text, none of which I have read, so I'm no help there. Those 6 are books. The Copleston and Stanford Encyclopedia discussions are much shorter. Your professor can probably recommend some other papers or books. But if you think you need something besides Sparknotes and the text itself, you might find some of these helpful.

The book is, in other words, about issues that really matter to us today. My suggestion is to read the book anyway, especially if they're going to ask details about the book. I use Spark Notes after I read the book because sometimes books are a little hard to follow in my class. But I don't recommend not reading the book. I've read the book and the Sparknotes before, and the way the book is structured Socratic dialogue makes it really hard to get the individual points of each "speaker.

I think the point of college, more so than high school, is to truly master the material. You're not doing that if you're using Sparknotes.