Something has always bothered me about the way we approach residential education programs. We have an immense opportunity to challenge and support our students to help them learn and grow while in college, and yet we seem to leave things up to chance. Why do we continue to have student staff design educational programming? I don’t think we should.
This blog series features different writers responding to the prompt, “What is one practice Res Life departments need to let go of?”
A core RA responsibility is to foster community, provide peer support, and act as a resource for students. While they can facilitate educational programming, acting as educational designers should not be an expection. By shifting the focus away from program creation and towards supporting students in their personal and academic growth, RAs can more effectively leverage their peer relationship to engage students in the learning process.
Additionally, RAs already have a significant workload, from handling conflicts between roommates to providing emotional support and fulfilling administrative functions–like duty and desk. Asking them to take on the additional responsibility of designing and executing educational programs is something we could take off their plate. Rather than relying on RAs to juggle yet another responsibility, we should consider alternative means of achieving our goals around resident education.
RAs are often best positioned to identify emergent needs in their communities, I believe this is true. But RAs are not necessarily best trained to design effective interventions or programs to address them. Furthermore, not all needs are emergent–we already know what soem of these are before our students even step foot on campus. Educational programs require careful planning, research, and an understanding of pedagogy, subject matter, and student development. While RAs may be excellent peer leaders, they are typically not trained in curriculum development, instructional design, or effective educational strategies. Instead, residence life departments could work with professionals who specialize in creating educational experiences that are grounded in best practices and developmental theory, ensuring that the programs are not only engaging but also impactful and educationally sound.
RAs are also students themselves, and while this gives them a unique peer perspective, it can also introduce biases into the programming they design. RAs may unintentionally create programs that cater to their own interests, experiences, or social circles, leading to a lack of diversity in content or a failure to meet the needs of all students. (This isn’t just true of RAs, but can be true of professionals as well.) Having dedicated program designers, committees, or teams can make for a more inclusive approach, ensuring that educational programs address the broad range of students’ needs, are culturally competent, and appeal to a wide audience. Educational programming is served well by having diverse voices in the planning process. (And RAs should have a voice in the process, too!)
Finally, for educational programs to be successful, there needs to be a clear understanding of what success looks like and how to measure it. Professional educators are trained to design programs with measurable learning outcomes, assessments, and methods for collecting feedback. RAs, with their focus on peer leadership and community-building, may not always be equipped to evaluate the effectiveness of the programs they create. Professional program designers can create more measurable and data-driven programs that allow for continuous improvement and a more targeted impact on students’ learning and development.
While RAs play a vital role in fostering community and supporting students, designing educational programs should not be a core responsibility of their job. By empowering professionals with the expertise, resources, and time to create and implement these programs, residence life departments can ensure that students receive high-quality, engaging educational experiences that align with their developmental needs and institutional goals. This shift would not only benefit students but also allow RAs to focus on core responsibilities of building a supportive, positive living environment for all residents.
