Kuh 1993

This article by Kuh is almost outdated, considering the magnitude of research Kuh has undergone since 1993 (and the interviews were conducted in 1989). The article's goal was to describe what students learned in out of class experiences. Kuh found that at some institutions there was a "seamlessness" between in and out of class experiences. He found this attributable to the institution's mission to integrate these two experiences. In the discussion section, Kuh also mentions that learning primarily occurred in the classroom, but the out of class arena was a place to test the validity of this learning, which is a learning experience in itself.

Kuh utilized mixed methodology of both qualitative and quantitative analysis. I see why there would be a debate in mixing the two, but as Kuh states, arranging findings quantitatively makes it easier to analyze larger amounts of information. Kuh took extra care in realizing potential flaws, such as contextual differences among institutions. What struck me especially is his preference to become the "single 'human instrument'" to analyze all the transcripts to reduce "potential interrater reliability problems" (p. 283). I assume this means he didn't want other researchers to make different conclusions about certain interviews while he made different conclusions on the interviews he analyzed.

On a side note, I enjoyed his description of "imposter syndrome" on page 288. I remember many of our grad student post-class "pow wows" during the first few weeks of the course centered on this shared experience.