Residential Experience
Learning Strategies
Residence Life's learning strategies include a range of educational activities, events, and touchpoints with students that provide opportunities for learning and community development.
These strategies work together on an ongoing basis to ultimately lead students to determine what it means to be in a community with others and their responsibility in its development and evolution as empowered leaders.
Community CouncilCommunity councils are established in every hall at the start of the academic year. Anyone living in that area can be a member of the Community Council! Councils meet weekly and act as a governing board for that area to create connections and provide opportunities for the student voice. Typical functions include setting a budget for the hall funds, purchasing equipment for the hall, determining rules and guidelines governing common areas both for residents and for outside groups requesting to use residence hall space, discussing and offering solutions to problems occurring within the halls, and planning and implementing hall events. |
Community AgreementA Community Agreement is a working document detailing how we will be in the community throughout the year. This agreement will be discussed during your first community meetings with you and the other members living on your floor. It will be a continued conversation over the year, with revisions made as needed. |
Shared Living ExpectationsThe Shared Living Expectations worksheet (pdf) is the foundation for roommates to develop shared expectations of their room space and negotiate areas of concern on a small scale. Residents who engage in these conversations can mitigate difficulties by discussing potential concerns and negotiating space expectations before they develop into conflicts. |
Community ConnectionsCommunity Connections are floor gatherings facilitated by a Resident Assistant (RA) to instill a sense of community and belonging among residents. RAs plan activities or group conversations to lead their floor through the month's "theme" to fulfill our learning goals and outcomes. |
Individual ConnectionsIndividual Connections are ongoing, and the RA does individual check-ins and conversations with each community member. Conversations are organic and build on the relationship established at the beginning of the year. Topics covered include general check-in, inquiry per the monthly theme, goal setting and resource sharing, and problem-solving as needed. |
Self Determination
With the spirit and history of self-determination, our on-campus communities engage with the learning strategies listed above to exercise and develop a unique sense of self and have clarity of beliefs, identity and social relationships within the context of community.
HistoryIn March of 1972, self-determination was introduced at William & Mary. Before this time, students were not permitted to receive or visit persons of the opposite sex in residential rooms except during stated hours at approved open houses. Open houses could be scheduled from noon to 1am on Friday nights, noon to 2am on Saturday nights, and noon to midnight on Sundays. Open houses could not be scheduled during reading or examination periods. Students under the age of 21 had to have a written parental consent form on file before they were allowed to participate in the open houses. Students could not entertain guests of the opposite sex if a roommate objected, and the restroom facilities were off limits, except those specifically reserved and identified. In addition, female students had to abide by stated curfew hours and regulations regarding absences from the residence halls. The policy of self-determination originally applied to an individual student's freedom of movement in and out of the residence halls, to the hours of such movement, and permitted students within each residence hall the opportunity to establish policies and procedures regarding visitation for their hall. Since then, self-determination has evolved on campus to meet the needs of current students and their learning in the residence halls. |
TheorySelf-determination theory asserts that every person has three underlying, basic needs: Autonomy, to integrate our experiences with our sense of self freely; Relatedness, to feel a sense of belonging with others; and Competency, to have some control over our environment or the information necessary to make a meaningful decision (Deci & Ryan, 2000). These needs must be satisfied for a person to be enabled to engage in goal-directed, self-regulated, autonomous behavior and thus become intrinsically motivated. Deci and Ryan (2000) identify the process of internalized motivation as "an active, natural process in which individuals attempt to transform socially sanctioned mores or requests into personally endorsed values and self-regulations. It is the means through which individuals assimilate and reconstitute formerly external regulations so that individuals can be self-determined while enacting them. When the internalization process functions optimally, people will identify with the importance of social regulations, assimilate them into their integrated sense of self, and thus fully accept them as their own (pg 235-236). By moving through the process of external regulation to integration, one ultimately can fully accept regulations "by bringing them into harmony or coherence with other aspects of their values and identity… what was initially external regulation will have been fully transformed into self-regulation, and the result is self-determined extrinsic motivation (236)." |
GuidelinesSelf-determination rests on two fundamental beliefs:
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