An application of landscape design to student academic success

This study is an assessment of a use in a higher education setting of an organizational design technique developed in industrial settings. This technique called landscape design is an application of principles of complexity theory. The technique involves influencing localized decisions by altering the setting in which localized decisions are made (Levinthal & Warglien, 1999).;This study assesses an application of landscape design principles to student academic success in a higher educational setting. A small, rural campus of a state university system used a first-year-experience course to increase new student, academic performance. This study compares the aggregate performance, as measured by average grade point average and retention rate of incoming classes of new students who were subjected to a first-year-experience course that incorporated landscape design principles, to the aggregate performance of classes of students who were subjected to an earlier non-landscape-design version of first-year-experience course, and to the aggregate performance of classes of students who were not subjected to a first-year-experience course.;Results suggest that groups of new students, subjected to a first-year-experience course, perform significantly better academically than do groups that did not have that experience. Results further suggest that groups subjected to the landscape design version of first-year-experience course significantly outperform groups subjected to a non-landscape-design version of first-year-experience course. Results also suggest that student persistence is enhanced by use of a landscape design version of first-year-experience course. This study provides evidence of usefulness of an application of landscape design principles in a higher education setting. The results suggest that landscape design principles may be used to make good practice better. That is, landscape design may be useful to enhance good educational practice by eliminating structural impediments to learning in a group setting.