Through a colleague I heard of a student conduct problem at another institution. A new student had a marijuana use issue only eight hours after being admitted. Wow. The outcome of this situation wasn't shared. The conversation then went into how the institution worked hard to promote pro-social conduct such as meeting deadlines, having good attendance, and, more generally, following rules. The source lamented that these efforts often weren't very effective.
The hidden curriulum refers to implicit, indirect learning that must occur at the college level. It's important, even critical to success, yet not covered in the textbook or lectures. Business people might call these soft skills like punctuality and personal responsibility. It may involve learning new cultural values. This learning could be pro-social or anti-social.
The general view is that college faculty should be aware of this gap and help students adjust to an adult learning environment. The transparency movement aims to be more explicit to students about why work is being done, such as what we hope to achieve with our assignments. Another example: How much time should be spent on assignments? Rubrics are used to communicate grading standards. There's much more, but you get the idea. After my exposure to transparency principles I have generally tried to make my assignments more explicit in a number of ways in the hopes of overcoming these hidden curriculum gaps.
Specifications grading has been an eye-opener to me in regard to hidden student assumptions. A general tenet is that work is graded pass/fail. The grading rubric is pretty simple: Challenges addressed, complete assignments, and college-level effort. The steps and grading is clearly communicated. The surprising part is how often student work is incomplete, even when the assignment instructions are quite detailed about the requirements. Incomplete means missing or skipping significant chunks of the assignment, such as the assignment asks for XY & Z, the submission only has X & Y or maybe even just X. Incomplete work is graded failing, then returned to the student for correction. This kind of failure happens way more often than it should given transparent instructions.
There could be many reasons why incomplete work occurs. The main concern though is an implicit learning that the stated minimum for acceptable work is not the real minimum. Students have a history of receiving partial credit or being rounded up for incomplete work. From this experience, students may be thinking that the real minimum is something lower than the stated minimum. What should be a straightforward, transparent work order turns into a guessing mind game of how much less than the minimum could be done, yet still receive a passing grade. This may not happen all the time, but I suspect some of this second guessing of the real assignment minimum is occurring.
At any rate, the hidden curriculum is a struggle for both students and faculty. I'm a fan of specification grading for 1) clearly communicating to students what they need to do and 2) giving non-passing grades when submitted work is less than the stated minimum. This is how the adult world works. It's good occupational training to prepare students for the culture of future work environments. I wish I would have learned about this approach earlier in my teaching career.