UNCG Hosted Online Journals (The University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
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Life in a Fishbowl: The evolution of the communication center as a sustainable component of institutional culture
Get PDFIn 2015, Kathleen Turner offered several benefits of Communication Center research and mentioned areas for future study. Turner (2015) believes that communication center directors would benefit from research that crosses institutional boundaries and contexts. Further, it is important that communication center directors demonstrate what clients have gained from the center. We must continue to recognize that “clients” are multi-faceted and our communication center spaces serve students, faculty, staff, administrators and the institution. Thus, this manuscript will, as Turner (2015) pleaded, help others think through how to “enhance their communication centers with clients, colleagues, and communities” (p. 3). Ultimately, it is important for center staff, as well as affiliated faculty and administrators, to concern ourselves with how the center integrates itself as part of the institution’s culture
Participatory Design of Classrooms: Infrastructuring Education Reform in K-12 Personalized Learning Programs
Get PDFThe redesign of the physical spaces of classrooms and schools has become a prominent feature in many K-12, personalized learning schools, though it is often dismissed as a peripheral aspect of change. Through observations and interviews at four public schools, I examine the affordances of these new spaces and the narrative of their design. I situate these spaces-turned-places as pedagogical artifacts in a participatory design process to examine how educators and students create functional and meaningful learning spaces. Reframing the physical spaces in this way suggests how the spaces may be supporting the sustainability of the reform
Social context matters: Predicting outcomes in formal learning environments
Get PDFResearch on different types of classroom spaces indicates that innovative classrooms can improve student learning. This study explores one mechanism that may underlie this effect, namely the social context of teaching and learning. The validated Social Context and Learning Environments (SCALE) survey was administered to over 2000 undergraduate university students in both traditional and active learning classrooms, and multivariate mixed-model analyses were conducted to determine whether social context was predictive of student learning. The data indicated that two out of four social context subscales predicted student learning in both types of learning environment, while one subscale had no significant relationship with student learning, and one subscale was predictive of outcomes in active learning classrooms but not in traditional spaces. From a theoretical standpoint, these results show that social context may be one of the mechanisms through which different learning spaces impact student learning outcomes, while from a practical perspective, they indicate that instructors may be able to support their students’ learning by working to improve the social context in their classrooms
Service Learning In A College Nutrition Class: Examination Of Elementary School Lunch
Get PDFA service learning project was implemented in a college nutrition course to examine what elementary school students actually consume during lunch. Students organized in teams with specific tasks for each stage of the project (data collection, analysis, interpretation). The project yielded meaningful recommendations for modifications in the school menu, which were implemented by the school district. The incorporation of service-learning is an excellent option for a general nutrition college course.
A New Alliance for Service Learning and Community Engagement To Cultivate Citizens with an Ecocentric Vision of Justice
Get PDFAs instructors at [University], a core conviction informs the service learning and community engagement (SLCE) courses we have designed: we cannot have thriving human communities, robust democratic citizenship, and authentic community/civic engagement when the ecological systems upon which all life depends, now and in the future, are ignored and ruined. Institutions of higher education need to use sustainability as an organizing tenet for SLCE and to achieve this, intentional collaboration must be made between SLCE and a sister discipline: sustainability in higher education (SHE). This article presents prototypes for SLCE-SHE partnerships. The preliminary qualitative data from these SLCE courses at [University] shows that strategic SLCE-SHE alliances cultivate the attitudes, goals, and learning outcomes sought by both disciplines in creative and perhaps, more adequate ways. When SLCE seriously attends to ecological sustainability -- when it becomes intentionally ecocentric -- place-engaged, ecologically literate, planetary citizens who value eco-social justice can be cultivated
Subversion in Education: Common Misunderstandings & Myths
No full textThis paper argues that subversion is a necessary tool for survival and opening up of new possibilities in the context of the 21st century where neoliberalism and its extreme market-driven ideologies and institutional practices permeate and impact all social settings public and private. Subversion is defined as subtle mechanism(s) of resisting abusive forms of power that create and/or maintain oppression and harm. At the heart of subversion and engaging in subversive acts is a hope for creation of new possibilities, imaginable and unimaginable, to facilitate attaining social justice and implementing justice-oriented practices that have moral implications. It is within the context of neoliberalism, and its ability to control power relations yet appear undetected, that we argue for a necessity of subversion and subversive acts as a form of resistance, as a tool and a grassroots action-oriented mechanism(s), to challenge abusive and immoral forms of power. The paper argues that subversion is, in many instances, the most moral and integral way to act in the face of abusive and exploitive practices that cause harm to certain social groups through policies that are normalized and perpetuated by social institutions. This paper identifies and critically challenges some common misunderstandings and popular myths about subversion in education.
Building Demand and Reaching for Capacity
Get PDFIn this case study, the authors describe a classroom redesign at Dartmouth College. The classroom was redesigned as a way to seed innovations in teaching and new ideas on how space influences learning through a partnership incubator for working with faculty. This paper outlines the campus context for how the classroom was redesigned, data collected on its use, and the support structure for faculty
BHUTANESE REFUGEES: ON UNDERSTANDING THE LINKS BETWEEN TRAUMA, DISPLACEMENT, AND COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
Get PDFThrough a unique community based participatory action research project with Bhutanese refugees and immigrants in the Triad area of North Carolina (Greensboro, High Point, and Winston-Salem), the authors explore the links between trauma, displacement, and community resilience. The social experience of displacement and relocation create impacts felt in the entire community. How do we understand and map these impacts and use them to transform community ills? While limited understanding of trauma and displacement among both the newly arrived and long-time citizens acts to limit the pro-social opportunities that trauma creates, the lack of mental health services and support for refugees allows post-traumatic growth in refugee communities to atrophy. While reviving trauma may seem counter-intuitive, we argue that the engagement of collective historical memory is a critical necessity for achieving change. As the United States’ largest community of South Asian refugees, the Bhutanese refugee experience, replete with a high rate of suicide, heart disease, and diabetes is a story largely left untold. This article aims to give voice to the experience of Bhutanese refugees so as to co-create community driven solutions to this community’s unique problems
Building Campus Partnerships through Advocacy and Collaboration
Get PDFBuilding partnerships with academic programs and campus divisions can advance a communication center’s goal of enhancing students’ communication competencies while also expanding the reach and visibility of the center. This paper explicates a process for establishing and executing such collaboration effectively, from advocating for the center’s integration in Student Life to developing and executing pilot projects that addressed recognized communication needs on campus. Central to this process were undergraduate student consultants who conducted research, designed communication modules, and facilitated difficult conversations. Student Orientation proved to be a fruitful campus site communication centers’ student consultants to support and enhance their peers’ public speaking, interpersonal, and small group communication