Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal
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Living la Vida Loca: The Ups and Downs of Learning in a Cohort System
Get PDFThis paper describes the use of cohort structures in management and leadership education. Cohorts privilege social interaction as the locale where cognition and culture are co-created between individuals. A cohort learning community format allows students and faculty to create opportunities for significant and deep learning—learning that integrates both the conceptual, the social and emotional, the self and the other—in relational spaces by promoting zones of proximal development, multisubjectivity, multivocality, and shared cognition. These are hallmarks of effective learning organizations and communities of practice. But they also present significant and tough challenges. Using creative nonfiction to frame reflections, five authors illuminate their experiences in cohort communities: the benefits, difficult sides, and challenges of creating crucible spaces where social and emotional learning can be explored, and its role in promoting transformational learning
Canadian-East African Learning Internships amidst COVID-19: Impacts of Virtual Learning and Exchange on Collaborative Relationships, Trust, and Power
Get PDFThe formation of trusting relationships is a stated aim of student mobility programs, but resources to support virtual relationship-building in the absence of in-person student travel to international locations have yet to be developed. Towards informing the development of such resources, especially for the context of North-South partnerships, qualitative research was conducted based on the experience of a 2020 summer cohort of remote interns at a Canadian university and an East African partner supervisor. Thematic analysis of intern blogs and semi-structured interviews indicates several considerations and recommendations that, if considered prior to virtual international student learning opportunities, could optimize learning and North-South relationship-building potential of these opportunities. These considerations and recommendations include: recognizing that the formality of online communication can limit feelings of trust and closeness between participants; infrequent communication can impact relationship-building; self-reflexive practice must be intentional to optimize learning in virtual internships; open communication makes a difference to learning and relationships; and, internships would benefit from the development of internship-specific strategic plans. More robust research on remote international internships is warranted to build up understanding of how and why virtual student international internships in general, and virtual internships involving Global North-South partnership in particular, differ from in-person internships
Exploring the Impact of a Short-Term Study Abroad Experience: Learning in Ethiopia across the Years
Get PDFIn higher education, there has been an increased call to engage students in global opportunities and develop their intercultural skills. Study abroad experiences are often used to help build these skills. This study was conducted to investigate students’ perceptions of a short-term study abroad experience in Ethiopia, especially which aspects of the experience provided opportunities for students to increase their intercultural competence. Participants consisted of 20 pre-service education students enrolled in either a graduate or undergraduate program and traveled to Ethiopia during the 2015, 2017, or 2019 trips. We used a qualitative research method of document analysis to analyze the data, including digital stories and blogs. Excerpts of the data highlight how the pre-service teachers made sense of their experiences. Findings from this study reveal that participation in the short-term study abroad experiences positively influenced students’ intercultural development. We discuss the pedagogical implications regarding programmatic considerations and how these influenced students’ cultural sensitivity and ability to apply and extend their learning in an unfamiliar environment
The Gizmo Project: Collaborative and Experiential Learning to Benefit All
Get PDFA science lesson can be anything but ordinary when accompanied by hands-on demonstrations, as is evidenced by the chorus of excited shouts and the wide eyes of school-aged students during a recent Gizmo Expo that was held on a college campus. Professors of an education course and an engineering course joined together at an institution of higher education to have their students work together to meet the needs of children in the community. When engineering and education students collaborate to design and build “gizmos,” which are defined as interactive devices that foster learning within integrated units, and work together to develop corresponding lesson plans, this Gizmo Collaboration provides similarly engaging and productive hands-on education for the college students while also benefiting the recipient in-service teachers and their school-aged students
Refining Pedagogy to Support Student Learning in a General Education Course: Action Plans for Social Change
Get PDFThe action plan is the culminating assignment that provides students with the opportunity to apply their semester-long learning about civics, diversity, and ethics to a real-world problem and propose an actionable solution. Students select an authentic genre that serves their purpose best: a letter to someone in a position to help implement their solution or an op-ed for a relevant news source. The goal is to end the semester with a piece of writing they can share and use to advocate for social change. Sara (the first author) uses the assignment in a required course in their university’s general education curriculum. At its essence, the action plan is designed to help undergraduates act as justice-oriented citizens (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004a) who take responsibility for transforming social issues. Sara’s student Hannah (second author) wrote an action plan that led her on a journey with Sara and Heather (third author) to try to change state education policy. In the personal reflection that follows, we explain our journey to enact Hannah’s action plan and detail how Sara used those experiences to refine the assignment to provide authentic learning experiences (e.g. Ritter, 2008; Sisserson, et al., 2002). To promote readability, the essay is written in Sara’s voice, and Hannah and Heather’s insights are presented throughout
"Embrace It, Enjoy It, and Work Hard for It!”: A Qualitative Investigation into Instructors’ Reflections on Rapid Migration to Online Teaching
Get PDFRapid or abrupt transition to online teaching can be extremely daunting to instructors, especially those with limited prior experiences teaching online. Our qualitative study focuses on four Chinese language instructors’ reflective journey on their experiences of migrating courses online in less than one month’s time. Following the three stages of individual reflection, pair reflection, and group discussion, we aim to reveal their perceptions of the specific challenges they have encountered; the changes they made to course design and their decision-making processes; how they felt about the experience; as well as their plans of taking the lessons learned forward in their future teaching. Our findings demonstrate that though all instructors had to tackle uncertainties and unexpected difficulties arising during their online teaching, they could still deliver high-quality instruction by actively seeking support from colleagues and the Center for Teaching & Learning, asking for and responding to students’ feedback, building a strong awareness and willingness to embrace new situations, and experimenting with alternative approaches and reflecting on their effectiveness
What About Joe? A Reflection on the First-Year Seminar
Get PDFThis article is the author’s reflection on pedagogical factors relating to student success in a three-credit first-year seminar course (FYS) at a land-grant university in the northeast United States. The narrative reflection focuses on an undergraduate male student, “Joe,” who represents a composite of students. Multiple layers of meaning and insight about the student and the instructor inform considerations for responsive and co-created course design