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Capstones have been a part of higher education curriculum for over two centuries, with the goal of integrating student learning to cap off their undergraduate experience. In practice, capstones are most often delivered as a course or include a significant project that addresses a problem or contributes new knowledge. This edited collection draws on multi-year, multi-institutional, and mixed-methods studies to inform the development of best practices for cultivating capstones at a variety of higher education institutions. The book is divided into three parts: Part One offers typographies of capstones, illustrating the diversity of experiences included in this high-impact practice while also identifying essential characteristics that contribute to high-quality culminating experiences for students. Part Two shares specific culminating experiences with examples from multiple institutions and strategies for adapting them for readers’ own campus contexts. Part Three offers research-informed strategies for professional development to support implementation of high-quality student learning experiences across a variety of campus contexts. Cultivating Capstones is an essential resource for faculty who teach or direct disciplinary or interdisciplinary capstone experiences, as well as for faculty developers and administrators seeking ways to offer high-quality, high-impact learning experiences for diverse student populations. A Series on Engaged Learning and Teaching Book. Visit the books’ companion website, hosted by the Center for Engaged Learning, for book resources.
This book emerges from the author’s ongoing work as director of Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning, where for the past decade, more than 200 scholars from over 120 post-secondary institutions across more than a dozen countries have participated in multi-institutional scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). This book focuses on six key practices:· Acknowledging and building on students’ prior knowledge and experiences · Facilitating relationships · Offering feedback · Framing connections to broader contexts · Fostering reflection and metacognition · Promoting integration and transfer of knowledge and skills.Following the introduction, the author devotes individual chapters to each of the six practices, and the concluding chapter focuses on implementing the six practices as an integrated approach. A Series on Engaged Learning and Teaching Book. Visit the books’ companion website, hosted by the Center for Engaged Learning, for book resources.
This book confronts the continually evolving nature of biomedical science education by providing a robust account of learning pedagogies and best practice for scholars and researchers in the field. Rather than considering subdisciplines of biomedical science education separately, the volume takes a holistic approach and considers the complexities of teaching biomedical science as a whole, providing a nuanced overview of how a particular practice fits in such a course overall, as well as providing support for development within the reader’s own subdiscipline. Ultimately, this holistic approach allows for expansive discussion of relevant pedagogical approaches that will directly inform innovations in the contemporary teaching of biomedical science education. Novel in approach and underpinned by the latest in research innovations, this book will appeal to scholars, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of medical education, higher education, and curriculum studies. Policy makers involved with health education and promotion as well as educational research will also benefit from the volume.
Drawing from in-depth interviews with alumni across the disciplines, this book explores the benefits of undergraduate research: meaningful intellectual engagement, a sense of belonging in the campus community, and vocational clarity and career success after college. What matters to alumni about their research experience is often not what is represented in scholarship. The compelling stories featured in this text describe intellectual and emotional uncertainty and excitement; deeply personal mentoring relationships; and the powerful ways in which undergraduate research shapes and directs career paths. The book brings a novel perspective that begins during the research experience and extends into the years after college, offering practical insight into program design, mentoring, and research-to-career practices that are flexible enough to be implemented in the natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. This book speaks to faculty, staff, and administrators at a wide range of institutions, regardless of experience or comfort level with undergraduate research. Supplemental resources—including discussion questions for each chapter, short videos of dialogue between undergraduate researchers and their mentors, and more—are available at www.centerforengagedlearning.org/books/a-long-view.
This practical resource examines how colleges and universities foster sustainable faculty involvement in living learning communities (LLCs). This volume delivers evidence-based research as well as practical examples and voices from the field, to guide and support faculty serving in different capacities in LLCs, to serve as a resource for student affairs practitioners collaborating with faculty in residential environments, and to offer guidance to administrators developing new and revising existing LLC programs.This book demonstrates that faculty are key to creating equitable, engaging, and sustainable LLCs in diverse higher education settings. Chapters delve into both the micro-level experiences of individual faculty – and their families, as in the vignettes at the beginning of each chapter – and the macro-level campus-wide planning that positions LLCs as a meaningful learning experience for students. The book is divided into three sections. The chapters in the first section envision a future of faculty-student engagement that meets the needs of new-majority students and faculty through intentional planning and forward-looking models of faculty engagement. Campus culture and administrator involvement play important roles in creating residential spaces where equity and inclusion are prioritized among students and faculty. The second section outlines ways to capitalize on faculty and residential life partnerships for successful LLCs. Authors focus on key areas of LLC development, including collaboration on programming, co-developing LLC curricula, fostering broad campus partnerships, and creating the conditions for effective faculty-student engagement. The third section serves as a resource for new and seasoned faculty-in-residence (FIR) who may wish to better understand their roles, as well as the roles and expectations for partners and families living with them, and strive to find a reasonable work-life balance. The chapters detail the lived experiences of FIR—they provide both a theoretical context as well as concrete ideas for new and seasoned faculty members who are serving LLCs.In the conclusion the editors look toward the future of faculty involvement in LLCs. They explore pathways for both expanding and deepening faculty involvement in LLCs and underscore the many avenues for faculty support and incentives presented throughout the book to enable administrators, staff, and faculty themselves to advocate for resources they need to thrive while working with students in LLCs. A Series on Engaged Learning and Teaching Book. Visit the books’ companion website, hosted by the Center for Engaged Learning, for book resources.
This book offers an innovative framework and set of pedagogical pathways for deepening college student learning through critical engagement with place. Though the what and how of teaching and learning rightly take center stage in research of best practices, this book argues that the where of education deserves increased attention. Drawing from interviews and case studies with college and university educators in the United States and Canada, Learning on Location highlights pedagogies-in-action and identifies programmatic models for embedding location-based learning within specific courses, majors, curricula, and campus-wide initiatives. Chapters provide a mix of theoretical framing and practical application, with three key practices grounding the text: writing on location, walking on location, and engaging the civic on location. This resource is an invaluable guide for higher education faculty, leaders, and practitioners seeking to enhance student experience through attention to location, support identity-conscious student success, and use reflection and praxis to move toward more inclusive and equitable learning experiences. Supplemental resources—including example assignments, discussion questions for reading groups, and more—are available at www.centerforengagedlearning.org/books/learning-on-location.
Enrich your students and the institution with a high-impact practice Designing and Teaching Undergraduate Capstone Courses is a practical, research-backed guide to creating a course that is valuable for both the student and the school. The book covers the design, administration, and teaching of capstone courses throughout the undergraduate curriculum, guiding departments seeking to add a capstone course, and allowing those who have one to compare it to others in the discipline. The ideas presented in the book are supported by regional and national surveys that help the reader understand what's common, what's exceptional, what works, and what doesn't within capstone courses. The authors also provide additional information specific to different departments across the curriculum, including STEM, social sciences, humanities, fine arts, education, and professional programs. Identified as a high-impact practice by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the Association of American Colleges and Universities' LEAP initiative, capstone courses culminate a student's final college years in a project that integrates and applies what they've learned. The project takes the form of a research paper, a performance, a portfolio, or an exhibit, and is intended to showcase the student's very best work as a graduating senior. This book is a guide to creating for your school or department a capstone course that ties together undergraduate learning in a way that enriches the student and adds value to the college experience. Understand what makes capstone courses valuable for graduating students Discover the factors that make a capstone course effective, and compare existing programs, both within academic disciplines and across institutions Learn administrative and pedagogical techniques that increase the course's success Examine discipline-specific considerations for design, administration, and instruction Capstones are generally offered in departmental programs, but are becoming increasingly common in general education as well. Faculty and administrators looking to add a capstone course or revive an existing one need to understand what constitutes an effective program. Designing and Teaching Undergraduate Capstone Courses provides an easily digested summary of existing research, and offers expert guidance on making your capstone course successful.
"Threshold Concepts in Practice brings together fifty researchers from sixteen countries and a wide variety of disciplines to analyse their teaching practice, and the learning experiences of their students, through the lens of the Threshold Concepts Framework. In any discipline, there are certain concepts – the ‘jewels in the curriculum’ – whose acquisition is akin to passing through a portal. Learners enter new conceptual (and often affective) territory. Previously inaccessible ways of thinking or practising come into view, without which they cannot progress, and which offer a transformed internal view of subject landscape, or even world view. These conceptual gateways are integrative, exposing the previously hidden interrelatedness of ideas, and are irreversible. However they frequently present troublesome knowledge and are often points at which students become stuck. Difficulty in understanding may leave the learner in a ‘liminal’ state of transition, a ‘betwixt and between’ space of knowing and not knowing, where understanding can approximate to a form of mimicry. Learners navigating such spaces report a sense of uncertainty, ambiguity, paradox, anxiety, even chaos. The liminal space may equally be one of awe and wonderment. Thresholds research identifies these spaces as key transformational points, crucial to the learner’s development but where they can oscillate and remain for considerable periods. These spaces require not only conceptual but ontological and discursive shifts. This volume, the fourth in a tetralogy on Threshold Concepts, discusses student experiences, and the curriculum interventions of their teachers, in a range of disciplines and professional practices including medicine, law, engineering, architecture and military education. Cover image: Detail from ‘Eve offering the apple to Adam in the Garden of Eden and the serpent’ c.1520–25. Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553). Bridgeman Images. All rights reserved.
This publication¿the latest report from AAC&U¿s Liberal Education and America¿s Promise (LEAP) initiative¿defines a set of educational practices that research has demonstrated have a significant impact on student success. Author George Kuh presents data from the National Survey of Student Engagement about these practices and explains why they benefit all students, but also seem to benefit underserved students even more than their more advantaged peers. The report also presents data that show definitively that underserved students are the least likely students, on average, to have access to these practices.
In this book the author propose that college education prepare students to be innovative and adaptable by developing four signature capabilities: core qualities of mind, critical thinking skills, expertise in divergent modes of inquiry, and the capacity to express and communicate ideas.