Experimental Curricula
The Rhetoric Class in Special Collections: Experiential Learning of Social Issues
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Laura Poladian, Rachel Wen-Paloutzian
A university’s holdings in archives and special collections offer unique opportunities for students and instructors to learn through spatial and physical experiences. As embodiment continues to emerge as an active learning strategy, Loyola Marymount University’s first-year rhetoric course in collaboration with Archives and Special Collections provides students with experiential learning of social justice topics. Engaging students hands-on with physical artifacts as products of social issues promotes affective, cognitive, and reflective learning of multiple cultural perspectives. This paper focuses on a specialized instruction that integrates object-based inquiry in special collections with learning outcomes for rhetorical skills that enhance transferable, foundational awareness of social justice in context. As an instructor in undergraduate rhetoric and a special collections instruction librarian, we collaborated on designing and implementing a lesson plan with two-parts: a visual, rhetorical exercise in the special collections exhibition gallery and an exploration and analysis of rare objects in the classroom. In an immediate and personal encounter, first-year students, as primary learners, investigate text-objects as socially situated not only through conceptual knowledge but also by experiencing social issues through direct contact with physical materials. Ultimately, we designed these activities for potential adaptations in other courses using a variety of special collections objects to promote learning and teaching in an embodied, experiential environment.
A Multi-tiered Approach to Teaching Writing and Research: Using an Undergraduate Seminar on Women and Music as a Model
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Julie Hedges Brown
Using a Women-and-Music course as a model, this praper offers strategies for student success in an undergraduate writing-and-research seminar. Three papers of different types and topics offer more variety than a semester-long research project and provide a platform for increasingly independent thinking: a short paper that guides both content and structure by having students address questions related to assigned reading; here students learn about socio-cultural influences that forced Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel to remain an amateur musician despite her obvious talents; a short position paper that evaluates comments made by Vienna Philharmonic players regarding the addition of women to the ensemble; students discern the players’ concerns, provide supporting quotations, then evaluate their merit; while the structure is still guided, students have more freedom with content; a longer research paper on a contemporary female composer chosen by the student, allowing freedom with both content and structure. Preparatory assignments for each paper also teach cumulative research skills, from “structured notes” to outline assignments, to multi-tiered bibliography assignments related to the research paper. Assignments become refined through in-class discussions and individual consultations with the instructor.
Lecturer Activities Driven by Lecture Guided Worksheets
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Thanida Sujarittham, Manjula Sharma, Narumon Emarat, Kwan Arayathanitkul, Ian Johnston, Jintawat Tanamatayarat
As active learning has been disseminated to physics faculties, many papers often reported that it could support student engagement and provide better improvements to university courses comparing with the traditional lecture format. However, it still is low embraced in large lecture classes. In this study, the attention is not in the path of comparing between two groups—traditional lecture and active lecture styles as former research studies. Based on the fact of our classes, in every year guided worksheets-based lectures have been used in the introductory calculus based physics course aiming to encourage students interactive engagement together with to improve student learning outcomes. Therefore, in this study we focus on to investigate how much guided worksheets could help to facilitate active learning in the classes across 3 years and their effectiveness on student understanding of electrostatics. We analyzed time that lecturer devoted to carry out classes’ activities by using video-recording and measured student learning gains by pre- and post-tests. With the different effort of developing the course in every year, these contributed the different lecturer activities. We noted the guided notes provided interactivity in classes about 20-35%. The result shows that the last two years mainly taught with the developed worksheets called new worksheets were devoted more time to interactivity having the higher average normalized gains than the year conducted the old worksheets. Additionally, we found that the more time of last two year devoted to the interactivity had higher time allocated to the areas of students’ learning difficulties on electrostatics.
Pre-graduate Physics Teacher Education at the Faculty of Science in Olomouc, CZ
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Renata Holubova
The aim of the paper is to present our model of the pre-graduate physics teacher education at the Faculty of Science, Palacky University, Olomouc. Teachers need a wide range of skills, but which of them are the most important for a successful education of learners in the 21 st century? To answer this question is not easy. To define the content knowledge and the pedagogical knowledge is the task of projects, that are solved at the Faculty of Science. The Z generation of learners is not easy to educate. According to our previous findings, the model is based on active teaching methods - IBSE, pedagogical practice and its reflection and the cooperation with the Science center (informal type of education). Typical activities and their evaluation from the students´ point of view will be presented.
