Innovation Showcases
Asynchronous Session
Teaching Hispanic Culture, Diversity, and Tolerance through Hispanic Dances and Music: Two Approaches for Flamenco and Caribbean Dances View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Chita Espino-Bravo, D Nicole English
This study considers two approaches. First, a Sociology Approach: Dance can be a useful tool for teaching students about culture and community. Through the language of Dance and Music (Caribbean Dance), context is given to social facts, which engages and informs students about such social issues as history, Colonialism, social class, gender, race/ethnicity, and social justice. The added bonus of using Dance as a lens is that it involves active, embodied learning (Dewey, English, Mead), making the material more memorable, meaningful, and relevant to the learner. Second, a Communicative Approach (Task-based Learning Activity) and Language for Specific Purposes: Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) is a derivative of the Communicative Approach (CA) and Second language Acquisition (SLA) studies. Certain types of communicative learning activities can lead to acquisition of language (Abdel Kazeroni, 1995, Aquilino Sanchez, 2004, Margaret Robertson 2014, Yiqng Lin, 2020). When teaching a Hispanic Dance Session using specific Spanish vocabulary of the dance to address certain dance movements (Flamenco), we engage language learners in acquiring Spanish parts of language related to the dance. We also immerse learners in the culture of the dance, and its rich cultural context, so they can learn about the social context, gender issues, the different meanings of the dance movements, the metaphors, and by extension they will learn about diversity, tolerance, inclusion, and respect for another culture through dance and music.
Connecting the Learner Journey to the Pedagogy Landscape: Truly Integrated Learner Analytics View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Nick Mount, Marlies Gration
Learner analytics have become an established method for gaining greater understanding about the inter-relationships and intersections between curriculum and learner outcomes. They are particularly prevalent in online and blended learning contexts. Some of the more advanced approaches undertake detailed tracking and tracing of what a learner does, when, and how they perform. This provides valuable mappings of the routes that learners take, which underpin the ability to provide informed and tailored guidance to learners at both individual and cohort levels. It is often argued that analytics can also be used to direct the evolution of curricula in order to enhance learner outcomes. But, to do this this requires more than information than a set of learner routemaps - it requires the routemaps to be contextualized within a pedagogic and/or curriculum 'base map'. Only then can the learning routes the analytics reveal be interpreted in terms of their relationships with the curriculum and pedagogy landscape. Achieving this needs learner analytics to be designed into a comprehensive, coherent and structured learning ecosystem that encompasses pedagogic framing, learning and curriculum design, content design and asset management and learning platform design and data modelling. In this paper we present such an ecosystem that has been developed to support advance learner analytics at the University of Nottingham Online. We show how the different elements of the ecosystem work together to support new insights into how learners interact with their curricula and outline the benefits for this approach for learners and those tasked with enhancing their experiences.
From Constant Pivot to Pirouette: Innovative Ways Higher Education Students Can Learn Through the Arts View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Brittany Harker Martin
The recent pandemic has forced so much transition that the word "pivot" has become cliché. Post-secondary arts educators have been especially challenged, forced to offer online solutions for teaching and learning formats that, until now, were largely dismissed by the field as inadequate for learning through the arts. In higher education, many arts educators have insisted on proximity, live audience, studio training, and other hands-on, interpersonal aspects of arts-based learning that were perceivably impossible to deliver online. And yet, online we went . . . amidst mandated lockdowns and remote work arrangements suddenly forced on many of us around the world. This study shares a variety of ways that I was able to innovate using the arts in undergraduate education during this time, pivoting so often I was in a constant pirouette. From arts-based discussion boards using unconventional mediums like Tiktok-style dances and recycle-bin sculptures, to campus-wide co-curricular initiatives that rewarded artistic activity with transcript credit, I share how we were able to use technology to capture and submit digital versions of student learning and creative work. I also include lessons learned for practice, and share solutions that emerged through pivots and pirouettes.on. Through arts-based learning, students and staff encountered expressive outlets for managing uncertainty, while forming an intercultural community of support. Stories, videos, and images show how works of art became the vessels for knowledge, but the work itself - the process - was where the real learning took place.
