The best complement to high-impact learning is a balanced student experience. That’s why Ohio Northern is committed to producing students who are practical, 热情投入. All three characteristics are important in building a fulfilling and successful future, and rest assured: If you become a Polar Bear, you’ll have found a winning combination.
Instilling students with a passion for learning happens every day inside our small, 亲密的教室. But it goes beyond that; we also believe in engaging and empowering you through an abundance of experiential-learning opportunities that happen outside the classroom. It's called high-impact learning – where you get the chance to roll up your sleeves, apply the knowledge you've gained, and actually solve challenges and develop solutions.
Many schools now build into the curriculum first-year seminars or other programs that bring small groups of students together with faculty or staff on a regular basis. The highest-quality first-year experiences place a strong emphasis on critical inquiry, 经常写作, 信息素养, 协作学习, and other skills that develop students’ intellectual and practical competencies. First-year seminars can also involve students with cutting-edge questions in scholarship and with faculty members’ own research.
The older idea of a “core” curriculum has evolved into a variety of modern forms, such as a set of required common courses or a vertically organized general education program that includes advanced integrative studies and/or required p艺术icipation in a learning community. (见下文.) These programs often combine broad themes – e.g., 科技与社会, global interdependence – with a variety of curricular and co-curricular options for students.
The key goals for learning communities are to encourage integration of learning across courses and to involve students with “big questions” that matter beyond the classroom. Students take two or more linked courses as a group and work closely with one another and with their professors. Many learning communities explore a common topic and/or common readings through the lenses of different disciplines. Some deliberately link “liberal 艺术s” and “professional courses.” Others feature service learning.
These courses emphasize writing at all levels of instruction and across the curriculum, including final-year projects. Students are encouraged to produce and revise various forms of writing for different audiences in different disciplines. The effectiveness of this repeated practice “across the curriculum” has led to parallel efforts in areas such as quantitative reasoning, 口头交流, 信息素养和, 在一些校园里, 道德调查.
Collaborative learning combines two key goals: learning to work and solve problems in the company of others, and sharpening one’s own understanding by listening seriously to the insights of others, especially those with different backgrounds and 生活经历. Approaches range from study groups within a course, to team-based assignments and writing, to cooperative projects and research.
Many colleges and universities now provide research experiences for students in all disciplines. 本科 research, however, has been most prominently used in science disciplines. With strong support from the National Science Foundation and the research community, scientists are reshaping their courses to connect key concepts and questions with students’ early and active involvement in systematic investigation and research. The goal is to involve students with actively contested questions, 经验主义的观察, cutting-edge technologies and the sense of excitement that comes from working to answer important questions.
Many colleges and universities now emphasize courses and programs that help students explore cultures, 生活经历, and worldviews different from their own. These studies – which may address U.S. 多样性, world cultures or both – often explore “difficult differences,例如种族歧视, ethnic and gender inequality, or continuing struggles around the globe for human rights, 自由与权力. 经常, intercultural studies are augmented by experiential learning in the community and/or by 出国留学.
ePortfolios are the latest addition to AAC&U’s list of high-impact educational practices, and higher education has developed a range of ways to implement them for teaching and learning, 规划评估, 职业发展. ePortfolios enable students to electronically collect their work over time, reflect upon their personal and academic growth, and then share selected items with others, 比如教授, advisors and potential employers. Because collection over time is a key element of the ePortfolio process, employing ePortfolios in collaboration with other high-impact practices provides opportunities for students to make connections between various educational experiences.
在这些项目中, field-based “experiential learning” with community p艺术ners is an instructional strategy – and often a required p艺术 of the course. The idea is to give students direct experience with issues they are studying in the curriculum and with ongoing efforts to analyze and solve problems in the community. A key element in these programs is the opportunity students have to both apply what they are learning in real-world settings and reflect in a classroom setting on their service experiences. These programs model the idea that giving something back to the community is an important college outcome, and that working with community p艺术ners is good preparation for citizenship, 工作与生活.
实习 are another increasingly common form of experiential learning. The idea is to provide students with direct experience in a work setting – usually related to their career interests – and to give them the benefit of supervision and coaching from professionals in the field. If the internship is taken for course credit, students complete a project or paper that is approved by a faculty member.
Whether they’re called “senior capstones” or some other name, these culminating experiences require students nearing the end of their college years to create a project of some sort that integrates and applies what they’ve learned. The project might be a research paper, 一个性能, a portfolio of “best work” or an exhibit of 艺术work. Capstones are offered both in dep艺术mental programs and, increasingly, in general education as well.
来源: 保证质量 & Taking High-Impact Practices to Scale 乔治·D. Kuh and Ken O’Donnell, with Case Studies by Sally Reed. (华盛顿特区:AAC&U, 2013). For information and more resources and research from LEAP, see http://www.aacu.org/leap.