Abstract
This study explores a case of coaching deployed in experiential, interdisciplinary, and project-based courses. This study follows coaching in two courses that operated on a high-impact practice framework. In these courses, coaching was experienced by both students and faculty as a critical feature of the success of the courses. Students showed that coaching impacted their sense of the gravity of course content, their ownership of student-designed work, their relationships with faculty, and their experience of place-based learning. Faculty indicated that the coaching promoted transdisciplinary course planning, while their teaching benefited student engagement. We recommend practices for coaching that can support gains for students and faculty in experiential, project-based, interdisciplinary courses.
Highlights
Transformative undergraduate student learning experiences are important to and expected by students attending campus-based education (Mayhew et al, 2016)
We present data from three sources—faculty interviews, student writing and artifacts, and participant observations—that speak to the ways coaching mattered to the depth of learning for both students and faculty
Coaching went deeper than giving advice to better teach for experiential learning; we offered a loosely-structured process because it helped create reliably observable patterns of student classroom behavior that could be documented and assessed for student learning
Summary
Transformative undergraduate student learning experiences are important to and expected by students attending campus-based education (Mayhew et al, 2016). It’s a fair expectation given the investments students and taxpayers make. There are constraints on the undergraduate classroom as traditionally understood, based on financial models for teaching that drive decisions about faculty time, class size, and by extension, pedagogy. There are faculty who see this scenario and desire—and sometimes seek out—an opportunity to tinker and experiment with novel approaches. While teaching has been on the agenda of pedagogical scholars interested in redesign, changing teaching practice from the status quo requires new investments (O’Meara et al, 2015). Teaching for transformation requires deep dedication and additional professional learning time in order to help faculty educate students in ways that create meaningful impacts (Schneider, 2015)
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