Meaningful Learning Experiences For Students Research Articles

Service-Learning: Connecting the Classroom to the Community to Generate a Robust and Meaningful Learning Experience for Students, Faculty, and Community Partners

The community can be a wonderful classroom for students and faculty to explore the real-world application of the content of almost any class in an academic unit's curriculum. It is also the means by which those in the community can be connected to the classroom to resolve a noteworthy problem. When properly designed, a course taught via service-learning can provide learning experiences that transcend the more controlled learning environment of the classroom or lab on one's campus. After reading this article, faculty members should be able to accurately define service-learning, comprehend 10 key principles of service-learning, and develop a course that has equal emphasis on both “service” and “learning” that when properly designed according to the literature will provide a robust and meaningful learning experience for students, faculty, and community partners.

Making Field Trips Count: Collaborating for Meaningful Experiences

Recent studies advocate careful selection of local historic sites and recommend collaboration between stakeholders to create meaningful learning experiences for students. The author describes the efforts of a historical society, a university professor, and a local school district to develop an integrative field trip to a one-room schoolhouse. Discussion includes how content was determined and how the social studies curriculum module provides a hands-on approach to teaching about the past. During pre-visit lessons, a field trip, and postvisit activities third-grade students handle primary sources, listen to oral histories, role-play, and construct a timeline. The author explains how evaluation played an important role in the development and refinement of the module. Teacher and student interviews as well as teacher questionnaires revealed that the field trip effectively connected third-grade curriculum with the history of the Lutz-Franklin Schoolhouse, helping students to develop chronological thinking and to learn the basics about historical research.

Ready or Not, Here They Come: Inclusion of Invisible Disabilities in Post-Secondary Education

In Ontario, elementary and secondary school programs such as "School Success" and legislation such as Education for All have greatly increased the success of students with disabilities. Success at the secondary school level means that more students with disabilities are choosing to attend postsecondary institutions. This paper focuses on the transition of students with invisible disabilities from secondary to post-secondary education. Universal Instructional Design is reviewed as an appropriate teaching tool for the postsecondary level, as it allows for increased access to meaningful learning experiences for students with and without disabilities. At this point in time, rights-based inclusion is still a novel concept and post-secondary educators struggle with what it means and what it looks like to include learners with disabilities. Issues that prevent the rights of individuals with special needs from being realized include access to higher education, limited funding, and employment equity.

Developing a Whole-of-University Approach to Educating for Sustainability

Institutions of higher education are poised to play a significant role in the search for a more sustainable future. Most universities are tackling sustainability issues in a compartmentalised manner, sustainability education is confined to specific courses, education is often isolated from research, and neither is likely to be linked to sustainable campus operations. Universities can optimise their role as agents of change with regard to sustainability by adopting a ‘whole-of-university’ approach to sustainability. This approach explicitly links research, educational, operational and outreach activities and engages students in each. By encouraging a collaborative space within the curriculum for students, academics and managers to critically reflect on university's performance with regard to sustainability, many positive benefits ensue, including raising the profile of university's sustainability initiatives; providing solutions to sustainability problems; building trust among students, managers and academics; and providing meaningful learning experiences for students.

A Day in the Life of a College Student Leader (review)

Reviewed by: A Day in the Life of a College Student Leader Julie E. Owen A Day in the Life of a College Student Leader. Sarah M. MarshallAnne M. Hornak. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2008, 211 pages, $24.95 (softcover) Politics. Divided loyalties. Ethical dilemmas. Peer Conflicts. Supervisory Issues. These are just a few of the complexities student leaders must navigate in their daily lives on college campuses. In order to better prepare students to constructively engage in such experiences, Sarah Marshall and Anne Hornak’s book A Day in the Life of a College Student Leader offers a litany of case studies designed to generate meaningful dialogue and critical analysis of realistic campus-based student experiences with leadership. Informed by interviews with over one-hundred undergraduate student leaders and eleven student affairs administrators about real-life leadership dilemmas, these case studies reflect compelling contemporary issues on college campuses and offer provocative questions for reflection and discussion. A Day in the Life was designed for use by faculty in classroom-based discussions of leadership as well as for student affairs professionals training student leaders in diverse functional roles and contexts. Citing the need of many educators to craft meaningful learning experiences for students, authors Marshall and Hornak promote case studies as an opportunity for students to actively construct and co-construct knowledge that has direct application to their own experiences. The authors wisely commence the book with detailed suggestions for effective use of case studies by faculty or administrators to inform student leadership training, education, and development. They also recommend facilitators themselves develop an informed perspective about their own campus culture, policies and [End Page 135] procedures, before offering guidance to students about navigating these environments. Finally, and perhaps the most overlooked and challenging recommendation, the authors’ suggest that facilitators strive to “model appropriate behavior for students” and “recognize the influence that your behavior has on the impressionable minds of students” (p. 5). Chapter 1 offers guidance to how to use cases for writing assignments, role plays, large group discussions, small break-out groups, and one-on-one conversations. The authors detail ways cases may be utilized in one-time training or on an on-going basis, such as at the beginning of each meeting of a particular student group. In chapter 2, the authors make a strong case for incorporating student development theory in case analysis. They explain: “The theories associated with college students and their development give us the scaffolding to explain these behaviors as we train leaders and develop programs to facilitate their success” (p. 7). A detailed example is offered that depicts how a case can be discussed in the absence of student development theory, and then demonstrates how case analysis and synthesis become more complex when intentionally informed by theories such as Astin’s Theory of Involvement (1984), psychosocial theories, theories of cognitive development, and leadership scholarship. While the book does not enumerate which developmental theories are most appropriate for each case, the authors acknowledge “it is ethically appropriate to ground these discussions in a theoretical framework balanced with the appreciation that all students are individuals” (p. 15). The ensuing chapters of the book (chapters 3 through 11) offer a wide variety of cases organized by functional area. Contexts addressed include: residence life, student government, Greek life, minority/underrepresented groups, orientation/welcome week, activities/programming board, honorary/academic/professional associations, service learning and community engagement, and general leadership cases. Cases presented are realistic across multiple types of institutions, and indeed were informed by interviews at a diverse array of schools. In addition, while some cases focus on just one functional area (such as residence life or orientation) others span multiple areas and address campus wide inputs and consequences. Cases also vary in length and amount of contextual detail provided, making them suitable for a wide variety of training and classroom environments. A helpful chart is provided as part of the book’s front matter that details which cases address particular dilemma areas for student leaders. The book concludes with a chapter of advice for student leaders gleaned as part of the authors’ interviews with experienced student leaders. This volume clearly addresses a gap in the...

New Intersections for Student Engagement in Libraries: A Qualitative Exploration of Collaborative Learning with Multimedia Technologies

Objective – The purpose of this study was to explore new ways librarians can provide meaningful learning experiences for students beyond the traditional classroom assignment and the one-hour library instruction session.
 
 Methods – The study was done within a qualitative framework using participative, interpretive, and personal experience methods. The research team consisted of two librarians and a graduate student. Data collected included transcripts of audio-recorded team meetings and interviews, field notes, and a post-project survey, where students described their experiences negotiating the conceptual and technical processes of authoring a multimedia story. The instructional layer was built upon a constructivist approach allowing for a collaborative learning setting to foster learner control and self-efficacy.
 
 Results – Findings illustrate the benefits of collaborative approaches for enhancing the learning experiences of students in the library, in this case with multimedia. The data also suggest promising new ways for librarians to facilitate learning and to engage students in the library.
 
 Conclusion – Through a multimedia project that involves both librarian-guided exploration and collaborative learning processes, libraries can offer students formal and structured opportunities to explore their own interests or underlying curiosities beyond the classroom assignment and the one-hour library instruction session.

Teaching medical students using role play: Twelve tips for successful role plays

Engaging students in role play promotes active learning. Planned and structured role plays can be used to deliver components of the curriculum in clinical rotations of a medical programme. Role plays are most effective if learning objectives are defined, and the cases are challenging. All students should be involved and ground rules should be set. Allow adequate time for the role play, feedback and reflection. Let the students enjoy themselves. This paper provides 12 tips to create a meaningful learning experience for students using role play.

The Kaya OS project and the μ MPS hardware emulator

Ideally, the most meaningful learning experience for students in an undergraduate OS course would be to develop fully-functional OS's on their own. This can be accomplished using μ mps, a hardware emulator for a pedagogically undergraduate-appropriate hardware architecture, along with Kaya, a specification for a multi-layer OS supporting multiprocessing, VM, thread synchronization, external devices (disks, terminals, tape, printers, and network interfaces) and a file system.Traditional OS projects like Nachos[3] or OS/161[9] provide students with a significant starting code base. Students then modify existing OS modules or add new ones. With μ mps/Kaya students undergo an innovative and pedagogically different experience of starting only with a hardware emulator (i.e. no initial OS code base for students to build on/replace) and ending with a completely student written OS capable of running student written C programs.

A Teaching Framework for Transformative Multicultural Social Work Education

A major challenge in multicultural social work education is fostering meaningful learning experiences for students by matching educational methods and content to students' individual learning needs and characteristics. Building upon transformative learning theory developed by Jack Mezirow, this paper proposes a teaching framework for transformative multicultural social work education that addresses students' individual learning needs and characteristics. This framework uses the dimensions of cultural knowledge and cultural sensitivity to represent four potential stances of cross-cultural learning in students. The paper provides a detail discussion regarding the learning needs and learning foci of students at each stance, and useful teaching strategies and activities that enhance students' transformative learning process so that they develop integrative knowledge about self and others in a dynamic multicultural society from multiple perspectives.

Developing an Area Formula for a Circle with Goldilock and the Three Bears

Developing formulas by identifying patterns is an element of algebraic thinking (NCTM 2000). This article describes a way to develop a formula for the area of a circle that involves active learning with patterning and estimating. This approach was tried with Erika, a fifth-grade student, and offers a meaningful learning experience for students at the lower end of the middle grades.

School-Based Intergenerational Programs

This paper focuses on experiences learned from being involved in the development of a sustainable school-based intergenerational program that simultaneously incorporated lifespan education into a Grade 2-3-4 curriculum. The program operated in an Australian primary school. A model was developed through this initiative that involved a tripartite collaborative partnership between school, university educators, and the primary school community (in particular its older adults). Older adult volunteers from the school's community were invited to teach students. Program monitoring consisted of contextual and observational analysis ensuring the program was sensitive to school culture and took account of participants' experiences. This monitoring process occurred throughout the planning, development, and implementation stages. Although school educators were always pressed for time, all participants actively contributed to the program. All of the educators saw purpose and worth in having the program. Ongoing support from teachers, the principal, and university personnel plus the provision of additional resources contributed to high student involvement and the overall success of the initiative. Having a school-based coordinator was found to be necessary, yet, for school educators, problematic because of constraints on their time. The findings from this project indicate that the older adult volunteers were enriched by their involvement in the program and able to provide meaningful learning experiences for students. As well, the study suggests that educators would be better prepared for implementing this area of learning opportunities if lifespan education were provided in their undergraduate and post-graduate courses as well as in professional development initiatives.