Curriculum and Instruction Commons^™

Honors Colleges, Transdisciplinary Education, And Global Challenges, Paul Knox, Paul Heilker

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The authors contend that the most significant comparative advantage of honors colleges is the combination of gifted and motivated students from every academic discipline and interdisciplinary curricula that train students to integrate diverse perspectives. The authors discuss how to harness this advantage to provide a truly transdisciplinary education through collaborative, project-based learning, both on campus and beyond. They assert that honors colleges are in a unique position to circumvent the siloed structures of academia by convening multidisciplinary groups of students guided by faculty from a wide range of disciplines. Doing so can help reimagine undergraduate education to address urgent and …

Promoting Holistic Wellness In Honors Students Through Peer Coaching, Leah Horton, Aaron Conrad, Patricia Joanne Smith

Honors in Practice Online Archive

While the conversation in honors about the mental health of students has persisted for over two decades, authors identify a marked increase in the need for student mental health support since the first Generation Z students entered college in 2015. A review of literature in honors indicates upticks in discourse relating to mental health (n = 66) since 2004, and content analysis shows peaks in publication for 2018 and 2021 (n ≠ 11, respectively). This study describes a peer coaching program that focuses on the holistic wellness and support of honors students. Authors observe a decrease in Behavioral …

Honors Flourishing In The Midst Of Change, Hao Hong, Robert Glover, Mimi Killinger, Jordan Labouff

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In the wake of formidable institutional change, and in response to administrative concerns about honors’ place within the university, authors describe the development of a pilot course that led to a program’s critical self-study and course transformations that were long overdue. Citizen Scholarship and Human Flourishing incorporates specific practices such as peer instruction and “ungrading” to align with new institutional learning objectives and broadly defined undergraduate research experiences across disciplines. The experimental course presents honors as a model for progressive curricular change in the midst of shifting administrative landscapes.

Diversity In Honors: Understanding Systemic Biases Through Student Narratives, Aman Singla, Minerva Melendrez, Mable T. Thai, Sukhdev S. Mann, Denise Zhong, Kim T. Hoang, Isabella H. Lee, Andrea V. Aponte

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Centered on superiority over a certain group or individual, discrimination becomes predominant in prestigious institutions that pride themselves on exclusivity. Collegiate honors programs tend to deepen this practice by creating highly elite spaces accessible only to a select few. This rigidity can lead to an underrepresentation of historically marginalized groups, students who often lack the necessary resources for achieving academic excellence. This case study examines the ways honors programs inadvertently perpetuate discrimination among different social identities. Using inductive interviewing of honors students (n = 12) to gauge individual perceptions of program diversity, researchers rely on content analysis to generate …

Resisting Disciplinarity: Curriculum Mapping And Transdisciplinarity, Megan Snider Bailey

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

American higher education relies on a taxonomy of knowledge stemming from Puritan ways of thinking and knowing—a disciplinary classification system that sorts “questions asked” and “answers possible” into epistemic categories. This paper interrogates the notion of disciplinarity to better understand the arbitrariness of epistemic divisions and the harm that these decisions cause. The author explores transdisciplinarity as an emerging concept in honors education, one which rejects boundaries and explores problems through multiple, competing perspectives. Transdisciplinary pedagogical approaches offer honors educators a mechanism for pivoting teaching and learning away from outdated assumptions of honors as elitist, giving honors students a liberating …

Meet The New Boss: An Honors Faculty Member Weathers Administrative Change, Annamarie Guzy

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The author reflects on the role of honors faculty in effectively responding to short- and long-term administrative change, discussing the value of resistance to deleterious administrative decisions and offering advice for successfully navigating cyclical administrative shifts in honors.

Leveraging Regime Change As An Opportunity To Reimagine, Reset, And Demonstrate Results In Honors, Irina V. Ellison

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Regime changes in higher education can be a source of disruption and lead to a potential derailment of honors programs. This paper describes one honors program’s agility and effective negotiation through a rapid succession of upper administrative change, suggesting that when seen as opportunities these changes invite honors practitioners to re-envision, reset, and reevaluate programmatic set points for admissions, student learning, and curricular innovation.

Regime Change As Opportunity: A Case For A Radically Inclusive Response, Massimo Rondolino

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The author proposes a radically inclusive approach to reimagining and rebuilding honors education at a time of institutional change, suggesting that when directives do not include a clear vision for academic curricula in practice and orientation (and instead focus on budgetary bottom lines and cost-maximization), honors practitioners benefit from an invaluable opportunity to exert self-determination and agency. This essay describes the effective rebuilding of an honors program by leveraging faculty experience to establish a collaborative community framed within a model of student self-governance and grounded in principles of mindful leadership, anti-cruelty mentality, and maternal thinking.

Ready For Business: Developing An Online Business Honors Course For Quality, Engagement, And Inclusivity, Kayla N. Sapkota

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay presents the creation process for an online honors course in the field of business. Highlighting engagement, critical thinking, and inclusivity as central themes, the author describes the course’s inception, structure, outcomes, and post-teaching reflection. The pedagogical framework includes integrative current event assignments and team activities. Noting student responses as generally positive, the author suggests how future versions might expand on remote teamwork opportunities.

Building An Honors Community That Values And Celebrates Faculty, Kristine A. Miller

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The National Collegiate Honors Council’s “Shared Principles and Practices of Honors Education” (2022) outlines the level of commitment, pedagogical innovation and inclusivity, mentoring, and intellectual leadership that honors programs and colleges expect from their faculty. These high expectations require institutional support structures that compensate faculty fairly, foster ongoing professional development, and build a sense of belonging and community in honors. Emphasizing the importance of faculty who teach, mentor, and guide honors students on their educational journeys, the author draws on firsthand experience to offer specific ideas about how to engage and reward honors faculty. The essay suggests that building a …

Developing Honors Faculty Through Faculty Development Programs, Aaron Hanlin

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Despite its crucial role in student success, there is scant research on how honors faculty develop teaching expertise and pedagogical authority. This essay considers the ways in which faculty development programs assist instructors by enhancing the critical skills necessary for positive student outcomes and successful honors programs. While honors scholars continue to advocate for institutional support toward faculty development, this essay provides further rationale and a specific example.

A Relational Model For Honors Education: From Contagion To Permeability, Andrea Radasanu, Rebecca C. Bott, Leigh Fine, Jonathan D. Kotinek, Joy L. Hart, Timothy J. Nichols, Hedi Appel, Daniel M. Roberts, Paul Knox, William L. Ziegler

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This article considers the value of honors education beyond its marked contributions to enrollment management goals. Suggesting that quantitative assessments toward understanding the value of honors fail to capture its breadth, interdisciplinary focus, and engagement, authors posit a new way of measuring impacts from “contagion model” (spillover to campus and beyond) to “permeability model” (interface across campus). Pointing to the benefits of permeability for both honors and the broader campus communities, authors encourage practitioners to foster exchange in curricular offerings, spatial inputs, scholarly outputs, extramural funding, and institutional support. The meaning and history of organizational permeability is explored, and examples …

Facilitating Change: Examining Honors Students’ Perceptions Of Learning Facilitation Techniques, Conner W. Suddick, Lindi Dice

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Despite advancements in global communication and interpersonal networks, in-person discussions and scholarly discourses often falter in the classroom—stifling innovation and preventing opportunities to foster deeper human connection. This study explores the remedy of facilitation: the art and science of enabling a group to unleash its creativity, address conflict, and unlock collective wisdom. Authors present a variety of facilitation techniques used in teaching honors students (n = 13) and closely examine how students articulate their personal learning outcomes after practicing effective facilitations. Liberating structures, which engage everyone in problem-solving, practicing self-discovery, and envisioning potential solutions, are used. Reflective assessments indicate …

Advising For Today's Honor Students, Erin E. Edgington

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs

Introduction: The Elective System, Honors Degrees, and Academic Advising, Erin E. Edgington

Part I: Theoretical and Philosophical Approaches

Chapter 1: How Honors Advising Is Different, Philip L. Frana

Chapter 2: Advising with Purpose: Utilizing the Motivation for College Success Model, Stephanie Veltman Santarosa

Chapter 3: Motivation in Honors Advising, Matthew T. Best, Kenneth E. Barron, Jared Diener, and Philip L. Frana

Chapter 4: Advising Honors Students: Motivational Interviewing as a Tool for Identity Building and Development, Chelsea McKeirnan

Chapter 5: Intellectual Humility, Honors, and Appreciative Advising: Exploring with Students that Changing Their Mind Does Not End the World, Alan Sells …

Advising First-Generation And Socioeconomically Diverse Honors Students, Angela D. Mead

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Honors programs and colleges increasingly consider socioeconomic status as a form of diversity by actively recruiting first-generation and low-income college students. Supporting this movement, the National Collegiate Honors Council’s “Shared Principals and Practices of Honors Education” (2022) highlights the need for inclusive excellence from across all communities. First-generation and low-income students are often high-potential students, and their inclusion into honors communities enhances the whole. The challenge, though, is retaining and graduating these students at rates similar to their more advantaged peers. Academic advising can be an effective tool in these efforts.

First-generation and socioeconomically diverse college students are a large …

Telling Your Story: Stewardship And The Honors College, Andrew Martino

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Honors administrators, particularly honors college deans, find themselves in positions not necessarily equivalent to academic deans in other disciplines. Often, honors college deans function more like provosts in that they need to attend to multiple disciplines simultaneously, while also often carrying obligations in teaching and advising. In addition, the initiation, cultivation, and stewardship of donors to the college are essential components to the honors college dean’s portfolio. This task may be particularly challenging for a dean in honors in that many potential donors are intellectually and emotionally tied to their specific major and/or school or college. And yet, fundraising, especially …

Moving Forward Together: Reflections Of A National Survey Of Ot/Ota Students’ Perceptions Of Culturally Aware Educational Content Delivery, Adair M. Sanchez, Iris W. Burns, Tina M. Deangelis, Maclain Capron, Abigail Mills, Taylor Kligerman

Journal of Occupational Therapy Education

In June of 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd and the additional atrocities against historically marginalized people and communities across the United States, the Commission on Education (COE) of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) sought to act within its scope. A retrospective survey (N= 1,692) was developed, deployed, and analyzed in accordance with the COE’s standard operating procedures relating specifically to monitoring trends that impact the education of occupational therapy (OT) and occupational therapy assistant (OTA) students. This survey aimed to capture perspectives from OT/OTA students regarding the delivery of culturally aware educational content in curricula …

Understanding The Implications Of Work Based Learning For Students Pk-12 School Systems Institutions Of Higher Education And Hosting Organizations, David Naff, Amy Corning, Meleah Ellison, Albion Sumrell, Zehra Sahin Ilkorkor, Jennifer Murphy, Ciana Cross

MERC Publications

This literature review by the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC) and Institute for Collaborative Research and Evaluation (ICRE), in partnership with the Virginia Talent + Opportunity Partnership (V-TOP) and State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) explores work-based learning and its implications for PK-12 institutions, institutions of higher education, and hosting organizations (e.g. employers). The report also provides background information about the foundations of work-based learning and concludes with a series of recommendations for practice, policy, and future research related to work-based learning. There is also an accompanying podcast episode where report authors discuss the key takeaways with …

Employer Perceptions Of The Skills Gap In College Graduates’ Written Communication, Julie Minnaugh

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

U.S. employers have reported that many college graduates are underprepared in written communication when hired and that lack of preparedness hinders these graduates’ employment success. Higher education institution (HEI) administrators need information regarding which writing skills should be taught across the curriculum to improve student outcomes. The purpose of this study was to investigate employers’ perspectives on the written communication skills gap that hinders college graduates from being successful in their professional practice. Swales’s six characteristics of a discourse community provided a conceptual lens for the study, as graduates commencing employment represent newcomers to a discourse community. A basic qualitative …

Employer Perceptions Of The Skills Gap In College Graduates’ Written Communication, Julie Minnaugh

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

U.S. employers have reported that many college graduates are underprepared in written communication when hired and that lack of preparedness hinders these graduates’ employment success. Higher education institution (HEI) administrators need information regarding which writing skills should be taught across the curriculum to improve student outcomes. The purpose of this study was to investigate employers’ perspectives on the written communication skills gap that hinders college graduates from being successful in their professional practice. Swales’s six characteristics of a discourse community provided a conceptual lens for the study, as graduates commencing employment represent newcomers to a discourse community. A basic qualitative …

Digital Transformation To Advance High-Quality Development Of Higher Education, Zongkai Yang

Journal of Educational Technology Development and Exchange (JETDE)

Digitization will bring unlimited potential and a new vision for education, and the digitization of education is a historical process and an inevitable trend of education reform. This paper first puts forward the connotation, foundation, core of education digital transformation and the typical stages of development. Then extracts a series of practices launched in China to cope with the demand in digital transformation from four aspects: platform construction, curriculum supply, teaching methods and evaluation methods. Finally, the exploration and practice carried out by three typical universities are presented where the author has served as president, namely Central China Normal University, …

Effects Of Synchronous And Asynchronous Online Instructional Approaches On English-Learning Undergraduate College Students: An Exploratory Study, Ivana Markova, Cristina Azocar

Journal of English Learner Education

Although the significance of the use of online classes remains evident due to their growing prevalence at US universities, they still remain an untested experience for countless English learners (ELs). This research explores EL students’ perceptions of the opportunities for interaction in synchronous and asynchronous online university classroom modalities. It also examines how socioacademic relations and Bandura’s social learning theory can explain the interactions between students and instructors that influence EL students’ literacy development. Participants (n=105) were selected from a large sample pool of 261 EL undergraduate student participants aged 18 to 35. A mixed methods design was …

Faculty And Staff Perceptions Of Their Roles In Preparing Students For College And Career Readiness: A Qualitative Exploration Of High Schools, Community Colleges, And Universities, Monica Ruiz

Theses & Dissertations

In 2020, nearly half of Texas’s 385,000 public high school graduates were unprepared for college-level reading or math. Limited research reveals K-12 faculty perceive limited roles and responsibilities in the college process, relying heavily on guidance counselors and college admissions counselors for preparing students for college and careers. The purpose of this study was to help fill this gap by answering the central research question: How do high school and college-level faculty and staff prepare high school students for college and careers? I chose a qualitative, interpretive design to explore educators’ individual and shared social meanings and interpretations. I used …

Global Learning: Definition, Assessment, And Approaches, Jiangyuan Zhou

Journal of Global Education and Research

Global learning has become a fundamental aspect of international education. Yet, a clear understanding of global learning and how to develop it remain unclear. Using the dynamic systems approach, this paper analyzed the reasons, methods, and knowledge, skills, and attitudes(KSA) of global learning in higher education. Global learning is the higher education institutions’ critical response to globalization. It is the essential learning outcome of comprehensive internationalization of curriculum requiring students to develop KSA about the external world and their internal selves in their daily lives across local and global communities. With survey results from 142 undergraduate students in one U.S. …

The Empirical Research On University Instructors’ Competencies In Virtual Reality Environment From The Perspective Of Students’ Learning Experience, Jing Ma, Yue Wang, Meng Jiang

Journal of Educational Technology Development and Exchange (JETDE)

The integration of virtual reality (VR) and education is a key way to realize the modernization of higher education. Instructors’ competencies directly affect students’ learning experiences and achievements. Based on the IBSTPI competency standards compiled by the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance, and Instruction (IBSTPI), this study developed an instructors’ competencies scale suitable for the VR environment from the perspective of students’ learning experience and conducted an empirical research on the current situation of instructors’ competencies in VR environment. The scale categorizes of instructors’ competencies included six dimensions: establishing and maintaining learning motivation competencies, expressing competencies, questioning competencies, …

Integrating Media Literacy Into General Education Core Courses For Undergraduates, Christen Embry

Dissertations

This study aimed to understand the essential nature of media literacy, evaluate pre-developed higher education classes for existing media literacy context, and recommend best practices for incorporating media literacy into an undergraduate curriculum. This mixed-methods study of media literacy in undergraduate college courses explored the presence and absence of media literacy lessons within core classes by auditing 15 online course shells accessed through the university’s Learning Management System (LMS). Specifically, all the courses surveyed included the first skill of media literacy, Access; 33% of the classes included Analyze; 27% included Creation; 20% included Reflection; and 20% included Action. Once the …

A Nexus Of Literate Activity: The Design Of Writing Assignments In The Disciplines, Lauriellen Stankavich

English Theses & Dissertations

Writing plays a critical role in higher education as students are inducted into disciplinary practices through different genres, methodological repertoires and argumentation strategies. In Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) initiatives, the instructor serves as an embodied reservoir of disciplinary knowledge and an arbiter of literate practices but most crucially employs the mediating capacities of the writing assignment as a potent pedagogical nexus. In this practice space, the instructor acts as designer of the pedagogical experience—the course as a whole and writing assignments in particular. This study used interviews, survey, and the collection of syllabi and other instructional artifacts to examine …

Reflections On Pedagogical Practice And Development Through Multidisciplinary Triadic Peer Mentorship, Nicole Charles, Nathalie Moon, Andrew P. Dicks

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This article presents a critical reflection on the experiences of three university instructors (two teaching stream and one tenure stream) within a 6-month peer-to-peer mentoring for teaching community of practice (P2P CoP). As part of the P2P CoP, the authors (who were previously unknown to one another) formed a “teaching triad” at a tri-campus, research-intensive Canadian university. They regularly met in person for 1 hour on a weekly basis throughout the Winter 2019 semester to discuss teaching-related matters, undertook classroom visits to observe one another teach, and participated in pedagogical workshops with other P2P CoP members. In this article, the …

Jcctl Mailer - August 19, 2022, Josef Brandauer

JCCTL Mailers

Updates on training and support and useful pedagogical resources compiled and sent by the JCCTL on August 19, 2022.

Contents:

Upcoming Events:

• Strategies for an Effective First Day of Class

Resource Guides:

• Practical Ideas for Creating Effective Syllabi (attached)
• Setting Up Your Moodle Gradebook (attached)

Jcctl Mailer - August 10, 2022, Josef Brandauer

JCCTL Mailers

Updates on training and support and useful pedagogical resources compiled and sent by the JCCTL on August 10, 2022.

Contents:

Upcoming Events:

• 30 minutes with Kelli Murphy – Effective and Efficient Moodle Course Design Strategies
• Supporting International and Multilingual Student Writers
• Practical Ideas for Creating Effective Syllabi
• Trauma-Informed Approaches in Teaching

Other Recommended Resources:

• Creating Videos from PowerPoint
• Panopto Video Tutorials