Liberal Studies Commons^™

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: The Honors Professional Development Portfolio: Claiming The Value Of Honors For Improvement, Tenure, And Promotion

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

All of us working in honors face a similar challenge when we are asked to account for the value of our efforts as teachers or leaders in our honors programs or colleges. Much of what we do is invisible to all but the most discerning and appreciative eyes: hours spent designing new courses and pedagogical approaches; advising students on curricular, career, and personal matters; coordinating faculty and student development opportunities; forging beneficial alliances across campus to grow and strengthen our institutional areas; collaborating with students on research projects; drafting grants and other proposals; maintaining alumnae relations; leading students to academic …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Constructing An Honors Composition Course To Support A Research-Based Honors Curriculum

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

As the research focus of post-secondary honors education intensifies, the honors composition course can be designed to support this mission by introducing students to discipline-specific research tools and argumentation styles while building an interdisciplinary community of scholars who can debate issues both within and outside their fields. Not only do students develop skills in selecting, reading, and writing researched academic arguments, but they also gain insight into the publication and presentation processes as related to professional development in a given discipline. Students learn how publishers and editors serve as gatekeepers of what is considered knowledge in a field, how researchers …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Building And Enhancing Honors Programs Through Faculty Learning Communities

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Many important institutional concerns and opportunities, observes John R. Cosgrove, involve honors programs and colleges, such as their impact on undergraduate academic performance, retention, and graduation (Cosgrove). Another consideration for honors programs is the area of curriculum revision or enhancement, for example, increasing ethical inquiry across courses in the honors curriculum. Others involve inspiring faculty to create new honors courses, adjusting criteria for student requirements and recognition, initiating joint enterprises with liberal education and STEM programs, and advancing the role of the honors curriculum in advocating change across the institution. These opportunities beckon solutions that can be investigated and proposed …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Foreword, Richard Badenhausen

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

When I first stumbled upon honors education over two decades ago while team-teaching a seminar called “Poetry and the Condition of Music,” it was the freedom inside and outside the classroom that most caught my attention. Sprung from the shackles of my usual British Literature survey, one in which students trudged through a rigid chronology of canonical authors, I was free to design a course with the university’s choral director that put ancient oral poets in dialogue with rap musicians; that explored the collaboration between W. H. Auden and Benjamin Britten; that set Langston Hughes against crucial jazz influences. Additionally, …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Reading To Improve Teaching And Learning, John Zubizarreta

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Scholarship on teaching and learning has exploded in volume and influence in recent decades, providing all of us who are dedicated to improving our roles as professors with a dizzying array of books and other resources. Faculty development as a specific area of study and professional growth and centers designed to promote and support better teaching (often called CETLs for Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning or CATLs for Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning) have multiplied on campuses around the globe.

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Teaching For Learning In Honors Courses: Identifying And Implementing Effective Educational Practices

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Teaching and learning are interesting endeavors. As faculty members, we spend a great deal of time working with students to help them understand a concept, a fact, or a point of view, but we often do not spend equal time better understanding and improving teaching and learning. Time and again, individual educators note that they were trained in a given discipline, not in the process of teaching. In most states, it takes more credentialing in teaching to become a first-grade instructor in math than it does to teach a graduate seminar in psychology. Because of the assumption that those who …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Using Student-Generated Questions To Promote Learning

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Faculty who teach gifted honors students often ask themselves, “How can I ask questions that foster higher-order thinking?” “How can I get more students to respond?” “How can I ensure that students are learning from question-based discussions?” Another key concern: “How can I get students to begin interacting with each other rather than conducting a discussion much like a ping-pong match where the rapid exchanges occur only between a single student and me and then another student and me?” This last question can lead faculty to a different model of questioning, one in which students generate questions that are then …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Honors Components In Honors Faculty Development

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In this chapter we describe the design characteristics of a professional development course about honors teaching. We claim that the principles of learning and teaching in honors are also applicable to the design of a course for honors faculty.

The context of our research is Utrecht University in The Netherlands, a large and high-ranking research university that offers undergraduate and graduate programs in a wide variety of academic disciplines. Dutch higher education does not have a longstanding

tradition in honors; Utrecht University was among the first research universities that started experimenting with honors programs in the 1990s. The rationale was …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Linking Honors Courses: A New Approach To Defining Honors Pedagogy

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

The shift in higher education toward outcome-based learning represents a significant opportunity for honors. By removing disciplinary boundaries related to teaching content knowledge, outcome-based learning increases opportunities for connecting student learning across courses within well-defined honors curricula. It also empowers honors students, many of whom are eager to take leadership of their educational experiences, to extend their learning in new ways. This essay presents an example of how drawing connections across honors courses within a curriculum creates unique opportunities for engaged, transformative learning and, unexpectedly, for the development of an honors program identity.

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Perspectives On Twentieth-Century American Identity

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

At Southern Oregon University, a course designated as HON 315: Perspectives on Twentieth-Century American Identity has been developed and offered with a high degree of success for several terms. Its pedagogical flexibility, high level of student participation, and exceptionally high course-evaluation ratings from students indicate that it might serve as a useful model for honors programs and colleges as a lower-level honors course in United States history or perhaps adapted to other disciplines. The course description is as follows:

This course is a study of the development of the United States in the twentieth century and early twenty-first century, focusing …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Innovative Discussion-Based Pedagogy

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Psychologists have identified a series of specific kinds of learning experiences that confer broad and lasting educational benefits, contributing to overall professional success regardless of field. These benefits include developing creativity, problem-solving, cognitive complexity, and flexibility (Maddux et al.); working well in diverse or dispersed groups; negotiating interpersonal problems (Tadmor et al.); tolerating ambiguity; pursuing cultural engagement; appreciating diversity; and being open to experience (Shadowen et al.). This research is important because it provides evidence for the longterm impact of certain experiences on ways of thinking rather than their short-term ability to help students pass exams. The research argues powerfully …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Bending Time And Space: Three Approaches For Breaking Barriers In The Honors Classroom

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Varying the typical format of the honors classroom is a great way to encourage creative thinking. When students become accustomed to what to expect from a class, they are often able to fulfill requirements with minimal effort. An unusual and challenging course experience requires students to focus, to think in new ways about their learning. This is part of why courses abroad are often so transformational: students constantly have to adjust to their new environment. The challenge for teachers like me who love leading courses abroad is how to create similarly engaging experiences at home. Using unusual course structures, meeting …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Growing Pains In Honors Education: Two Courses Designed To Build Community

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Honors programs and colleges that seek substantial growth face a number of challenges. Two of the most prominent are maintaining a strong sense of community within the honors student population and finding sufficient faculty to teach honors courses. A different, but not entirely unrelated, challenge is presented by part-time students, some of whom may be excellent candidates for honors but whose outside commitments make it impossible for them to carry a full course load or regularly attend classes during business hours. In what follows, I will provide an overview of two honors courses whose design can help meet the two …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Introduction

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

At times, when honors education comes up in academic or popular conversations, a common and automatic response seems to prevail: an assumption that honors means faster, broader, more complicated, and more expert delivery of content information on the part of the teacher and greater, more efficient acquisition of disciplinary knowledge and higher achievement on tests or essays on the part of the student. What the instructor teaches in terms of countable amounts of information and what the student produces in terms of quantitatively measurable outcomes rule the day.

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: The Importance Of The First-Semester Experience: Learning Communities And Clustered Classes

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

I served as Director of the Honors College at William Paterson University for ten years in a half-time capacity while I also worked as a Professor of History. Last year, I took a new position as the Dean of the Pforzheimer Honors College at Pace University. Both honors colleges have special courses for first-semester honors students that are meant to help successful high school students transition into successful college students. First-semester consolidated courses can offer honors students an experience that is challenging and rigorous and that helps them to better understand the expectations of professors and the staff of the …

Breaking Barriers In Teaching And Learning: Selected Book Resources

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Achacoso, M. V., and M. D. Svinicki, editors. Alternative Strategies

for Evaluating Student Learning. New Directions for Teaching

and Learning, No. 100. Jossey-Bass, 2005.

Allen, M. J. Assessing Academic Programs in Higher Education,

Jossey-Bass, 2004.

Anderson, L. W., D. R. Krathwohl, and B. S. Bloom. A Taxonomy

for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy

of Educational Objectives. Longman, 2001.

Angelo, T. A., and K. P. Cross. Classroom Assessment Techniques: A

Handbook for College Teachers. 2nd ed., Jossey-Bass, 1993.

Arreola, R. A. Developing a Comprehensive Faculty Evaluation System:

A Handbook for College Faculty and …

Possibility And Play: Ludonarratology As Liberating Praxis, Morgan Read-Davidson

English Faculty Articles and Research

Studying and composing ergodic media like interactive fiction can be one way of liberating students from the constraints of linear textual composition, encouraging them to explore and experiment with multimodality and remediation. A pedagogy that incorporates narratology and ludology teaches awareness of the remediation of narrative into digital, ludic media, and creates opportunities for the transfer of nonlinear, interactive writing practices back into more conventional writing. This paper describes an example of this pedagogical approach in a Writing for Video Games course, and the preliminary steps toward understanding how such praxis might transfer to writing in new contexts.

Front Matter, Joonna Smitherman Trapp, Brad Peters

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Front Matter

Jaepl, Vol. 23, Winter 2017-2018, Joonna Smitherman Trapp, Brad Peters

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Editors’ Parting Message

Essays

The Politics of Consciousness, Kurt Spellmeyer

Writing, Silence, and Well-being, Robert P. Yagelski

Writing as a Liberal Art in an Age Neither Artful nor Liberal, Douglas Hesse

The Tyranny of ‘Best Practices,’ Roger Thompson

SPECIAL SECTION: TEACHING AND LEARNING AS BODILY ARTS

Corporal Pedagogies: An Introduction, Wendy Ryden

Embodied Databases: Attending to Research ‘Places’ through Emotion and Movement, Kati Fargo Ahern

Embodied Ethos and a Pedagogy of Presence: Reflections from a Writing Yogi, Christy I. Wenger

Rhetorics of Reflection: Revisiting Listening Rhetoric through Mindfulness, Empathy, and Non-Violent Communication, Renea Frey

Performance and the Possible: Embodiment, Privilege, …

Performance And The Possible: Embodiment, Privilege, And The Politics Of Teaching Writing, Lesley Erin Bartlett

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

An astute examination of the roles students often expect their teachers to assume prompts questions and challenges for those whose bodies do not correspond with those expectations.

Connecting, Christy I. Wegner, W. Keith Duffy, Sheila Kennedy, Jen Consilio, Carl Vandermeulen, Robert Randolph

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Christy I. Wenger, The Emotional Labor of Our Work

W. Keith Duffy, Interdisciplinary Dangers: A Small Caveat

Sheila Kennedy & Jen Consilio, One Mindful Step

Carl Vandermeulen, The Way to the Falls

Robert Randolph, A Good Rain

Back Matter, Joonna Smitherman Trapp, Brad Peters

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Back Matter

Invitational Rhetoric: An Engaged Pedagogy For Technical Communication, Linford Odartey Lamptey

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Many scholars have advocated a breakdown of teachers' authority while agitating for students’ voice and freedom in the classroom. They have proposed several theories to this effect. In this paper, I reflect on how principles of invitational rhetoric, engaged pedagogy and critical pedagogy operate in teaching a technical communicating class. It is to find out how these tend to support or otherwise students’ voices, engagement and agency. To reflect, I adopted and adapted the principles of invitational rhetoric, engaged, and critical pedagogy to topics in technical communication. My reflections reveal that the successful applications of theories cannot be guaranteed. We …

Integrating Ethnic Studies In Social Studies Curriculum, Alyssa Denise Hernández

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Traditional social studies curriculum in the K-12 system focuses on United States history through a Eurocentric lens. The issue with focusing on a black-and-white version of history impacts people of color from ethnic backgrounds that are not equally represented in the curriculum. The research conducted for this project specifically focuses on the impact of this subject matter on individuals in a predominantly Latino community. Through surveys and interviews, the researcher presents feedback on the experiences of these individuals and provides possible solutions on how schools can improve social studies curriculum at the high school level to be more culturally relevant …

Iii International Colloquium Proceedings, International Colloquium

Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Languages, Cultures, Identity in School and Society

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Outdoor Orientation Program Participation On Honors Program Completion, Joanna Gonsalves

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Improving rates of honors program completion is a goal of virtually all honors directors and deans, and research can help identify and evaluate promising strategies. A number of recent empirical studies have investigated predictors of program completion, including students’ admission credentials and honors program features. Though specific indicators of honors program success vary across institutional contexts and even by student cohorts within programs, some patterns have emerged. For instance, high school grade point average (GPA) tends to be a better predictor of honors program success than SAT scores (McKay; Savage et al.; Smith & Vitus Zagurski). Other completion studies focusing …

Honors Student Thriving: A Model Of Academic, Psychological, And Social Wellbeing, Amanda Cuevas, Laurie A. Schreiner, Young Kim, Jennifer Bloom

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Although academic success in honors programs is easily quantified, student thriving has not been previously measured. Honors students are often recruited to raise the academic profiles of their institutions (Carlson; Hebel) and so tend to excel academically in ways that can be measured by grades and graduation rates. Little is empirically known, however, about their holistic success and wellbeing while in college (Boazman; Moon; Slavin, Coladarci, & Pratt; Walker). Because they are no more immune than other students to psychological and social impediments, they may be succeeding but not thriving in their college experience. Thriving—defined as academic, psychological, and interpersonal …

Journal Of The National Collegiate Honors Council, Open , Vol. 18, No. 2. Fall/Winter 2017

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Editor’s Introduction — Ada Long

Open Forum Essays

Teaching an Honors Seminar on #BlackLivesMatter in East Texas — Ervin Malakaj, Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, Kimberly Bell, Patrick J. Lewis, and Julia D. May

Helping with the “How”: A Role for Honors in Civic Education — Craig Kaplowitz

A Part Of… or Apart From: A Reflection from South Africa — Ken Mulliken

Mental Health Needs in the Honors Community: Beyond Good Intentions — Maureen Kelleher

Research Essays

Aided by Adderall: Illicit Use of ADHD Medications by College Students — Amber D. Rolland and Patricia J. Smith

Honors …

Moving From Forecast To Prediction: How Honors Programs Can Use Easily Accessible Predictive Analytics To Improve Enrollment Management, Joseph A. Cazier, Leslie Sargent Jones, Jennifer Mcgee, Mark Jacobs, Daniel Paprocki, Rachel A. Sledge

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Most enrollment management systems today use historical data to build rough forecasts of what percentage of students will likely accept an offer of enrollment based on historical acceptance rates. While this aggregate forecast method has its uses, we propose that building an enrollment model based on predicting an individual’s likelihood of matriculation can be much more beneficial to an honors director than a historical aggregate forecast. Many complex predictive analytics techniques and specialized software can build such models, but here we show that a basic approach can also be easily accessible to honors directors where a small amount of data …

Two Neglected Features Of Honors Advising, Jeffrey P. Hause

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Recent studies on advising show considerable agreement about the sorts of practices that constitute good advising, whether by a professional staff advisor, an official faculty advisor, or an unofficial faculty mentor. These practices include creating a welcoming atmosphere, building a trusting relationship, and helping the student find resources to envision a flourishing future and make concrete plans to achieve it (Gregory and Edwards; Bloom et al.; Cooperrider et al.). Two important features of advising, though, do not receive the focus they deserve. The first is the advisor’s practice of attention, an activity that forms the basis of a trusting relationship …