Faculty Teaching Fellowships

Serie Leamos: Students Applying Design and Language Curriculum to Create a Multilingual Reading Library
Our College to Career Fellowship entails an interdisciplinary collaboration of faculty from two colleges (Rodrigo from World Languages and Cultures, and Prewitt from Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design), and collaboration of students from two disciplines (Spanish and Art & Design). Students in Spanish and Art & Design courses have collaborated to write and illustrate original stories. The stories are used as reading material for inexperienced student-readers of Spanish in Lower Division courses. The final product becomes part of Serie Leamos, an online library for language acquisition through reading, which is accessible to teachers and students worldwide.This experiential learning project raises students’ awareness of their career readiness by allowing them to connect the work they do in their major to career competencies. Furthermore, it allows students to demonstrate their proficiency in career-transferable skills by using those skills to create real value for audiences within the University and far beyond. In this project, our students learn by doing, which will prepare them to face the challenges they can encounter when working in the real world.

The purpose of this project is to develop design principles and technological infrastructure for distance learning in immersive reality. The goal is to discover best practices, best experiences, and best content when using virtual spaces as a teaching and training environment. While studying the innovations in the media industry, I will apply them to teaching and learning in a design thinking process of discovery. I will focus on the question - How might we redesign education both spatially and cognitively for students to participate fully in distance learning where the experience is more uniquely engaging than in-person learning? The tangible outcomes will be public discourse in the immersive learning landscape and a refined course prototype.

Sites of Discussion: Teaching the Humanities Online through Discussion Forums and Place-based Pedagogy
I propose a SoTL project that examines how discussion forums and mapping technology benefit online teaching in the humanities. Using research in online learning communities and place-based pedagogy theory, I will use an online discussion forum and a digital mapping tool in my fall 2020 Victorian novel class and assess the results. I will develop and use rubrics that assess the technologies’ effectiveness of building a learning community and for student learning outcomes for the course..

Our project: Criminal Justice and Criminology Sophomore Learning Community
The sophomore year creates some unique challenges that, for many, results in the “sophomore slump” (Virtue, Wells, & Virtue, 2017). Historically, campus resources have focused on first-year student efforts rather than on sophomore needs. The creation of a Sophomore Learning Community model can help address concerns regarding sophomore attrition. While managing the logistics of a sophomore LC can be difficult, with proper faculty, staff, and administrative support, positive results can be produced. Further, creating SLCs that relate to specific majors or career paths improves the likelihood that courses will fill and that students, as well as faculty, will have a positive Learning Community experience (Gahagan & Stuart Hunter, 2006; Virtue et al., 2017).Modeled after the FLC program (Dabney, Green, & Topalli, 2006), this SLC program draws upon a cohort model to foster student belonging, connections to the university, and student success. At the core of the program is a newly created course Proseminar in CJ (CRJU 2010). This 3-credit course will count as an CJ Area I elective. It will be a WAC designated class with the support of a graduate writing consultant. The content of the course is designed to orient students to the CJ major, enhance their connections to the faculty and subject matter, provide remedial support in the areas of social science writing and statistics, and serve as a first step in the college-to-career progression.Students will participate in coordinated trips and field experiences, collaborate to identify and propose solutions to real-world challenges, consider the impact of their proposals, identify errors in reasoning, set goals, prioritize tasks, and meet deadlines. Additional course modules will expose students to department policies and support programs (i.e. AYSPS Office of Academic Assistance and AYSPS Career Services), introduce them to faculty members, and prepare them for the job and graduate school prospects that follow. This course will serve as a valuable second-year extension for native students who participated in the FLC program. Importantly, it will serve as a vital orientation and remediation course for first-year transfer students who historically struggle to keep pace with the rigors of a research university program.