Fostering Transformative Education Online: Preliminary results from an FLC focused on developing ecology learning modules
Presenter: Ashley Bales
Collaborators: Bryan Adinolfi, Michael Sekor, Christopher Jensen
A major goal of general education is to foster transformative learning: to empower students not only to master a subject, but to transform that mastery into action. Transformative action outcomes benefit greatly from community-oriented learning programs (Segalas et al., 2010), however, online classrooms face greater hurdles in establishing productive student learning communities. In response to the challenges presented by a fully-remote semester, the Math & Science department formed a four-person faculty learning community (FLC) aimed at developing a series of online learning modules in order to address the question: How might transformative learning be fostered in the online classroom? Employing a variety of pedagogical approaches, these modules were implemented in four ecology courses and data was collected to better understand changes in the students’ complexity of understanding, patterns of collaboration, and attitudes. The coordinator of this FLC, Adjunct Assistant Professor Ashley Bales, will present preliminary results from the group’s in progress study. Discussion following the presentation will allow attendees to both consider how similar approaches might enrich their classroom practice and provide feedback that will inform future research by this FLC.
When: February 12th, 12pm
Presentation type: Presentation followed by discussion centered on attendee questions/comments
Total duration: 50 minutes (30 minutes presentation, 20 minutes discussion)