Downloads & Free Reading Options - Results

This article examines two case studies that describe different ways of working with community partners to create civic engagement experiences in undergraduate education. Analysis of the case studies yields guidance about practical decisions involved in planning, designing, and executing pedagogy that uses engagement to generate what Fink calls "significant learning experiences." Emphasis is placed on several key considerations of goals, process, and outcomes for designing courses with community partnerships. The article also highlights a rationale for sponsoring community-engaged pedagogy and identifies the types of resources such work requires to be effective.

This article examines two case studies that describe different ways of working with community partners to create civic engagement experiences in undergraduate education. Analysis of the case studies yields guidance about practical decisions involved in planning, designing, and executing pedagogy that uses engagement to generate what Fink calls "significant learning experiences." Emphasis is placed on several key considerations of goals, process, and outcomes for designing courses with community partnerships. The article also highlights a rationale for sponsoring community-engaged pedagogy and identifies the types of resources such work requires to be effective.

In a domain historically dominated by student passivity, instruction that entices students to integrate and assimilate new content into their pre-existing cognitive schema is a new but necessary shift from the traditional teaching paradigm. No longer is college teaching primarily focused on quantity of information, but rather the quality of learning as measured by specific student learning outcomes. To facilitate this change, Fink (2003) identifies what he calls a "significant learning experience" and categorizes it according to a six-part taxonomy. This case study explores one of Fink's categories, "integration," in the context of a class in an undergraduate religious studies course. In this class, students explored the work of St. Augustine, a prominent early Christian theologian, and his notion of idolatry (confusion of the world with God). Discussion of St. Augustine was used both as a springboard for understanding the concept of idolatry as well as for critiquing contemporary notions of romantic love. This piece will present specific instructional decisions that exemplify this theory of integration as well as offer advice to other higher education faculty looking to create significant learning experiences in their own classrooms.