High Impact
Practices and Affective Learning in the L2 Class:
Challenges and Rewards
_
Organiser:
Mercedes Rowinsky-Geurts
_
CFP
in Spanish
Most first
year university courses are content driven. The need to cover the curriculum
drives the teaching, leaving few opportunities to explore students' own
life experiences and, most of all, to connect course content to those events.
This approach could diminish the academic success of students, and institutions
may fall short of obtaining their academic goals. Some argue that dealing
with the affective domain in higher education is a cumbersome task which
usually is also difficult to measure. Bloom et al have discussed these
issues at length.
_
The implementation
of High Impact Practices (HIP) in a large first year university using multi-media,
multiple-modality literacy of digital storytelling to connect the course
content to personal stories, for example, has shown students achieve not
only greater cognitive ability, but also develop and work on the affective
domain of the learning process while creating learning communities, facilitating
social relationships and forms of participations. Apart from these significant
learning outcomes one of the major goals of the DS is to promote the internalization
of learned concepts making them part of the individual repertoire.
_
The innovative
aspect of HIP is that it moves students from a memorization, test oriented
mentality in order to bring them to a superior cognitive level where connections
are established, creating opportunities for deeper learning. According
to the Association of American Colleges and Universities, implementing
HIP during the first year has shown: higher persistence rates; higher graduation
rates, short-term positive effect on GPA; gains in commitment to social
justice/multicultural awareness; greater academic engagement and greater
faculty and peer interaction. By providing clear objectives, timelines
and progress-report requirements for the projects at the outset, students
are kept well informed and feel guided throughout the process. The learning-by-doing
approach of some HIP creates a hands-on approach, while applying conceptual
content acquired in the course; but instead of having only a grade as the
outcome as in tests and/or quizzes, it offers the possibility of receiving
formative feedback all throughout the learning journey, creating opportunities
for reflective periods and constant reviews, with the goal of obtaining
the best product possible, completely different than just listening and
memorizing content.
_
Students in
large classes are accustomed to being passive receptors of information.
Much of it, is forgotten soon after the course is completed. By offering
students the possibility to have a voice through the High Impact Practices
(HIP) that explore the affective domain, by communicating clear expectations
and by guiding them through the process, students not only achieve a higher
level of conceptual understanding, but they also display a high level of
engagement, which is rare in a large class. HIP are also a vehicle to develop
empathy about the way others perceive the world. By offering the space
to reflect on their learning, instead of receiving marks that can’t be
improved, the HIP offer a unique opportunity to develop a deeper sense
of self and it connects the student’s own experiences to the course content,
while allowing opportunities to connect with others in the class. In this
way, some HIP practices could be situated as an innovative project that
helps students to "escape boredom and indifference" so prevalent in today’s
large classes.
_
This panel
will present already established practices or those which are in the process
of being put into practice that could be implemented in any L2 class successfully.
We request that presenters offer tangible examples of HIP together with
a set of teaching tools: plan for the project, assessing tools, rubrics,
etc. in order to provide the audience with material to apply these methodologies
in their own institutions.
_
Please, send
an_abstract_of
500 words to Dr. Mercedes Rowinsky-Geurts at_mrowinsky@wlu.ca_by
Feb. 1st 2012. Include a brief biography._
Se
recuerda a los participantes que deben_inscribirse
al Congreso de la Federación Canadiense de Humanidades y Ciencias
Sociales_y
tener su_cuota
de membresía a la ACH_al
día.
|
_el 5 de diciembre de 2011
