engaged signature work: presentation for rutgers university new brunswick
TRANSCRIPT
Engaged, Meaningful Student Capstone Experiences
“Engaged Signature Work”
RU-NB Cares • Thursday, December 7, 2017 • Ariane Hoy, Bonner Foundation
•Who are you?
•What are you hoping to learn?
Introductions
• Founded in 1990
• 70+ colleges and universities
• A unique holistic, developmental approach
• More than 15,000 graduates
About Bonner and Me
Concept, Origins, and Evidence
The Concept
• AAC&U Diversity & Democracy, Fall 2016
• Articles by a range of authors
• Allegheny, DePaul, Portland State, University of Richmond, Wofford, etc.
• A high-impact practice
• Lasts at least one semester
• Individual or team
• Involves a community partner or works to address a social action or issue
Engaged Signature Work
Academic Pathway
• Scaffolded experiences
• First Year Seminar
• Learning Community
• Methods
• Undergraduate Research
• Capstone
• The LEAP Challenge calls on colleges and universities to build pathways where all undergraduates to complete a substantial cross-disciplinary project in a topic significant to the student and society, as part of the expected pathway to a degree(AAC&U, 2016).
The LEAP Challenge
Conceptual Model
Connects with post-graduate success
–Theater major producing play about history of church
connected with Underground Railroad
- Journalism major using investigative approaches to
write about race
“Undergraduates…would participate in field projects, relating ideas to real life. Classrooms and laboratories would be extended to include health clinics, youth centers, schools, and government offices. Faculty members would build partnerships with practitioners who would, in turn, come to campus as lecturers and student advisers” (Boyer, 1994, p. 5).
Pedagogical Foundations: The Scholarship of Engagement
“If community outreach is to be seen as a form of scholarship, then it is the practice of reaching out and providing service to a community that must be seen as raising important issues whose investigation may lead to generalizations of prospective relevance and actionability" (Schön, 1995, p. 7).
Faculty as Reflective Practitioners
Learning Paradigms:
Democratic Community Engagement
• Nearly half of 707 regionally accredited colleges and universities used capstones within their institution's assessment (Berheide, 2007; Henscheid, 2000).
• Rhodes and Agre-Kippenhan (2004) found that community-based capstones were associated with gains in leadership, tolerance for difference, knowledge of people from different cultures, and understanding of social issues.
Evidence for Capstones
• NSSE’s analysis suggested capstones involving “a field placement or experience were associated with the greatest number of educational gains (fourteen of fifteen common gains), including working effectively with others, acquiring job- or work-related skills, solving complex, real world problems, applying theory, and synthesizing and organizing ideas” (Kinzie, 2013, p. 2)
Evidence for Capstones
Reactions & Discussion
Individual & Institutional
Change
Educating Civic Minded Graduates
Source: Bringle, Hatcher, & Sternberg, 2012
–American Studies student working on food security in Albany
–Computer Science student using data visualization of local arrests
– Political Science student analyzing
tax policy to understand and address income
disparities
– Education student analyzing teacher preparation in high-need schools
Learning
Purpose
ImpactThe paper
The community forum
The report
Why the student is doing this?What question the knowledge can
address?
The disciplinary lensTransferable skills
Finding that sweet spot…
(1) a framing definition and conceptualization of civic engagement and Civically Engaged Signature Work;
(2) well articulated, developmental, integrated processes for design and implementation
(3) links clearly with both the academic learning goals and structure (usually a course) and partner structure (often a community-oriented product and dissemination of what is learned);
What Is Needed for Institutional Integration
(4) scaffolding of the capstone experience within the broader sequence and structure of undergraduate experience (curricular and co-curricular)
(5) assessment of student learning
(6) thoughtful integration of community voice, needs, and guidance is supported through both instructional design and deep, sustained relationships between students, staff, and faculty with community partners
What Is Needed for Institutional Integration
• Curriculum mapping (departmental or institutional, and can include co-curriculum)
• Faculty (or integrative) learning circles with readings and scholarship
• Mechanisms to gather and share projects and requests from community partners (meetings, focus groups, systems)
Three Promising Practices
Curriculum MappingSource: https://www.eab.com/research-and-insights/academic-affairs-forum/expert-insights/2017/
Faculty Learning CirclesMeeting 1 Discuss An Overview of Capstones and Signature Work by AAC&U Discuss capstones currently at the institution and integrated with civic work.
Meeting 2 Discuss Creating the New American College by Ernest Boyer Discuss A New Scholarship Requires a New Epistemolog y by Donald Schön Discuss the conceptualizations of an engaged institution and scholarship and how they apply to your campus.
Meeting 3 Discuss Democratic Engagement White Paper by John Saltmarsh, Matthew Hartley, and Patti Clayton Discuss The Scholarship of Community Partner Voice by Sean Creighton
Discuss the concepts of democratic community engagement and strategies for producing knowledge in partnerships between faculty, students, and community.
Meeting 4 Discuss Taking Stock of Capstones and Integrative Learning by Jillian Kinzie, Associate Director, Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research and NSSE
Discuss Going Beyond the Requirement: The Capstone Experience by Peggy Redman, Director of the La Verne Experience at the University of La Verne Boyer
Discuss viable reasons (i.e., learning outcomes) and avenues for creating capstone courses at your institution.
Meeting 5 Discuss Civic Engagement in the Capstone: The “State of the Community” Event by Charles C. Turner, CSU Chico Discuss Civic Engagement through Civic Agriculture: Using Food to Link Classroom and Community by D. Wynn Wright, Michigan State
Discuss the take-aways from these articles about effective community-engaged capstones.
Meeting 6 Discuss Putting Students at the Center of Civic Engagement by Richard M. Battistoni and Nicholas V. Longo Discuss College Graduates’ Perspectives on the Effect of Capstone Service-Learning Courses by Seanna Kerrigan, Portland State
Discuss opportunities for student voice and leadership in the capstone design and courses.
Meeting 7 Discuss Doing Less Work, Collecting Better Data: Using Capstone Courses to Assess Learning by Catherine White Berheide Discuss Generating, Deepening, and Documenting Learning: The Power of Critical Reflection in Applied Learning by Sarah Ash,
North Carolina State University, and Patti Clayton, PHC Ventures Discuss the integration of critical reflection and assessment of student learning in capstones.
Partner RequestsSet up focus
groups
Run 3-4 focus
groups
Translate into
research projects
Build systems &
relationships
Examples: Courses
Examples: Courses
• “The capstone course is the culmination of an undergraduate career; a crowning experience coming at the end of a sequence of courses that allows students to ‘put it all together’ (Hovorka, 2009, p. 252)
• “What last academic experience can [faculty] provide graduating seniors that will be valuable for citizenship in the human community?” (p. 253)
• Capstones invite students to be colleagues in the collaborative community of researchers and scholars; when extended to partners, these projects can generate community knowledge (Davis, 1993; Hovorka, 2009; Saltmarsh & Hartley, 2011; Wagenaar, 1993)
Transformational Integrative Potential
How could you envision this
for you or here?
