CEL facilitates multi-institutional research on engaged learning topics. Participants from institutions around the world collaborate over three years, producing scholarship that shapes research and practice globally.
CEL is home to two book series. In addition, CEL research seminars and other initiatives have produced 100+ publications (to date).
CEL’s concise guides offer research-informed practices for engaged learning.
CEL’s concise guides offer practical strategies for studying engaged learning.
CEL brings together international leaders in higher education to develop, synthesize, and share rigorous research on central questions about student learning.
The CEL Scholar role and CEL Student Scholars program enable Elon faculty and students to deepen their understanding of and professional development in scholarly activity on engaged learning.
Cooper, Katelyn M., Brian Haney, Anna Krieg, and Sara E. Brownell. 2017. "What’s in a Name? The Importance of Students Perceiving That an Instructor Knows Their Names in a High-Enrollment Biology Classroom." CBE—Life Sciences Education 16 (1): ar8. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-08-0265.
Cooper et al. have been cited in several recent publications about fostering relationships in college. The authors suggest that using nameplates to facilitate addressing students by name leads to relationship gains, even if faculty wouldn’t otherwise remember students’ names. Cooper et al. studied a high-enrollment biology class in which instructors used active-learning strategies and asked students to use name tents – folded card stock on which students wrote their names. At the end of the semester, the instructors could name approximately half of their students when looking at a deidentified photo roster, but 78% of the students surveyed thought the instructors knew their names (5). Moreover 23% of the students indicated that instructors knowing their names contributed to student-instructor relationships (7).
Annotation contributed by Dr. Buffie Longmire-Avital
Costa, Christina Naegeli, and Lauren Christine Mims. 2021. "Using Notecard Check-Ins to Build Relationships and Establish a Climate of Care." College Teaching 69 (1): 32-33. https://doi.org/10.1080/87567555.2020.1797619.
Costa and Mims describe using notecards to check-in with students at the beginning or end of class as a way to build rapport. In this “Quick Fix” article, they describe distributing index cards to their students periodically during the semester. They ask students to respond to questions about their stress level, self-care plans, or recent good news, and the instructors respond either individually or with synthesized responses to the class. Costa and Mims write, “Setting aside five minutes during class has allowed us to quickly and easily learn (1) what is currently causing distress, (2) the good and the bad things that are going on in students’ lives, and (3) whether students are utilizing resources on campus that they might need. As a result, notecard check-ins have fostered a greater sense of connection between us and our students” (33).
deBie, Alise. 2020. "Respectfully Distrusting ‘Students as Partners’ Practice in Higher Education: Applying a Mad Politics of Partnership." Teaching in Higher Eduction. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2020.1736023.
Alise de Bie provides an interesting editorial explaining Mad(ness) Studies – “an area of scholarship and pedagogy establishing roots in the academy, has emerged as a result of this activism and is principally inspired by and concerned with Mad people’s ways of knowing, being and doing (Menzies, LeFrancois, and Reaume 2013; Reville 2013)” (2). Her inclusion of Mad people includes: “(service) users, (psychiatric) survivors, consumers, patients, disabled, Mad (for an overview see Reaume [2002]; Speed [2006])” (2). The four main themes include: 1) equality; 2) interpersonal concord and consensus; 3) mutual collaboration; and 4) inclusion. The article brings up many excellent points about how certain voices may be valued more in Students as Partners practices and that conflict may be fine – everything does not have to be okay.
Hurtado, Sylvia, Cynthia L. Alverez, Chelsea Guillermo-Wann, Marcela Cuellar, and Lucy Arellano. 2012. "A Model for Diverse Learning Environments." In Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, vol 27, edited by John C. Smart and Michael B. Paulsen, 41-122. Springer.
The authors give an overview of their comprehensive Multi-Contextual Model for Diverse Learning Environments (DLE). The overarching purpose of their model, which centers the experiences of historically underrepresented minorities (HURMS), is to acknowledge three main points: (1) Multiple nested contexts continuously and dynamically intersect, while providing spheres of influence for individuals who occupy space within the university. (2) Students, faculty, and staff are agents of change who have the power to generate movements of campus climate change. Lastly, (3) the goal or outcome of an institution is the creation of persons who continuously seek out opportunities to learn and are not only competent in a multicultural world but active citizens that will contribute to “our collective social and economic success.” This chapter is critical to understanding the context relationships are developing within.
Simmons, Denise R., and Julie P. Martin. 2014. "Developing Effective Engineering Fictive Kin to Support Undergraduate First-Generation College Students." Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering 20 (3): 279-292. http://doi.org/10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.2014010979.
The use of fictive kin by African American communities is a longstanding practice. Beyond extended families, fictive kin are relationships elevated to the status of familial and have been effective in creating nuanced support networks, and tangible social capital for historically underrepresented minority groups (HURM). The authors find that first-generation students who create a network of fictive kinships across peers, faculty, student life, and administrators associate their persistence, self-efficacy, sense of belonging and perceived inclusion with the engagement in these relationships. Relationship building should consider the effectiveness of a fictive kinship models and approaches.
