March 4, 2021Four Steps to Better Data Visualizationsby Jennie GoforthIf you’ve collected data in your higher education research on engaged learning, chances are you’d like to present it to your readers in an effective, visually pleasing, and impactful way. The problem is that data visualization is a complex topic,…
February 25, 2021Immersion, High-Impact Practices, and the Power of Combinationsby Phillip MotleyWe can thank George Kuh and colleagues at the Association of American Colleges & Universities for initially proposing the idea of “high-impact practices” (HIPs) as exemplar components of a college student’s learning experience in the AA&U publication, High-Impact Educational Practices: What…
February 18, 2021Mentoring for Learner Success: Conceptualizing Constellationsby Maureen Vandermaas-PeelerIn their recent book, Relationship-Rich Education, Elon colleagues Drs. Peter Felten and Leo Lambert weave together dozens of stories emphasizing the importance of meaningful connections for successful learning and well-being in higher education. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, they offer extensive evidence of the power of relationships between learners and peers, staff, and faculty, asserting that all students should “create webs…
February 3, 2021When Does Collaboration Hurt Memory?by David BuckTake six people and give them all a list of words to commit to memory individually. Next, have three of those people work as a group to recall as many words as they can. Have the other three people try…
January 29, 2021Why Letting Your Students Collaborate on Exams isn’t a Bad Ideaby David BuckCollaborative testing (aka team-based testing) is a collaborative learning technique that has received a fair amount of attention from researchers (LoGiudice, Pachai, and Kim 2015). It is a practice that typically involves students taking a test individually and then taking…
January 26, 2021Designing Environments Where Integrative Learning Can Flourishby Nancy BudwigJames Barber’s Facilitating the Integration of Learning: Five Research-based Practices to Help College Students Connect Learning across Disciplines and Lived Experiences (Stylus 2020) is one of the few books that delivers more than its title promises. The middle section of…
January 11, 2021Resources and Strategies for Creating More Inclusive Teaching-Learning Spacesby Andrea N. HuntThe Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning (2017) at Brown University defines inclusive teaching as “an explicit intellectual and affective inclusion of all students into our fields and disciplines, through course content, assessment, and/or pedagogy.” This definition was developed based…
December 1, 2020Academic Book Publishing: Why Publish Open Access?by Jennie GoforthAs regular readers of this blog will know, in 2019 the Center for Engaged Learning launched a brand-new initiative – the Open Access Book Series. We became part of the global movement to make research free and accessible to everyone,…
November 19, 2020Elon Statement on Capstone ExperiencesFrom 2018 to 2020, twenty-two scholars participated in the Center for Engaged Learning research seminar on Capstone Experiences, co-led by Caroline Ketcham (Elon University), Jillian Kinzie (Indiana University), and Tony Weaver (Elon University). The seminar fostered international, multi-institutional research on capstone…
November 19, 2020Pedagogical Partnerships and The Power of Partnership: A Roadmap to Revolutionizing Higher Edby Ketevan KupatadzePedagogical partnerships or students-as-partners pedagogy has become increasingly popular internationally due to its promise to be transformative in building considerably more equitable and collaborative relationships between diverse players in higher education institutions, most importantly between students and faculty/staff (Matthews, Cook-Sather,…