October 30, 2020Making College “Worth It”by Sophia Abbot and Lucia-Maribel CraigeAlthough day-to-day life for college students is far from normal, right now, faculty and staff can continue to help the class of 2024 pursue a journey of self-discovery. How can students make the most of their experience? Educational scholars George…
October 27, 2020Is College Worth It? Alumni Say High-Impact Experiences Make College Worthwhileby Jessie L. Moore, Peter Felten, Jason Husser, and Kaye UsryWhat is the value of an undergraduate education? Scholars, politicians, and families have debated that question for decades. Research consistently demonstrates the economic payoff of earning a degree, but is that enough to make college “worth it” for students? In…
October 13, 2020Do Cohesive Groups Matter?by David BuckIn previous posts (here and here), I’ve been writing about the different ways that groups can be created for class projects, and whether the method of group assignment has an impact on learning. In this post, I want to focus on one…
September 30, 2020New Scholarship on Writing Beyond the University: Writers’ Complex Experiencesby Julia BleakneyNew studies seek to update the field of Writing Studies’ understanding of writing beyond the university by explaining how writers enter into and navigate these spheres, writers’ complex roles in non-curricular writing contexts, or the kinds of writing they conduct….
September 15, 2020A Complicated and Qualified Recommendation for Creating Groupsby David BuckAs a warning, I’m going to talk about methods again for part of this post because I can’t seem to help myself, but I will actually make a recommendation by the end, so there is a payoff if you bear…
September 10, 2020COVID-19: An Unexpected Adversary—and Ally—for Immersive Learning Researchby Phillip MotleyI was on sabbatical in the spring semester of 2019 and thus escaped much of the turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic that affected students and teachers alike at Elon University and most other institutions of higher education. While my colleagues…
September 7, 2020Ask your students: The value of student input on online course designby Sophia Abbot and Geneva SteinFor Jeongmin Cho, a junior at Princeton University from Seoul, South Korea, the transition to remote learning this spring was a transition to an entirely new form of teaching and learning. He explains, “I have grown up in a traditional…
September 4, 2020Beware of Simple Universal Recommendations about Group Assignmentby David BuckWith any group assignment, there are a number of decisions that need to be made before introducing the assignment to students. Some of those decisions have to do with features of the assignment (e.g., what will you assess and when…
September 1, 2020New Open Access Book: Writing about Learning and Teaching in Higher EducationNow available in our Open Access Series Writing about Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Creating and Contributing to Scholarly Conversations across a Range of Genres by Mick Healey, Kelly E. Matthews, and Alison Cook-Sather Writing about Learning and Teaching…
August 25, 2020Service-learning/Community Engagement Opportunities and Immersive Learningby Phillip MotleyLike many higher education institutions, Elon University is many things, including a place of opportunity and possibility. Since my last blog post, I was selected to serve as Elon’s next Faculty Fellow for Service-Learning and Community Engagement (SL-CE). By itself,…