As Jessie Moore (2023 p. 3) writes, “Engaged learning entails students actively and intentionally participating in their own learning, not only at discrete moments but rather as an ongoing, lifelong activity.” After releasing the original FIRE² Toolkit focused on the Elon Experiences (five high-impact practices embedded in Elon University’s core curriculum), students, staff, and faculty – at Elon and other institutions – asked for a toolkit extension that offered similar reflective prompts for students’ holistic higher education experience and lifelong learning.

In 2024, Jessie Moore and Paul Miller drafted new toolkit questions to support students’ engaged learning across and beyond their college experiences. Moore and Miller facilitated focus groups with students to test and revise the reflective prompts, and student feedback shaped the final questions and suggestions for use shared below.

Students: We encourage you to use these questions to guide your reflection on and discussion with others in your mentoring constellation (peers, faculty, academic advisors, community members, work supervisors, family, etc.) about your college journey. You also can use them to talk with peers about their plans for college and their reflections on experiences they’ve already completed. Students in our focus groups suggested revisiting the questions each semester, noting that their own responses would evolve over time as they learned from and contributed to more college experiences.

Want to write responses to one or more questions so that you can revisit your reflections later? Open this Google Doc and make a copy (File –> Make a Copy) to save an editable version to your Google Drive.

Staff and Faculty: We invite you to pick a few questions to use in conversation with your advisees, student workers, and other students with whom you interact to help them reflect on their college journeys with attention to their prior knowledge and experiences and their future goals. Students in our focus groups suggested integrating these reflective prompts into curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular spaces like: first-year experiences, distribution requirements or learning pathways in core curriculums, capstones in majors and general educations programs, advising meetings, learning management systems, on-campus employment, and student organizations.

Questions for Early in Your College Journey

• What are your personal and educational expectations and goals for your college education?
• What did you do in high school that you hope to continue in college?
• Engaged and experiential education can include opportunities like living-learning communities, internships, community-based learning, undergraduate research, and more. Some are embedded in courses, while others take place outside the classroom. What engaged and experiential education opportunities are available at your college? Which do you think you’d like to pursue and why?
• Do you want to seek on-campus employment, and how might that work experience integrate into your overall learning and development?
• Which curricular choices (classes, major, minor, etc.), co-curricular choices (student government, student organizations, etc.), and extra-curricular choices (sports,  employment, etc.) might support your interests?
• What core values shape your choices about the experiences you want to prioritize in college?
• We know that engaged learning is relational, and you get the most out of these experiences when you also contribute to them. What are some steps you can pursue to take ownership of your own learning?

Questions for the Mid-Point in Your College Journey

• What are your personal and educational expectations and goals for your college education? Have they changed as you’ve journeyed through your early college experiences?
• How has your college experience so far shaped what you do, who you interact with, and how you view your community(s)?
• Engaged and experiential education can include opportunities like living-learning communities, internships, community-based learning, undergraduate research, on-campus work, and more. Some are embedded in courses, while others take place outside the classroom. Which engaged and experiential education opportunities have you pursued so far? Which would you like to pursue and why?
• How do your engaged and experiential education experiences intersect with your other curricular, co-curricular, extra-curricular experiences (for example, participation in a club or organization, student employment, interactions in your residential space, etc.)?
• What other experiences have you pursued that add value to your learning?
• We know that engaged learning is relational, and you get the most out of these experiences when you also contribute to them. How are you actively contributing to your own learning?

Questions for the Final Stages of Your College Journey

• If you were asked to provide a narrative of your college education, how would you connect your engaged and experiential education opportunities to this story? How would you connect your other curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular experiences (for example, participation in a club or organization, student employment, interactions in your residential space, etc.) to this story?
• What are your personal expectations and goals for your life after you graduate? 
• How have your expectations and goals changed as you’ve journeyed through your college experiences?
• How have your college experiences shaped what you do, who you interact with, and how you view your community(s)?
• Engaged and experiential education can include opportunities like living-learning communities, internships, community-based learning, undergraduate research, on-campus work, and more. Some are embedded in courses, while others take place outside the classroom. Which engaged and experiential education opportunities have you pursued during college? How did they shape your college journey? How might they inform your personal and professional life beyond college?

Questions or comments about the FIRE Toolkit? Contact Jessie L. Moore (jmoore28@elon.edu) and Paul Miller (millerp@elon.edu). If you adopt or adapt the FIRE Toolkit, please include attribution:

Moore, Jessie L., and Paul C. Miller. 2024. “Facilitating Integration of and Reflection on Engaged Learning Toolkit.” https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/facilitating-integration-and-reflection-on-engaged-learning