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Browsing by Subject "Belonging"
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Item Improv(ing) learning environments: How to Foster Belonging through Play(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2015-04-17) Rossing, Jonathan P.Applied improvisation is a field in which practitioners apply the principles and practices of improvisational theater to enhance and transform relationships in real-world arenas. Applied improvisation practices have gained popularity in business and professional settings, including professional education such as medical school, law school, and management training. However, currently no research examines how applied improvisation might augment college learning environments by promoting greater student connection, focus, and presence. This research project examines how principles and practices of improvisation can be used to address two classroom challenges: 1) distraction or lack of focus/attention and 2) disengagement and disconnection from peers that hinders the development of a learning community. First, mental distractions hinder student engagement: from smart phones and online social networks to larger concerns such as academic anxieties (worrying about an upcoming test) or stresses in persona life (i.e. a troubled relationship). These distractions displace students’ attention from the immediate task of learning and limit their mental presence in class. Second, learning often remains a radically individual endeavor rather than a process of engaging with and supporting peers in a learning community. In response to these challenges, I have adapted improvisation games to use as “warm-up” activities in every class session throughout the semester. The goal is to understand whether applied improvisation promotes greater student focus and attention as well as foster connection and trust among learners, both of which result in a stronger learning community. These outcomes are particularly significant at a commuter campus where students find fewer opportunities to develop community and connection. This poster will report the results of a mixed-methods study featuring both quantitative and qualitative data. Results indicate that applied improvisation improves learning environment factors such as students’ sense of community, belonging, focus, and attention.Item Spring 2023 IEL Students Perspectives on “Mattering”(2023-11-01) Hahn, Thomas“Mattering” is the feeling of being significant and important to other people” with implications for student learning and well-being. This report details the results of a pilot questionnaire administered to students participating in IEL programs. It consisted of 5 items designed to measure students’ perception of mattering.Item Transformative Praxis: A Critical Design Framework for Inclusion in Technology-Rich Learning Spaces(Indiana University Press, 2023) Price, Jeremy; Smith, Je' Nobia; Fox, AlexandriaDrawing on transformative, critical, and culturally responsive and sustaining traditions of pedagogy and instructional design, we present a technology-focused framework for decentering normative forces along the lines of race, ethnicity, class, language, religion, ability, sex, and gender in online higher education learning spaces that honors each participant for who they are with respect to their identity markers and their intersectional community memberships to promote inclusion and belonging. These normative forces—which simultaneously crowd out and make hypervisible diverse identities—predispose the ends and processes of teaching and learning and structure the nature of academic disciplines. This is particularly apparent online where engagement is decoupled from traditional anchors of relationships and influenced by difference-blind neoliberal perspectives. In response, we provide a framework for inclusion and belonging along two vectors. The first vector is a critical design process inspired by backward design principles: inquiring, translating, activating, and reflecting. The second is a set of inclusive considerations grounded in culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy and the Universal Design for Learning framework: asset-based frames, authentic multiple modes, and mixed mirrors and windows. This process includes an opportunity to interrogate the role of technology as a mediator of learning and teaching for belonging. We further assert that the instructor also needs to engage in identity work to interrogate their positionality in online environments with respect to not only observable and cultural identity markers but also academic disciplinary identity. To illustrate our framework, we provide reflections on the design and enactment of online and technology-rich activity structures that promote inclusion and belonging.