Symposium 2022 Fall: Experiential Learning

Experiential Learning as Transformative Education: Developing Your Pedagogy to Promote Engaged Teaching and Learning

Patrick M. Green

Research indicates that experiential learning has the potential to facilitate transformative teaching and learning in higher education. How do high-impact learning experiences, including undergraduate research, community-based learning, educational internships, and global immersion experiences, lead to transformative teaching and learning? How do you design for such experiences in and out of the classroom? What strategies best support high-impact learning? In this interactive workshop, participants will have the opportunity to identify potential teaching and learning approaches, discuss the most promising practices for designing such experiences, and generate ideas to incorporate such strategies in their courses and programs.

Patrick M. Green, EdD, serves as the Executive Director (and Founding Director) of the Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, & Scholarship (CELTS) at Loyola University Chicago, overseeing the service-learning, academic internships, undergraduate research, and learning portfolio programs. Dr. Green also serves as the Director of Engaged Learning, in which he supports the University Engaged Learning requirement, facilitating faculty professional development programs that foster learning innovation and experiential pedagogical strategies.

View the keynote presentation

Exploring VR with Brian Wilson - Prairie Room, Third Floor

This session will be run throughout the afternoon with no set beginning and end time so participants may come and go as they please

Virtual Reality technology offers opportunities for experiential learning that may not otherwise be available. In this open “Test Kitchen” style session, you will have the opportunity to try a few different types of VR experiences and learn about some of the most popular educational programs already available in VR.

Reducing the achievement gap: Helping students succeed by reviewing skills from prerequisite courses

Trisha Vickrey, lecturer of chemistry | University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Students’ retention of key concepts from previous courses is often needed to be successful in subsequent courses. For a variety of reasons, students often lack these prerequisite skills. In this presentation, Vickrey will describe 1) the creation of an optional pre-semester review course offered asynchronously through Canvas, 2) the background characteristics of students that completed the pre-course, and 3) the impact of taking the pre-course on course outcomes, particularly for first-generation students.

Immersive Learning with Affordable VR Technology

Olha Tytarenko, associate professor of practice of Russian | University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Virtual Reality has many benefits in education. Immersive project-based activities, games, and virtual tours designed with VR enhance students’ engagement and motivation by closely resembling interaction in an authentic environment. This talk will focus on a series of project-based assignments and activities Tytarenko developed to be used with Oculus Quest, Google Cardboard, or Merge VR/AR headset in RUSS301 “Russian Through Art” class. Although she designed these activities with specific outcomes in mind pertinent to language pedagogy (to enhance students’ communicative competence in the target language, help with the retention of the material, encourage vocabulary acquisition, etc.), Tytarenko will also discuss how VR technology can be used across disciplines to promote interactivity, encourage creativity, enhance students’ engagement and motivation, and create an immersive and authentic learning environment.

Break

Experiential Learning Panel Discussion

This session will feature a group of educators from UNL’s Schools and Colleges with expertise and interest in experiential learning. The panel will also feature the Symposium’s keynote, Patrick Green, and will be chaired by the CTT’s Director, Nicholas Monk. The object of the session is to bring multiple disciplinary perspectives to some of the principal ideas that underpin experiential learning. The panel will take questions from the audience in an attempt to address both specific individual concerns and broader theoretical questions.

Speed Sessions

Symposium Speed Sessions are back for 2022. Inspired by ideas in James Lang’s book Small Teaching, speed sessions are presented by university instructors and will highlight strategies and techniques that have been employed in classes. Each presenter will spend five minutes discussing an effective teaching technique or technology. This year's presenters include:

Vanessa Gorman (History), Amelia-Marie Altstadt (Honors), Amanda Higgins (Nutrition and Health Sciences), Catherine Fraser Riehle (Libraries), Julia Remsik Larsen (Center for Transformative Teaching), and Amy Barry (Academic Technologies) & Kelli Boling (Advertising and Public Relations) .