4 research outputs found
Digitalization and the Writing Classroom: A Reflection on Classroom Practices
This paper outlines the educational benefits of creating digital stories for a variety of academic purposes as well as the professional need for students to develop and showcase digital proficiency. Digital stories fall under the category of multimodal composition and new media studies, and they encourage students to expand their digital literacy skills while reconceptualizing ways in which traditional writing projects can appeal to a broader audience. The article also addresses some of the classroom challenges teachers may face when trying to implement the practice and some practical resources that might assist teachers to integrate digital stories into their classrooms
Increasing Student Responsibility in Revision Efforts: Redefining and Restructuring Peer Response with the Millennial Generation
The Millennial Generation presents a unique set of challenges to the classroom, including the desire to multi-task and teamwork as well as a strong need for attention and validation. Frequently, this creates a conflict between the students’ current skills and the teacher’s expectations when it comes to drafting and revision efforts. Restructuring traditional peer response methods into a group conferencing method allows students to utilize their current strengths while building skills necessary for later writing assignments. By participating in a six-step activity that occurs during a seventy-five minute class period, students are asked to listen, read, write, respond, discuss, and apply writing techniques. Over the semester, the author finds that students are invited into the writing discourse by developing vocabulary representative of global writing issues (development, transitions, paragraph structure, etc.) as well as that of grammar and mechanics. In the process, students learn how to trust their instincts and listen to others while participating in a methodical approach to decision-making
IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 11, Issue 2, Summer 2022
The essays in this issue explore interdisciplinarity in the classroom and/or education.
Our first contributor argues that making the economics curriculum more interdisciplinary corrects some common
American misconceptions about Africa and encourages students to develop a richer understanding of
both economics and Africa, while also teaching students that Africa need not be relegated merely to economic
development courses and instead shows how Africa, particularly the Swahili Coast, was both inventive and
innovative.
In our second contribution, three authors writing together explore the power of storytelling in interdisciplinary
learning communities, or cohorts of first-semester students enrolled in general-education classes that connect
through a common theme. The authors detail how they developed their learning community around storytelling,
while also arguing that interdisciplinary learning communities grounded in storytelling are high-impact
practices that help students connect to their school community, classes, and to each other and to see their
learning as relevant in their lives.
Using two classification schemes (Biglan’s disciplinary classification scheme and Holland’s hexagon of occupational
interests and personality characteristics) that are relevant for understanding collaborations between
disciplines in multidisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary education to analyze disciplinary collaborations in education,
our third contributor measured the correlation between the two classification systems to determine the
relationship between them. Based on the study, the author argues the two classification schemes and their
relationships provide helpful frameworks for understanding disciplinary similarities and differences, while also
providing important insights about how members of collaborating disciplines may complement or differ with
one another