A Model to Incorporate Meaningful Community Engaged Learning Opportunities into Medium

Community engaged learning (CEL) has been identified as a high impact educational practice that can have profound influence on learning and improve student engagement (Kuh, 2008). Despite the potential to provide a meaningful learning experience, CEL opportunities are not widespread at large research institutions, and most examples arise from optional co-curricular activities or small classes (Holander, 2011). Current realities of increasing class sizes and decreasing resources can make implementing CEL challenging. Creative thinking is required to modify the critical elements of successful CEL to suit broader educational needs. This paper provides a tangible model for CEL assignments that can be adapted to suit medium to large classes, with an honest discussion of the lessons learned in the process from student, faculty and community perspectives. Based on key concepts of reciprocity, shared decision-making and mutual benefit we designed a novel CEL assignment in a large 4th year course (\u3e100 students). Briefly, student teams researched one of five priority areas identified by Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health (WDGPH) to write an evidence-based literature review. Based on these findings, students worked with WDGPH experts to translate their research into practical recommendations and tools to advance WDGPH programming. An end-of-semester showcase was used to highlight these applied projects. Students identified real world relevance and the opportunity to be creative as the main advantages of the assignment. Surprisingly, community partners identified the opportunity for leadership and mentorship as an unintended but welcomed benefit to the program. From a faculty perspective, the time required to coordinate and grade the projects during the teaching semester was manageable although the quality of student projects varied significantly. Future offerings should consider strategies to provide more tailored feedback to all students and to encourage a balance of effort between the research and applied aspects of the CEL project

Ancient Pastoral Settlement in The Dhofar Mountains: Archaeological Excavations at Shakil and Halqoot

For much of Dhofar’s history and prehistory, most of its population has been mobile in search of wild game and with herded domesticated animals, which need new grass and browse. While few archaeological sites in the southern region of Oman suggest permanent or even semi-permanent occupations, there is now clear evidence of a distinct and perhaps unique episode of well-constructed, semi-permanent settlements in the Jebel Qāra, Dhofar. In 2012 and 2017, archaeological teams established a chronology, occupation history, and pastoralisthunter lifestyle of these settlements’ occupants, raising new questions about episodes of pastoralist settlement in long-term context. This paper documents the archaeological sites, their architectural details and layout, associated finds, and preliminary assessments of their faunal and vegetative components

Red Sea palaeoclimate: stable isotope and element-ratio analysis of marine mollusc shells

The southern Red Sea coast is the location of more than 4,200 archaeological shell midden sites. These shell middens preserve archaeological and climatic archives of unprecedented resolution and scale. By using shells from these contexts, it is possible to link past environmental information with episodes of human occupation and resource processing. This chapter summarises current knowledge about the marine gastropod Conomurex fasciatus (Born 1778) and discusses its use in environmental and climatic reconstruction using stable isotope and elemental ratio analysis. It offers a review of the most recent studies of shell midden sites on the Farasan Islands, their regional importance during the mid-Holocene, theories about seasonal use of the coastal landscape, and preliminary results from new methods to acquire large climatic datasets from C. fasciatus shells

Urban and Transport Scaling: Northern Mesopotamia in the Late Chalcolithic and Bronze Age

Scaling methods have been applied to study modern urban areas and how they create accelerated, feedback growth in some systems while efficient use in others. For ancient cities, results have shown that cities act as social reactors that lead to positive feedback growth in socioeconomic measures. In this paper, we assess the relationship between settlement area expressed through mound area from Late Chalcolithic and Bronze Age sites and mean hollow way widths, which are remains of roadways, from the Khabur Triangle in northern Mesopotamia. The intent is to demonstrate the type of scaling and relationship present between sites and hollow ways, where both feature types are relatively well preserved. For modern roadway systems, efficiency in growth relative to population growth suggests roads should show sublinear scaling in relation to site size. In fact, similar to modern systems, such sublinear scaling results are demonstrated for the Khabur Triangle using available data, suggesting ancient efficiency in intensive transport growth relative to population levels. Comparable results are also achieved in other ancient Near East regions. Furthermore, results suggest that there could be a general pattern relevant for some small sites (0–2 ha) and those that have fewer hollow ways, where β, a measure of scaling, is on average low (≈ < 0.2). On the other hand, a second type of result for sites with many hollow ways (11 or more) and that are often larger suggests that β is greater (0.23–0.72), but still sublinear. This result could reflect the scale in which larger settlements acted as greater social attractors or had more intensive economic activity relative to smaller sites. The provided models also allow estimations of past roadway widths in regions where hollow ways are missing

A Model to Incorporate Meaningful Community Engaged Learning Opportunities into Large Courses.

Community engaged learning (CEL) has been identified as a high impact educational practice that can have profound influence on student learning1. Students who participate in CEL have been shown to retain, integrate and transfer information at higher rates and report higher levels of satisfaction and engagement1. Despite the potential to provide a meaningful learning experience, CEL opportunities are not widespread at research institutions, and most examples arise from small classes in social sciences2. Current realities of increasing class sizes coupled with decreasing resources make implementing CEL challenging. However, institutional accountability to deliver key learning outcomes, plus student demand for relevant curriculum across disciplines makes the challenge worthwhile. Creative thinking is required to modify the critical elements of successful CEL to suit broader educational needs. Based on key concepts of reciprocity, shared decision-making and mutual benefit we designed a novel CEL assignment in a 4th year kinesiology class (\u3e100 students). Briefly, student teams researched one of five priority areas identified by Wellington Dufferin Guelph Public Health (WDGPH), to write an evidence-based literature review. Based on these findings, students worked with WDGPH (ratio ~ 1:20) to translate their research into practical recommendations and useful tools to advance WDGPH programming. Knowledge translation projects were highlighted during an end of semester open showcase. This presentation will provide a tangible model that can be modified to suit various teaching environments. Successes and challenges will be shared from faculty and community perspectives and top student projects will be available for participants to experience. 1) Kuh, G.D. (2008) High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access To Them, and Why They Matter. Association of American Colleges and Universities. 2) Hollander, EL (2011) Civic education in research universities: leaders or followers? Education + Trainaing 53:(2/3):166-17