An Integrated Approach to Learning Communities: Designing for Place-Based, Communication-Intensive Learning

This article describes the design of a learning community that paired an English Composition and a Public Speaking course at the New York City College of Technology (City Tech) and explains the embedded teaching strategies: flexible scheduling, integrated assignments, and a place-based (Brooklyn) focus. These tactics, developed with the aim of engaging first-semester students in their general-education communication courses, served to orient students to City Tech and its neighboring environment. Flexible scheduling helped avoid making concessions due to time constraints and allowed for greater fairness and efficiency, while also expanding opportunities for classroom and out-of-classroom activities. Designing overlapping assignments helped students by scaffolding coursework throughout the semester, building toward increasingly challenging course objectives. The place-based focus on Brooklyn oriented students to the campus, supported their ability to find nearby places that expanded their campus experience, and gave them tools for interacting critically with their surroundings. Grounded in maker pedagogy, the semester’s final project asked students to make a shared Google Map that included their videos and summaries of their research, creating a virtual tour of downtown Brooklyn. Ultimately, these strategies supported better student success and engagement in the courses while providing a creative outlet for successful college work. Jody R. Rosen is an Assistant Professor of English and Co-Director of the OpenLab at New York City College of Technology, CUNY, where she teaches in the First-Year Learning Community program each fall semester. Her scholarship focuses on pedagogical approaches to foster community, and on Modernist narratological representations of gender and sexuality. M. Justin Davis is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern University. His research explores processes related to the production, performance, and consumption of identity, cultural memory, and public mind

Supporting Twenty-First-Century Students with an Across-the-Curriculum Approach to Undergraduate Research

An across-the-curriculum (ATC) approach to undergraduate research (UR) is a productive addition to UR ecosystems at equity-oriented institutions. The ATC approach is differentiated from mentored UR experiences and laboratory course-based UR experiences by its ability to employ experiential, problem-based skills and practices for a broad variety of informal research activities at all levels of curriculum and without special facilities. In doing so, the ATC model encourages faculty to make the application of twenty-first-century student learning outcomes explicit for students who are new to research so that they see how inquiry, knowledge creation, and other aspects of problem-solving are used in practical ways that translate to professional and community contexts

Open Digital Pedagogy: Creating a Game-Based Workshop

Concurrent Session

The Woody Guthrie Centennial Bibliography

This bibliography updates two extensive works designed to include comprehensively all significant works by and about Woody Guthrie. Richard A. Reuss published A Woody Guthrie Bibliography, 1912–1967 in 1968 and Jeffrey N. Gatten\u27s article “Woody Guthrie: A Bibliographic Update, 1968–1986” appeared in 1988. With this current article, researchers need only utilize these three bibliographies to identify all English-language items of relevance related to, or written by, Guthrie

Machine learning uncovers the most robust self-report predictors of relationship quality across 43 longitudinal couples studies

Given the powerful implications of relationship quality for health and well-being, a central mission of relationship science is explaining why some romantic relationships thrive more than others. This large-scale project used machine learning (i.e., Random Forests) to 1) quantify the extent to which relationship quality is predictable and 2) identify which constructs reliably predict relationship quality. Across 43 dyadic longitudinal datasets from 29 laboratories, the top relationship-specific predictors of relationship quality were perceived-partner commitment, appreciation, sexual satisfaction, perceived-partner satisfaction, and conflict. The top individual-difference predictors were life satisfaction, negative affect, depression, attachment avoidance, and attachment anxiety. Overall, relationship-specific variables predicted up to 45% of variance at baseline, and up to 18% of variance at the end of each study. Individual differences also performed well (21% and 12%, respectively). Actor-reported variables (i.e., own relationship-specific and individual-difference variables) predicted two to four times more variance than partner-reported variables (i.e., the partner’s ratings on those variables). Importantly, individual differences and partner reports had no predictive effects beyond actor-reported relationship-specific variables alone. These findings imply that the sum of all individual differences and partner experiences exert their influence on relationship quality via a person’s own relationship-specific experiences, and effects due to moderation by individual differences and moderation by partner-reports may be quite small. Finally, relationship-quality change (i.e., increases or decreases in relationship quality over the course of a study) was largely unpredictable from any combination of self-report variables. This collective effort should guide future models of relationships

Effects of Inverted L2/Ln LanguagePedagogy on Student Experiences and Outcomes: The Case of American Sign Language

Second language (L2) learning has largely occurred in the traditional lecture-based classroom setting. Studies show that the lecture format has an impact on student outcomes and perceptions of classroom learning. Negative impacts include insufficient time for reinforcement activities, reviewing lecture materials, and engaging in conversation between instructors and students. An innovative way to enhance L2 students’ classroom outcomes and perceptions is the inverted classroom pedagogy. This study assesses whether the inverted pedagogy leads to more positive student perspectives and higher student outcomes compared to traditional pedagogy in L2 classrooms in American Sign Language (ASL). In this study, student outcomes and instructor and student perceptions of inverted pedagogy for ASL are assessed using a mixed method design with one controlled (traditional) and one experimental (inverted) advanced ASL class in a post-secondary setting. Results suggest that the inverted pedagogy is an approach that is as viable as the traditional approach for teaching and learning ASL as an L2 that enables students to engage in meaningful activities and conversations