Creativity in liberal education before and after study commencement

[EN] In today’s society, creativity is an important quality. Creativity is defined as the ability to produce something novel and valuable as defined within a social context and it involves skills such as divergent thinking, problem solving and perspective taking. This study assesses the creative potential of students before and after commencement of an interdisciplinary, liberal undergraduate program.  In between measurements, students followed a course in connective thinking through creative reading and writing. The results showed that students’ creative potential developed over time. Implications for theory as well as practice are discussed.http://ocs.editorial.upv.es/index.php/HEAD/HEAD18Van Goch, M. (2018). Creativity in liberal education before and after study commencement. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 1475-1483. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD18.2018.8228OCS1475148

Interdisciplinary students’ reflections on the development of their epistemic fluency

Introduction: How can higher education institutions foster students’ epistemic fluency, that is, their ability to identify, reflect upon, and connect different knowledges and different ways of knowing? As higher education institutions put interdisciplinary research and education prominently on their strategic agendas, there is a call for knowledge on how to teach students to identify and integrate insights from different disciplines. This study approached this topic from the viewpoint of the student: what are the drivers and barriers to the development of epistemic fluency, according to interdisciplinary students? Methods: Participants were undergraduate students enrolled in a course on the interdisciplinary research process with a specific emphasis on integration. In the first and last lectures of the course, students were asked to reflect on their openness to alternative perspectives and their connective thinking. They also reflected on their development in general and specifically in this interdisciplinary course. Results: Students were able to meaningfully reflect on their development and the results showed a varied picture of students’ epistemic fluency

Developing a shared syllabus template as a living document of inclusive practices in a teaching and learning community

[EN] Inclusive teaching and learning is central to our educational mission. In this project, we used a whole-institution approach to make our institution’s inclusive objectives concrete and specific. We aimed to develop ways to capture our own community’s goals and objectives in a ‘living document’, a syllabus template in which insights from educational literature on diversity and inclusion are presented alongside the voices and practices of members of our own community of practice (CoP). We created the syllabus template by using the literature to list elements of inclusive design, inclusive delivery, inclusive assessment, and learning-focused syllabi, then identifying examples of those elements in syllabi of local experienced practitioners, and deepening the good practices in interviews with the experienced practitioners. The final syllabus template presents authentic practices from local syllabi, with explanations of the relevance of those examples and reference to educational literature, links to teaching tools, and contact-information for individual colleagues. The shared syllabus template deliberately situates academic development within the practice of the local CoP. We found that even the most experienced practitioners find it challenging to work on inclusive practices, which is all the more reason to stimulate a collaborative approach.Lutz, C.; Untaru, L.; Van Goch, M. (2021). Developing a shared syllabus template as a living document of inclusive practices in a teaching and learning community. En 7th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'21). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 481-489. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd21.2021.12967OCS48148

Re-presenting Research: A Guide to Analyzing Popularization Strategies in Science Journalism and Science Communication

This open access book focuses on the textual features, or ‘strategies’, which form popularization discourse. In popularization discourse, research findings from academia are re-presented to make them noteworthy to society and influential for everyday life. Popularization involves recontextualization, or reimagination of findings in an everyday and newsworthy context, and reformulation, the use of audience-appropriate language to increase text comprehension and engagement. ‘Re-presenting research’ presents an empirically grounded, analytic framework for the analysis of popularization texts. Its applicability spans across disciplinary, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary fields, and overarches science communication, science journalism, and research communication. The book offers theoretical background information on popularization discourse, empirical underpinning of the construction of the framework, and practical applicability in examples from multiple text types and academic fields. This book acts as a guide for those working with or on popularization discourse – whether it is to analyze it or learn about it

Scholarly Learning of Teacher-Scholars Engaging in Interdisciplinary Education

Many higher education institutions have put interdisciplinary teaching and learning high on their agenda. We know students learn a lot from interdisciplinary education, and we know scholars learn from their educational scholarship, but what do scholars learn from engaging in interdisciplinary education? I interviewed seven mid-career scholars about what they learned and in what ways their work was appreciated. The findings illustrate that scholars learn about education, students, interdisciplinarity, their own discipline, the university, and themselves and that the scholars felt their efforts were recognized by their interdisciplinary contexts but not rewarded outside of those contexts. The study describes academic and personal struggles, pleasures, and joys of scholars starting to engage in interdisciplinary education

Baseline assessment in writing research: A case study of popularization discourse in first-year undergraduate students

In popularization discourse, insights from academic discourse are recontextualized and reformulated into newsworthy, understandable knowledge for a lay audience. Training in popularization discourse is a relatively new and unexplored research topic. Existing studies in the science communication field suffer from under-utilized baseline assessments and pretests in teaching interventions. This methodological problem leads both to a lack of evidence for claims about student progress and to a gap in knowledge about baseline popularization skills. We draw the topic into the realm of writing research by conducting a baseline assessment of pre-training popularization skills in first-year undergraduate students. Undergraduate science communication texts are analyzed to identify instances of popularization strategies using a coding scheme for text analysis of popularization discourse. The results indicate a lack of genre knowledge in both academic and popularized discourse: textual styles are either too academic or overly popularized; the academic text is misrepresented; and the essential journalistic structure lacking. An educational program in popularization discourse should therefore focus on the genre demands of popularization discourse, awareness of academic writing conventions, the genre change between academic and popularized writing, the role of the student as a writer, and stylistic attributes

Developing a shared syllabus template as a living document of inclusive practices in a teaching and learning community

Inclusive teaching and learning is central to our educational mission. In this project, we used a whole-institution approach to make our institution’s inclusive objectives concrete and specific. We aimed to develop ways to capture our own community’s goals and objectives in a ‘living document’, a syllabus template in which insights from educational literature on diversity and inclusion are presented alongside the voices and practices of members of our own community of practice (CoP). We created the syllabus template by using the literature to list elements of inclusive design, inclusive delivery, inclusive assessment, and learning-focused syllabi, then identifying examples of those elements in syllabi of local experienced practitioners, and deepening the good practices in interviews with the experienced practitioners. The final syllabus template presents authentic practices from local syllabi, with explanations of the relevance of those examples and reference to educational literature, links to teaching tools, and contact-information for individual colleagues. The shared syllabus template deliberately situates academic development within the practice of the local CoP. We found that even the most experienced practitioners find it challenging to work on inclusive practices, which is all the more reason to stimulate a collaborative approach