Before you start reading, think back on the class in which you learned the most, or think back on the professional environment in which you performed your best work, and ask yourself the following questions:
Although many words may come to mind, one of the main motifs that you will probably find running through and connecting all of them is the concept of safety. When people feel safe in the workplace, they tend to do their best work. When children feel safe at school, they tend to learn the most. When we think about college students, the same pattern applies to their learning and performance levels. Students of all ages learn best when their environment enables them to take risks, participate, and focus on class content; one way to create such an environment is to foster the emotional and intellectual safety of our students. In doing so, instructors can improve the success rates of their students. This blog entry will discuss emotional and intellectual safety in the college classroom and will follow the format:
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by Sophia Strickfaden
Sophia Strickfaden, Instructional Design and Technology Specialist at JWU Denver, headed to the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference 2018 in Denver, Colorado. While at the conference, she learned more about the student-centered mindsets we all could take into consideration when enhancing our course deliveries throughout degree programs.
Overview of Conference As an Instructional Designer and Technologist, I have a professional goal of attending one professional conference a year. The EDUCAUSE Annual Conference 2018 had the mission to, “elevate the best thinking in higher education IT!” It held up to this mission in providing a variety of sessions, learning experiences, and networking opportunities related to current opportunities to innovate and evolve using Information Technology (IT) in Higher Education. Throughout the conference, I overheard conversations and presentations to common themes of student-centered education, mobile-first designs, and data-driven decision-making. I concentrated on the two program tracks for Exploring Innovations in Teaching and Learning and Transforming the Student Experience. These sessions highlighted efforts and strategies for meeting student expectations of their secondary educational experiences. One main theme surfaced in-common between the sessions I attended: Student-Centered Educational Experiences. Student-Centered Ideas I was struck by the recurring theme of student-centered designs, concepts, and decisions. The community of Higher Education leaders and decision-makers were focused the following questions:
Given this understanding of our student population, I was especially taken by a group of five students serving on a panel: We Are the Workforce of the Future. These students were well acquainted with the information technology field and held well-rounded views of the workplace. They highlighted their plans to give back to their communities as IT professionals, address inequities in gender representation in the IT industry, and saw potential in innovation with visual simplicity and solutions for enhancement of human-computer interactions. Their hopes and dreams included influencing visual fluency of technology and software, overcoming their elders’ fears of technology, and overcoming problems related to technology access in disparate communities. Most importantly, this group of students understood the importance of soft skills. When asked what the most important skill was for a leader to have, the first answer was the “soft skill of listening to others.” Hanaa Al-Dasouqi, Davidson College, mentioned although she was a psychology student she understood the humanities supplemented the technology fields. Her emphasis was in the reality that we still need to interact with each other when utilizing technology – at the end of the day, there is a human element behind every technology. These student panel was sincerely interested in being a part of a team they could learn from and innovate with. It made me wonder how we could integrate these work expectations of students into our program and course designs. Is there a way we can be good leaders and provide comradery in our courses? Are we already providing safe-to-fail environments for our students? How are we mentoring students as they complete internships and get real-world experience? In other words, are we continually considering our students’ needs and expectations of their professional futures when we are designing, developing, and delivering our programs and courses? In many cases, the answer is a resounding, “Yes!” and we have been doing it for years. However, there is a continuing change in our students and technology which yields a need for continual evaluation of opportunities for student-centered enhancements. Summary EDUCAUSE Annual Conference 2018 was a comprehensive conference for technology in higher education. I connected with many campus technology professionals at many institutions and returned to campus with a new level of understanding of the overlap of technology and student-centered decision-making in higher education. May we always be enlightened by the students courageous enough to serve on panels and share their sincere interests, needs, and expectations of their educational experiences. |