Holidays are nearly upon us and it is time to share another project update before the New Year. Below are some highlights related to this project. Thank you for your many contributions to experiential education in 2018 and wishing all of you a beautiful holiday season!
- RESEARCH PROJECT UPDATE: Data collection for the institutional case study is nearly complete and the findings are rich with insights, trends, and complexities. In January I’ll begin to write up a synthesis of results and I’ll be sure to share it with all of you. In total, the study includes:
- 18 interviews with faculty members from nearly every faculty at UBC
- 7 focus groups with a total of 46 staff and faculty experts
- 60 surveys from UBC faculty members who are heavily involved in experiential education
- EVENTS: 2019 will be a year for synthesizing the research, disseminating findings with (and beyond) our UBC community, and developing resources that address some of the gaps shown in the research. Although exact dates are not yet confirmed, I’d like to share some presentations that are likely to happen:
- 26, 2019: Community Engaged Scholars’ (CES) Group Presentation:
- I’ll be sharing preliminary study findings with the Community Engaged Scholars Group, which is organized by Kat Cureton in the Community Engagement Office.
- March 2019: PhD Defense:
- I’ll be defending my PhD dissertation on critical approaches to service-learning and global engagement work! (Although this is separate from the experiential education project, my doctoral research is in a specific area of the field [international service-learning] so please contact me for details if you’re interested in attending).
- Late April, 2019: Presentation of Findings at UBC-Okanagan’s Experiential Education Day
- Early May, 2019: Experiential Learning full-day Symposium for Celebrate Learning Week.
- I aim to invite all of the collaborators, participants, and EE community members I’ve connected with over the past 9 months in this project (this means you!). Stay tuned.
- June 2-4, 2019: Congress Panel Presentation:
- Presenters will include myself (sharing findings from this project), the collaborative survey team (sharing findings from the experiential education survey), and Adriana Briseno-Garzon with teaching practices survey findings. *Pending acceptance to conference
- June 2-4, 2019: Congress Pedagogy Hub: This is an event in partnership with Congress 2019 (rather than a research paper session). We will be contributing to a session that looks at credit-based experiential education.
- 26, 2019: Community Engaged Scholars’ (CES) Group Presentation:
- RESOURCES:
- Alison Taylor has developed a blog that shares UBC-relevant resources in community engaged learning. She also has a new podcast (found on the blog) in which she and doctoral student, Stephanie Glick, interview community partners and faculty members. Find it here: blogs.ubc.ca/experience.
- 12 Principles of Practice: “We need some common language for talking about experiential education” – it’s a sentiment I’ve heard often since this project began. This visual is one way to think about experiential education – not necessarily through a definition, but through principles of practice. This list was adapted from the principles of the Association for Experiential Education. Hopefully it will help you in thinking through your own work.