Transformative Student Experiences In Higher Education

Transformative Student Experiences in Higher Education: Meeting the Needs of the 21st Century Student and Modern Workplace presents a thorough consideration of the role, use, and implications of transformative and active instructional strategies in higher education. It examines the changing landscape of higher education and serves as a foundational lens and framework for thinking through higher education from both an experiential and transformative instructional context. As instructors and administrators struggle with 21st century challenges, this seminal text serves as a companion resource that presents innovative 21st century techniques in a fair and balanced theoretical context.

Campus leaders describe how community colleges, publicly funded universities, and private liberal arts colleges across America are integrating sustainability into curriculum, policies, and programs. In colleges and universities across the United States, students, faculty, and staff are forging new paths to sustainability. From private liberal arts colleges to major research institutions to community colleges, sustainability concerns are being integrated into curricula, policies, and programs. New divisions, degree programs, and courses of study cross traditional disciplinary boundaries; Sustainability Councils become part of campus governance; and new sustainability issues link to historic social and educational missions. In this book, leaders from twenty-four colleges and universities offer their stories of institutional and personal transformation. These stories document both the power of leadership—whether by college presidents, faculty, staff, or student activists—and the potential for institutions to redefine themselves. Chapters recount, among other things, how inclusive campus governance helped mobilize students at the University of South Carolina; how a course at the Menominee Nation's tribal college linked sustainability and traditional knowledge; how the president of Furman University convinced a conservative campus community to make sustainability a strategic priority; how students at San Diego State University built sustainability into future governance while financing a LEED platinum-certified student center; and how sustainability transformed pedagogy in a lecture class at Penn State. As this book makes clear, there are many paths to sustainability in higher education. These stories offer a snapshot of what has been accomplished and a roadmap to what is possible. Colleges and Universities Covered Arizona State University • Central College, Iowa • College of the Menominee Nation, Wisconsin • Curriculum for the Bio-region Project, Pacific Northwest • Drury University, Missouri • Emory University, Georgia • Florida A&M University • Furman University, South Carolina • Green Mountain College, Vermont • Kap'olani Community College, Honolulu, Hawaii • Pennsylvania State University • San Diego State University • Santa Clara University, California • Slippery Rock State University, Pennsylvania • Spelman College, Georgia • Unity College, Maine • University of Hawaii–Manoa • University of Michigan • University of South Carolina • University of South Florida • University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh • Warren Wilson College, North Carolina • Yale University

Transformative Experiences in College: Connections and Community explores the intersection of two concepts: transformative experience in college and the communities in which students learn. Emerging from a five-year longitudinal interview study tracking a panel of 75 students through four years at a selective liberal arts college, this book provides a rich depiction of how aspects of the college community (and the relationships developed within that community) create opportunities for transformative experiences that lead to personal and academic growth. Neal Christopherson argues that transformative experiences in college are primarily the results of interactions with other people and with a broader campus community, documenting the ways in which relationships with faculty, experiences in courses, interaction with peers, and the general institutional environment can generate these experiences. Christopherson also touches on extracurricular and co-curricular activities, the importance of a healthy environment for interacting with difference, and how students transition out of the institution. Scholars of education, sociology, and communication will find this book particularly useful.

A 2022 SPE Outstanding Book Honorable Mention Our society urgently needs education that motivates, challenges, engages, and affirms all students. No matter their previous successes or failures, every student has enormous learning potential and important contributions to make now and in the future. Such meaningful learning experiences don't just happen, they need to be intentionally designed. This book supports those who will undertake this vitally important work. Learning that Matters: A Field Guide to Course Design for Transformative Education is a pragmatic resource for designing courses that engage college students as active citizens. This "work" book provides research-informed approaches for creating learning experiences and developing innovative, intellectually-engaging courses. Whether a novice or a veteran, by engaging with the text, collaborating with colleagues, and reflecting on the important work of a teacher, any motivated educator can become a transformative educator. Every college course has the potential to transform students' lives. Through implementation of critical concepts such as connected and authentic assessments; dilemmas, issues, and questions; portable thinking skills and engaging strategies; and a purposeful focus on inclusivity and equity, readers begin the process of change needed for preparing students who will be able to address the monumental challenges facing our society. Click HERE to watch the book launch. Click HERE to hear the authors discuss their book. Perfect for courses such as: Education Curriculum and Instruction | Design for Transformative Learning | An Introduction to Evidence-based Undergraduate Teaching | New Faculty Orientations | Freshman Seminar Faculty Trainings | Center for Teaching & Learning | Workshops in Course Design

Rooted in the work of community – school collaborations, this text focuses on connecting the rigors of the classroom with the ambiguity of lived community experience. Community-Based Transformational Learning (CBTL) draws on the increasing evidence that course-learning conducted in an applied, community setting, can positively transform students' professional and personal identity and creates new ways of thinking and working in university courses and pre-professional experiences. To illustrate the different ways to successfully implement community-based learning, examples are provided of experiences integrated in courses across multiple disciplines across an American university whose mission is focused on teaching. Topics covered include refugee and immigration transition issues, incarceration and health needs with international examples of community experiences from Jamaica, Korea and Belize. Qualitative and quantitative data depict how these experiences impact students and each chapter presents how community engagement has been established as an effective approach in the different disciplines, including computer science and sports management. The authors demonstrate how CBTL experiences can be transformative when students are provided a chance to connect the academic commitment to community aims, but also provides suggestions for overcoming challenges and pit-falls in developing these experiences.

Presenting leadership of educational change in higher education as a dynamic, collaborative, and evolving area, Delivering Educational Change in Higher Education provides rich examples of how new ways of working are being adopted and adapted. It brings together leaders and practitioners, as authors and readers, to share their experiences of whole organisational change. Across the chapters, common threads highlight the importance of organisational context, of shared or distributed leadership, and the critical need for continuous learning in and on action by reflective readers. Linking case studies to a range of practical models and theories, this book: Explores established paradigms and models of change management and leadership. Offers examples from a diverse range of institutional contexts. Models critical reflective practice in the leadership of educational change. Addresses the future of educational developers working collaboratively with an increasingly diverse higher education workforce. Providing rare insights into ‘the what’ and ‘the how’ of change management and leadership, this book will be of interest to senior managers, educators, programme leaders, and educational developers who are all working in collaborative ways to enact positive change for student learning and experience.

"The theme of the book is that the drive for quality in Britain and elsewhere, and the reform of teaching and learning processes have not been connected, organizationally or in practice: change has been driven by the search for efficiency and by a quest for greater bureaucratic accountability. Harvey and Knight argue that, whatever the merits of these developments, they have not been directly concerned to improve the quality of student learning. They argue not just that student learning ought to be at the centre of discussions about quality enhancement, but that the goal ought to be transformation: transformation of universities with a view to transforming learners."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Much of higher education was originally designed to meet the needs of full time 18-22 year-old students who enter directly from high school. However, the New Majority of our students are older, likely to swirl among institutions, and have significant adult responsibilities outside of the classroom. The New Majority Student: Working from Within to Transform Higher Education is a call to transform colleges and universities to meet the academic and student experience needs of New Majority students and for adult educators to become advocates, allies, and resources for needed reforms. Book contributors, including faculty, staff and administrators at public, private and community colleges, provide insights for this transformation. The bookutilizes a business perspective to academic transformation, providing a guide to how universities can redefine and restructure their education product to meet student needs. Taking a Human Centered Design approach, the contributors provide frameworks and examples of how institutions can reallocate technology, effort (internal, external, student, faculty) and finances to reimagine programs and ensure long term institutional health.