INCORPORATING EXPERIENTIAL TEACHING AND LEARNING IN CONNECTIONS & CAPSTONES
The Connections initiative invites faculty to develop courses built on (and leading to) shared knowledge. The Capstones experience allows majors to examine and integrate previous discipline-based learning .
Experiential Teaching and Learning can support the goals of both Connections and Capstones courses by integrating field-based learning with traditional course content in one of three ways:
Before a course:
Students and faculty, for example, can live in a culture before studying it in connected courses on literature, social structures or geography. Or a discipline may build into required major courses a certain amount of musical performance, applied foreign language use or field-based observations before a Capstone seminar.
During the course:
Students enrolled in conjoined courses, for example, Aging and Death and Dying, might serve simultaneously at a local center for the elderly. Similarly, a department might integrate a set of field activities such as a tour of various tropical sites into a capstone course in field biology.
After the course:
The January break may provide opportunity for travel to experience
a culture or community after students have made the intellectual connections in course work. Likewise, an intensive January practicum could follow an integrative capstone course in a discipline.
The Experiential Committee offers support to connection course teams and departments to
- think about ways teaching and learning can be enriched by adding experience, reflection and evaluation, and
- integrate and regularize such experiential teaching and learning into the connection and the disciplinary capstone.
If you would like assistance in facilitating a departmental conversation about incorporating experiential teaching and learning in Connections and Capstones, please contact Grace Baron (Ext. 3689, gbaron) or Kay Gruder (Ext. 3796, kgruder).