Embedded Files
HIPs
Collaborative Assignments and Projects
Collaborative Assignments and Projects
Collaborative learning gives students practice with listening and with teamwork, transferable skills preparing them for life after graduation. Collaborative learning can be as big as developing a project-based course or course centered on team-based learning or as small as incorporating meaningful group work in parts of your course. The main benefits are the same: students learn to listen to and value the insights of others and students learn to work together as a team to critically analyze problems or situations and to develop solutions together.
Appalachian's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning for Student Success (CETLSS) offers resources and workshops for building collaborative assignments into your course.
Sample Assignments and Rubrics
VALUE Rubric on Teamwork (available free from AAC&U)
Resources
Harvard Instructional Moves Teaching Through Problems
Chronicle Article Why Students Hate Group Projects (and How to Change That)
App State Team-Based Learning webinar
Common intellectual Experiences
Common intellectual Experiences
Common intellectual experiences promote sustained critical and creative thinking by engaging students in conversation and reflection around a common topic. App State's Common Reading Program offers a common intellectual experience for our first year students. The Climate Literacy and Response-Ability: Cultivating Resilient and Just Communities Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) aims to provide a vertically integrate suite of opportunities for students to critically evaluate climate responses and creatively enact change towards a more sustainable future. This important intellectual experience will remain our QEP for ten years and resources are already being developed to help faculty engage in this work.
Sample Assignments
Visual Journaling Activity developed around the 2021-2022 Common Reading Text, Belonging, written by Norah Krug
Various activities developed around the 2023-24 Common Reading Text, Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian with Practical Advice for Aspergians, Misfits, Families & Teachers written by John Elder Robinson
Resources
Cruz, L., Min, M., Ogden, D. T., Parker, J., Grodziak, E., Ko, P., & Klinger, K. (2023). Top Chief: A Critical Assessment of a Cross-disciplinary Case Study as Common Intellectual Experience. Innovative Higher Education, 48(3), 415–432. https://doi-org.proxy006.nclive.org/10.1007/s10755-022-09598-6
Hayford, M., Kattwinkel, S. (2018). Common Intellectual Experiences. In: Hayford, M., Kattwinkel, S. (eds) Performing Arts as High-Impact Practice. The Arts in Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72944-2_3
Capstone Courses and Projects
Capstone Courses and Projects
At Appalachian every program of study includes a capstone course. The capstone provides opportunities for students to integrate and apply what they learn to a major project. Capstone projects are implemented successfully in many forms: research papers, portfolios, exhibitions, and projects with community-partners. Appalachian's General Education vertical writing curriculum cumulates in a capstone course within the major. The Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program provides resources for faculty teaching these courses.
Sample Assignments
Diversity / Global Learning
Diversity / Global Learning
Courses and classrooms that incorporate diverse experience engaging students at home and abroad develop students' awareness, understanding, appreciation, and respect for cultures, life experiences, and worldviews different from their own. These experiences prepare students to better understand the responsibilities of membership in global communities, forge meaningful local-to-global connections, and lead as engaged global citizens.
Appalachian's Office of International Education and Development (OIED) offers resuorces for faculty whishing to develop short -term study abroad courses as well as resources for faculty aiming to incorporate a global perspective in their on-campus courses. Consider registering for the annual OIED Global Symposium or participating in the Cultural Ambassadors Program.
Sample Assignments and Rubrics
Intercultural Dialogue Research Assignment with corresponding HIP syllabus
VALUE Rubric on Global Learning (free to download from AAC&U)
VALUE Rubric on Intercultural Knowledge (free to download and use from AAC&U)
Resources
Harvard Instructional Moves Educating for Equity and Inclusion modules
App State Inclusive Teaching in Natural and Physical Sciences
App State webinar Fostering Community and Sense of Belonging in Online Courses
Learning Communities
Learning Communities
Learning communities link curricular and co-curricular activities, allowing students to complete linked courses in community, developing close working relationships with each other and with their professors. Appalachian hosts several residential learning communities in which students live and learn together. Selective academic programs such as Appalachian Community of Education Scholars (ACES), Watauga Residential College, and the Honors College allow students to live together and learn together through linked academic experiences, engaging students with authentic problems, and building their critical thinking and communication skills together, over time. However, the benefits of living and learning to together are not limited to our selective programs. Appalachian offers many Residential Learning Communities (RLCs). All first-year students in a residential learning community live near each other in campus housing and learn together in a common section of a linked course, working closely with each other and their faculty mentor. Interested in proposing a new RLC? Email rlc@appstate.edu to learn more.
Internships
Internships
Internships ask students to integrate theory and practice. These programs allow students to explore career possibilities while strengthening their ability to think critically and creatively and communicate effectively in a real-world setting .
Appstate's Career Development Center helps students find, apply for, and secure internships (see examples). The office also provides resources for faculty and staff as they work to support student internships. These resources include information about Appalachian's Internship Inventory, internship policies, and student liability insurance
Community-Engaged Learning
Community-Engaged Learning
Community-engaged learning gives students direct experience with issues they are learning about in the classroom, providing opportunities to analyze real-world problems, to think critically about important issues in partnership with the community, and to develop creative solutions together. Appstate's Office of Community-Engaged Leadership explains that this High Impact Practice "enhances [students'] capacity to serve and lead in socially-responsible ways for the benefit of their local and global communities." The office shares four important learning outcomes for community-engaged learning.
career readiness
inclusive community
personal development
wellbeing
Appalachian's Academic Civic Engagement program supports faculty interested in incorporating service learning in their classrooms. This support includes a 2-day faculty fellows workshop as well as individual consultations (contact machargbd@appstate.edu, director of academic civic engagement).
Sample Assignments and Rubrics
Assignment- Community Based Partnership Project and Rubric
VALUE Rubric on Civic Engagement (free download to use from AAC&U)
First Year Seminars and Experiences
First Year Seminars and Experiences
In App State's First Year Seminar courses small groups of students (typically 22 or fewer) explore a topic of interest to them and their instructor. Appalachian's First Year Seminar program relies on engaged faculty to teach engaging courses that develop creative and critical thinking abilities, cultivate effective communication skills, make local-to-global connections, and help students understand the responsibilities of community membership. In addition FYS faculty work closely with the University Library to strengthen information literacy in our students.
FYS faculty teach subjects that they are passionate about to small classes, providing opportunities for close engagement with students. Interested in developing a FYS course? Learn more about UCO 1200 at the FYS faculty resource page. Contact the director of Watauga Residential College to learn more about WRC 1103 and the dean of the Honors College to learn more about HON 1515.
Sample Syllabi
UCO 1200, Intercultural Dialogues with Professor Lillian Nave, liquid syllabus and course trailer
Resources
e-Portfolios
e-Portfolios
App State's A-Portfolio website explains "in the simplest of terms an ePortfolio is an academic website where students collect & curate evidence of their learning for a professional audience, course, or program. The process of designing and creating an ePortfolio assists students in articulating transferable skills, knowledge, and co-curricular learning. [ePortfolios] provide a place where students organize, represent, and contextualize their academic growth and the intersections with their professional aspirations." Because ePortfolios are built over time the provide excellent opportunities for departments to asses overarching student learning goals for their programs and for students to connect their various educational experiences through meaningful reflection.
Appalachian's Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program supports ePortfolio practice. The WAC website provided information about...
ePortfolio design, and
Currently, Appstate provides faculty and student support for the A-Portfolio platform
Undergraduate Research
Undergraduate Research
The Council on Undergraduate Research defines Undergraduate Research as "A mentored investigation or creative inquiry conducted by undergraduates that seeks to make a scholarly or artistic contribution to knowledge." In undergraduate research , students and faculty undertake an investigation or creative project together, building a common language for understanding the issue at hand, and co-create the research product. In this process, undergraduate students receive tailored academic and professional mentorship, strengthening academic and research skills while at the same time learning important professional skills such as managing a long-term project and tailoring communications to different audiences.
Appalachian's Office of Student Research supports undergraduate research efforts across campus.
Faculty can list research opportunities for students (contact osr@appstate.edu) and apply for financial support for their undergraduate research students as Undergraduate Research Assistants.
With support of faculty mentors, students can apply for research and travel grants (including international travel).
App State also offers several Course Based Undergraduate Research opportunities. The Honors College offers an Introduction to Research First Year Seminar Course and a Sophomore Seminar course titled Research to Action Multidisciplinary Problems thorugh a partnership with App States Research Institute for Environment, Energy, and Economics
Funded by a UNC System Undergraduate Research Program Award, the Department of Chemistry and Fermentation Scinece has recently redesigned their Biochemistry course to include Course Based Undergraduate Research. More recently, this same grant funded a team of faculty from The Department of Chemistry and Fermentation Science and the Mathematical Sciences Department to collaborate with scientists from North Carolina A&T University in developing a year-long first year seminar course "How Scientists Discover" that focuses on the research process, exploring how science and scientists work. The Office of Undergraduate Research is excited to support this work.
Sample Course Based Undergraduate Research Experiences
Resources
Writing Intensive Courses
Writing Intensive Courses
Appalachian's Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) office supports a Vertical Writing Model in which students progress from first and second-year Rhetoric and Composition courses to junior-level Writing in the Discipline (WID) and senior-level capstone courses, with WID and capstone courses offered in the Major. WAC offers
teaching and learning support faculty consultations and workshops)
inclusive teaching resources, including antiracist feedback practices for writing-intensive assignments,
many additional resources, including example syllabi, a collection of resources around reflection, information about peer review, and more.
Faculty teaching writing intensive courses may also benefit from the information on the CETLSS assignment design website, particularly examples of communicating effectively assignments based on the TILT framework. In addition, the VALUE Rubric on Written Communication may be helpful when designing rubrics (free to download and use from AAC&U).
Page updated
Report abuse