17 Additional Annotations

Personally Relevant: In an article on relevant teaching, InformED editor Sara Biggs cites several research sources highlighting key attributes of relevant instruction, including building relatedness and offering student-directed assignments.

Culturally Relevant: Building content (text, images, videos, etc.) that clearly honors diverse voices and perspectives is paramount. This design should be explicitly stated within the syllabus and assignments.

Community Relevant: Incorporating some form of community involvement is another means of making instruction relevant (yes, even in an online course!). One way to incorporate community connected projects is through service learning. On college campuses nationwide a tension exists between the idea that service learning could be part of the curriculum that helps accomplish the cognitive goals of a course, as it’s often more associated with affective domain learning. Though the tension does exist, there is a significant body of research suggesting that reaching students at the affective domain is an effective means of teaching cognitive content. Some would even argue that both the affective and cognitive domains of learning exist on a continuum. Following this logic, affective domain learning is not the opposite of cognitive domain learning, rather the two interact to make content stick. Service learning is a type of active learning that connects in-class work to students’ communities. Research shows that service learning is one means of reaching students at the affective domain (Kezar & Rhoads, 2001).
Material above adapted from the Peralta OETraining - E8:Connection & Belonging - CC