Engaged Learning During COVID

Tips and Strategies to Promote Student Learning and Engagement During COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic is challenging educators to think about teaching and learning in new and different ways. This also applies to the structure and delivery of high-impact practices (HIPs) and all forms of engaged learning, including internships, undergraduate research, global learning, and community engaged teaching and learning. These forms of applied and experiential learning require sustained interaction between students and mentors; an exploration and examination of relevant, real-world problems and issues; and periodic and structured opportunities for reflection and feedback. 

These experiences require a significant investment of time and effort for students, faculty, staff, program directors, and community partners in normal times. In the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic, forms of community-engaged teaching and learning become especially difficult and challenging, especially with social and physical distancing guidelines and changes to on-campus course delivery formats, all to mitigate the spread of the virus and reduce the risk of infection on our campus and within the community. More importantly, high-impact practices and engaged learning experiences provide excellent opportunities to explore issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Given the profound social movement taking place across the country in response to the murder of George Floyd and too many other examples of systemic racism, discrimination, and bigotry, we have a moral and ethical responsibility to make high-impact practices accessible to our students. This is especially important now during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is disproportionately impacting communities of color and low-income areas, and as we see increased and appropriate demands for racial justice and equitable and inclusive practices across and within all institutions in our society. 

On May 29, 2020, the Office of Academic Affairs provided guidance for academic programs delivered at IUPUI (now IU Indianapolis), IUPUC (now IU Columbus), and IU Fort Wayne during AY 2020–21. This document provided guidance to academic units on appropriate course formats that faculty should use for the upcoming academic year. Moreover, students may have the opportunity to participate in a variety of on-campus and off-campus curricular and co-curricular engaged learning experiences, such as internships and community-based service learning and volunteer opportunities that are not linked to a specific course using one of these suggested formats.

This professional development series is designed to help faculty, staff, and program directors structure various forms of engaged learning for our students during the upcoming 2020–21 academic year.  Where appropriate, session facilitators will highlight ways in which faculty and staff can structure experiences within one of the four course formats specified by the Office of Academic Affairs for the fall semester. Tips and advice will also be offered for structuring co-curricular experiences on campus and within the community, while following guidelines specified in the IU Return to Campus Guide. 

This professional development series is open to all IU Indianapolis faculty and staff. Participants may register for one or more of the 10 sessions being offered.

IU Indianapolis faculty are eligible to receive a completion badge and a $500 stipend if they complete all of the following requirements:

1. Attend Session # 1 and # 2.
2. Attend one or more of the other sessions listed (# 3 through # 10).
3. Submit a reflection of their involvement in the professional development program.
4. Provide evidence of a change made to a course requirement or an engaged learning experience based on their participation in this professional development series.
5. Both items (the reflection and the revised course requirement or experience) can be emailed to iel@iupui.edu. Please submit this information no later than August 31.

Through funding provided by the Office of Academic Affairs, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Institute for Engaged Learning are able to support faculty by providing a $500 stipend for engaging in professional development programming to prepare to teach in new formats. Faculty are eligible to earn a $500 stipend for only one of the following programs, but they may participate in as many as they choose. 

• Summer Online Course Development (closed)
• CTL Intensive Course on Quality Online Course Essentials,  May or  July (closed)
• Just-In-Time Course Design: A Faculty Learning Experience
• Small Teaching Online Faculty Learning Community (multiple communities are offered)
• Tips and Strategies to Promote Student Learning and Engagement during COVID-19 Professional Development Series

Tentative schedule

Session # 1: In this first session of this PD series, we will examine the central features of high-impact practices and identify and explore strategies and opportunities for embedding an engaged learning experience into an online course, a hybrid-traditional format, a hybrid-distance format, and a distance-other format. Participants will asked to share the learning goals/outcomes for the course, their prior experience(s) embedding engaged learning into a curricular or co-curricular experience, and anticipated challenges they might experience in the fall semester. Collectively, we will explore strategies for embedding different experiences into these various course formats, and participants will be invited to attend additional sessions where specific high-impact practices will be explored in greater detail (e.g., internships, ePortfolio, global learning/engagement, civic learning, capstones, and service learning). 

Session # 2: Critical reflection is a key tenet of all high-impact practices that, when designed well, allows students to make meaning of their experiences in light of particular frames of reference (e.g., a course concept, disciplinary knowledge, skill, or value). This process not only helps students deepen their knowledge but also provides an opportunity to document their learning. In our time together, we will discuss key design principles and a helpful reflective framework, offer tips on designing reflection for distance-learning, and provide you with a helpful way to utilize reflection products as a means of learning assessment.

Session # 3: Join us for an interactive presentation exploring how to make internships a greater learning experience for students. Move beyond work reports and counting hours as the main means of assessment. Hear about best practices and learn about resources for developing timely reflective prompts, surveys, and other tools to assess the impact of your internship courses on students and intern site supervisors. There will be ample time for questions and discussion. We want you to share your best practices too!

Session # 4: Explore ready-to-go and customizable assignments and activities designed for online, hybrid, and face-to-face delivery for incorporating ePortfolio into a course or whole degree program. Do you want your students to create an ePortfolio, but you’re not sure how to get started? Concerned about how your students will get help? Do you have a course assignment you want students to add to their ePortfolio? Resources for each of these situations and more will be shared and available for you to import into your own Canvas site to use in your teaching.

Session # 5: Join us for an interactive session where we will walk you through core principles, tips, and strategies to initiate new or adapt service-learning projects and partnerships for online and mixed course formats. This session will include practical examples, project ideas, and sample assignments.

Session # 6: Looking for a flexible way to integrate civic engagement into your course this fall? If so, you may want to consider civic learning. Civic learning is a form of integrative learning that supports students in their development for lives of informed and active participation in society as citizens and professionals. Civic learning is an untapped dimension of much of the teaching we already do in universities. Civic learning potential lies dormant inside many of our most common learning goals such as critical thinking, information literacy, communication, cultural humility, collaboration, and quantitative reasoning skills. In this session, join us to learn about relevant frameworks, practical strategies, and concrete examples to make civic learning visible in disciplinary and general education courses regardless of course type.

Session # 8: Join a panel of faculty, staff, and administrators as we overview policy considerations for experiential and community-based learning experiences this fall. Beyond the policies, we will explore situations and ways to respond that that align with university policy as well as how to integrate risk and safety considerations into the classroom as teachable moments.

Session # 10: Join a panel discussion exploring ways of structuring capstone experiences in virtual and hybrid formats. Four faculty members (Tyrone Freeman, David Pierce, Beth Goering, and Zeb Wood) from four different schools at IU Indianapolis will share what they learned last semester transitioning their capstone experiences to virtual/online formats. They will share what worked, and what didn’t, for themselves as instructors and for their students, as well as offer advice for faculty who are considering implementing a virtual or hybrid capstone experience for students this fall.