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Engaging Today's Students with the Liberal Arts |
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Community Resources for Experiential Education Beloit College |
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In the past two years we have accomplished the following goals related to our ACM Engagement Project at Beloit College: (1) opening a dialogue on what is understood by experiential and community-based learning at a liberal arts college, (2) linking Beloit College and its students with community organizations and services, and (3) designing and implementing a website that lists, among other things, opportunities for students to engage with community partners. We have learned that terms such as engaged learning, experiential learning, activities-based learning and active learning are at times used interchangeably, causing confusion. To ensure better communication, we have sought clarification from readings by experts in the field about the meanings of these terms. We also wish to learn how these terms are used in the liberal arts, particularly in ACM schools. Regardless of what term we eventually adopt, our group is interested in engaging students in the local community by having them work with community partners to meet needs. Through a luncheon we hosted for community partners in the first year of the project, we became aware of the wide range of sites in the Beloit community that offer learning opportunities, especially for students of education, Spanish, and dance. These partners shared their perspectives on community-based learning and ideas for ensuring successful experiences for both the college students and the hosting organizations. From this luncheon, we learned the importance of preparing students for engagement in their local communities. We also became aware of the need to build mechanisms that will allow faculty and community partners to communicate more often in order to build stronger ties between the college and community organizations. In the first year we also designed and sent out a questionnaire to potential community partners in Beloit. Based on the returned questionnaires, we completed a database of community partners that is part of our website. Students and faculty can access this database when looking to engage with the community. It has been particularly useful for our First-Year Initiatives Program and courses that require students to complete some work in the community. In addition, the website offers definitions for terminology related to engaged learning, recognizes the various types of engaged learning that Beloit faculty and staff require or expect of their students, and includes links to online resources and various documents associated to engaged learning and that were produced by the Experiential Learning Committee, which Sylvia chaired last year. In sum, the ACM Engagement Project Grant provided the impetus for furthering what we want to do in community-based learning at Beloit College. While we have made good strides, we understand that much more can be done to strengthen and expand the scope of engaged learning at Beloit, especially since part of our mission as a liberal arts institution is to prepare students "for intelligent and responsible participation in the contemporary world of action" (Beloit College Catalog 2005-07, 6). Sylvia López,
Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures |
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Return to: Engagement Project |
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