Scaling Experiential, Community-Engaged Learning using Micro-Role Based Curricula

University Of California-Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to serve the national interest by establishing a new model for project-based courses that enables courses to scale apprenticeship learning and to support richer real-world community-engaged learning for all. The rapid pace of technological innovation has led to a labor market undergoing continuous change and an increasing use of digital systems in society. This has led to calls for higher education to prepare students with more real-world, experiential, and community-engaged learning that can, in the former case, equip students with the skills needed for transitioning into the workforce, and in the latter case, equip students with the skills needed for developing technology for the public interest. This will create a novel pedagogical approach through which learning is modeled after the workplace, with lectures, sections, and assignments organized around small experiential micro-roles that are the building blocks for learning pathways that scaffold learning and organizational structures that coordinate many students towards large real-world projects. This project will take a design-based research approach to designing, developing, and repeatedly deploying two project courses and supporting tools to provide scalable, real-world, community-engaged learning experiences for students of any background. The objectives of the project are; to develop organizational patterns that scaffold effective learning while enabling learners to complete significant real-world projects; study peer support chaining, a networked form of mentorship for enhancing peer and near-peer mentorship in ways that enable real-time personalized guidance from a community without overwhelming people or triggering the bystander effect; develop a learner sourced rubric creation process that creates detailed rubrics while facilitating reflection and critique at scale, and develop a theory of micro-role based apprenticeship learning that characterizes how the methods of apprenticeship learning play out in micro-role based learning and their impact for learning, especially for underrepresented students. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.