Faculty-led Inquiry into Reflective and Scholarly Teaching (FIRST)
Date of this Version
Fall 12-18-2023
Document Type
Article
Citation
Aaron PeeksMease. (2023). "Understanding the Impact of Pedagogical Changes in an Honors Activism Course: A Case Study" UNL Faculty Portfolios
Abstract
The purpose of this portfolio is to document learning outcomes after initiating three pedagogical changes in an Honors Sociology of Activism course taught at UNL in both the Fall of 2022 and Fall of 2023. The first change was to provide students with prior student work of an assignment to see if student performance on the assignment improved. Findings indicated that providing examples of previous student work did not raise grades on the overall assignment, but did result in stronger projects for that one aspect of the overall assignment. The second change examined the impact of introducing reading quizzes and whether that improved required write-ups over those same readings. Findings indicate a very strong relationship between reading quiz grades and reading write-up grades. Nonetheless, student write-up grades for the Fall 2023 course were nearly 6% lower on average compared to the Fall 2022 course. The third change involved me creating a survey to assess student perceived “usefulness” of the various forms of either preparatory or actual activism they engaged in. Findings indicate that students reported, to varying degrees, that the forms of preparatory and actual activism were “useful” with few students offering suggestions for ways to make the various assignments more useful.
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Higher Education Commons, Higher Education and Teaching Commons, Sociology Commons