This week I participated in a Meaningful Inquiry Workshop which will count towards an endorsement of my skills in inquiry-based teaching and learning. From "decoding the disciplines", to the ALA’s Framework for Information Literacy (www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework), to transparency in learning and teaching, to the conceptual processes for getting from a deficit mentality to a mentality for institutional transformation around equity issues - the content was highly relevant to the educational work I do and what I aspire to do. The idea of a "threshold concept," in particular, will be useful in organizing content and creating lesson plans. These are the concepts which prove to be barriers to the disciplinary knowledge you are teaching - students can only use coping strategies until the truly "get" these concepts. The workshop changed my understanding of:

  1. The purpose of research or inquiry-based assignments. I now appreciate that the experience of my inquiry assignments may not match my expectations of what research feels like to me. The importance of the student/teacher perspective difference.
  1. The way I communicate expectations. I would like to improve my communication to make assignments less intimidating. I grossly underestimated that aspect of my communication, especially for written instructions.
  2. The content can be organized for optimum learning - prioritizing learning "bottlenecks." A cognitive aspect of a "bottleneck" is the threshold concept I mention above. But also emotional and logistical obstacles to learning.
  3. The meaning of term information literacy. My connotations have evolved from a mechanistic perspective on dealing with information toward a more human experiential perspective.
  4. Contributors to racial and socioecon achievement gaps. The complexity of why (and why not) first generation students seek help. The importance of finding a trusted advisor and feeling a sense of belonging.
  5. Equitable learning experiences. There is no prescription, no single right answer. I really liked the cognitive frames for analyzing equity issues - that there is a mental and cultural process for getting from an individualized perspective to a collective, institutional perspective. Like, math, you can’t skip steps and expect to get to a solution.

This semester, I will implement the above and other meaningful inquiry frameworks as part of my Global ePortfolio support for Turkish 2241, the Turkish Culture course at Ohio State taught by Dr. Danielle V. Schoon. Cultivating students’ sense of self as part of a cultural community, or "proclaiming the self as a cultural being" (Gay, 2010, p. 3) is the threshold concept I will be focused on as I assess student learning and provide feedback throughout the semester. Additionally, I will make student learning bottlenecks my priorities as I provide feedback on their writing. For a cultural learning class, this includes research missteps and anxieties, logistics in connecting with online conversation partners in Turkey, social anxiety, and other obstacles to cross-cultural communication and research. I will be considering the decoding the disciplines wheel in moving learning forward to the best of my ability. This work in Turkish 2241 is a part of our research project, "ePortfolios for Online Global Competency and Intercultural Learning." You can follow updates on the Global ePortfolio web site.


Overcoming Student Learning Bottlenecks, Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development, Xavier University, CC 2.0