Thank you for sharing your reflections on Experiential Learning. This is yet another way of giving students the opportunity to actively engage with their learning and make better meaning of the knowledge and skills they acquire.
I agree that there is nothing like experience to really understand the impact of following a bad diet. It seems to me a key idea to experiment with these in a “controlled, reflective context,” as you note in your fourth paragraph. In order to avoid putting students in situations where they are causing their bodies lasting harm, I wonder what kinds of controlled exercises could be proposed to illustrate the the incorrectness and, sometimes, dangers of some of the myths that can be found on social media.
Ethan, thank you for sharing your research and experience with open pedagogy. I am very interested in the structure of your schooling where you got the opportunity to engage deeply in your learning interests. It must have been wonderful to have such strong ownership of your learning. When transitioning to a more traditional high school model, what did you find difficult?
I agree that health and diet is very personal, requiring some trial and error. I like your idea of integrating student-generated content, and developing peer-reviewed meal plans aligns with Design Thinking as well. Let’s talk!
Blog Prompt: Choose one (or more) of your planned learning activities from your Blueprint and identify any barriers to student success. How can you alter or adjust your current plan to reduce those barriers?
Students to any course bring with them unique needs, abilities, and history. This diversity, if not addressed, can lead to a large proportion of students having trouble engaging fully in learning within the course. Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a framework created by CAST to address a diversity of student needs based on what is known about the human brain, offers guidelines to support student learning in a number of ways (CAST, n.d.). Based on these guidelines, we can design multiple options for engagement, representation, and action & expression in order to increase access, support the learning process, and support executive functioning.
One of the planned learning activities we have in our Blueprint is to read an article and a webpage about healthy food choices. Barriers to reading could include difficulty with language, literacy, or vision. To reduce these barriers, we could encourage students to use translation or text-to-speech technology if they choose. We could also offer video or podcast alternatives which cover the same content. If the course is given in person, we might investigate to find out if any student needs alternatives for large print. We could also offer the article and/or webpage in options written for multiple levels of English comprehension. Finally, we could ensure plenty of pictorial support of the text, with captioned descriptions.
Additionally, there may be misunderstandings in the students’ conceptions of healthy eating, which could impact access due to bias and distracting ideas. CAST UDL Guidelines suggest creating a supportive culture by exploring how biases can impact learning (CAST, n.d.). This could be done in a short introduction to the reading, video, or podcast, acknowledging possible preconceptions or myths about healthy eating.
Another barrier could be difficulty in transferring learning from the article, website, video, or podcast, to application in meal planning for themselves. We can support this by including explicit references and connections to this learning in future assignments. We could also survey students ahead of time to learn about the foods they like so that we can use relatable examples to help make sense of the content during instruction.
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