Four professors will work on projects that explore partnerships between students and faculty through dance technique, investigating the effects of learning with nature as a source, and experimenting with different teaching methods in the same course.
Four professors will work on projects that explore partnerships between students and faculty through dance technique, investigating the effects of learning with nature as a source, and experimenting with different teaching methods in the same course.
Elon University professors Renay Aumiller, Scott Morrison, Shannon Duvall and Duke Hutchings have been named CATL Scholars for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 academic years. Shannon Duvall and Duke Hutchings will be working together on one project.
The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning’s Scholar program fosters innovative and scholarly teaching and learning. Echoing the Elon Teacher-Scholar statement, the CATL Scholars program is designed so that participants engage deeply with the shared goals of our academic community and develop highly innovative projects.
Aumiller, assistant professor of Dance, will incorporate student-faculty partnerships in a modern dance technique class. Her project will use inquirybased movement education practices from the Franklin Method to encourage an active role in dance education and student development. The project will emphasize practice-based movement research through movement laboratories as a mode for high-impact collaborative educational practice.
Morrison, assistant professor of Education, will study the effects of nature pedagogy (forest schools and school gardens in particular) with university students in an undergraduate course and elementary teachers in two local schools. In addition to receiving support to enhance EDU 431 Environmental Education and provide professional development workshops at Eastlawn Elementary and South Graham Elementary, Morrison will be collecting data from Elon students and elementary teachers as they learn to teach with and in nature.
Duvall and Hutchings, both associate professors of Computing Sciences, will facilitate multiple teaching styles in the same course, rather than viewing the issue of teaching and learning style (lecture, “flipped” classroom, etc.) as an “either or” proposition that forces us to choose a primary approach. They will develop Scrumage, an approach that has shown early promise in providing students choices about pedagogy. They will also analyze and disseminate the results of their project in pedagogy-focused literature as well as give workshops for other educators to employ and further refine the technique in their classrooms.
Aumiller, Morrison, Duvall, and Hutchings will join forty current or past CATL Scholars, including current Scholars Alexis Franzese (Sociology), Scott Windham (German), Sarah Glasco (French), and Jennifer Uno (Biology).
A call for applications for CATL Scholars is announced early each fall. All faculty are encouraged to apply.
CATL Scholars are selected by a faculty committee comprised of other Scholars and CATL faculty advisory committee members. This year’s committee included Kristina Meinking (Classics), Mary Knight-McKenna (Education), Cassie Kircher (English), Jennifer Uno (Biology), and Brandon Sheridan (Economics).