Learning That Matters: A Field Guide to Course Design for Transformative Education

Our society urgently needs education that motivates, challenges, engages, and affirms all students. No matter their previous successes or failures, every student has enormous learning potential and important contributions to make now and in the future. Such meaningful learning experiences don't just happen, they need to be intentionally designed. This book supports those who will undertake this vitally important work. Learning that Matters: A Field Guide to Course Design for Transformative Education is a pragmatic resource for designing courses that engage college students as active citizens. This "work" book provides research-informed approaches for creating learning experiences and developing innovative, intellectually-engaging courses. Whether a novice or a veteran, by engaging with the text, collaborating with colleagues, and reflecting on the important work of a teacher, any motivated educator can become a transformative educator. Every college course has the potential to transform students' lives. Through implementation of critical concepts such as connected and authentic assessments; dilemmas, issues, and questions; portable thinking skills and engaging strategies; and a purposeful focus on inclusivity and equity, readers begin the process of change needed for preparing students who will be able to address the monumental challenges facing our society.

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Perfect for courses such as: Education Curriculum and Instruction | Design for Transformative Learning | An Introduction to Evidence-based Undergraduate Teaching | New Faculty Orientations | Freshman Seminar Faculty Trainings | Center for Teaching & Learning | Workshops in Course Design

Caralyn Zehnder is a lecturer in Biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She discovered her passion for transformative teaching and developed her identity as a professional educator when she was a professor of Biology & Environmental Science at Georgia College. It was at Georgia College where she realized the power and joy of collaborating with fellow educators to intentionally design courses. Dr. Zehnder facilitates course design workshops that help participants use evidence-based teaching practice that utilize the most recent research in education, cognitive psychology, and the social sciences to build learning environments that contribute to important student learning. She earned her B.S. in Biology from Penn State and her Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Georgia. For 2 years, she was the Professional Development Coordinator at Springfield Technical Community College. On a good weekend, you’ll find Caralyn out hiking and birding with her husband and daughter.

Cynthia Alby has spent most of her career immersed in what could most accurately be described as “avid cross-discipline idea synthesizing.” She studies pedagogy, sociology, psychology, neuroscience, and economics - anything that might yield useful clues to improving the art and science of teaching. Her primary research question is, “How might we re-enchant learning for both students and faculty?” Dr. Alby received a Ph.D. in Language Education from the University of Georgia, an M.A. in Classical Archeology from the University of Cincinnati, and an H.A.B. in Classical Languages and Philosophy from Xavier University. She joined Georgia College in 2001, where she is now a Professor of Teacher Education and works extensively with the Center for Teaching and Learning. She is also the Lead Lecturer for Georgia’s “Governor’s Teaching Fellows,” a program she has worked with since 2001. She and her husband raise a critically endangered breed of sheep on their farm, Shangri-Baa.

Searching for a purposeful profession after stints in both public and private business sectors, Karynne L M Kleine came later to her career in education, which has now fascinated her for 35 years. Throughout that period, she has examined many of the taken-for-granted-assumptions about teaching, learning, and how the world works in order to internalize her understanding of human nature and its intersection with growth and progress of the collective. Dr. Kleine’s educational philosophy focuses on finding out “what is” then imagining and realizing “what could be.” She calls Georgia home having travelled the US and earning undergraduate degrees in Interdisciplinary Studies (Southwestern College) and Business Administration (San Diego State University), and advanced degrees in Education from the University of Maine (M.Ed. Middle Grades Education; Ed. D. History and Philosophy of Science/Science Education.) As a former dean and current professor of education, Karynne collaborates alongside her colleagues at Georgia College as well as nationally with those in other fields to address issues of equity, particularly inequitable educational outcomes that serve to reinforce the status quo and limit life choices. She and the love of her life, Mike Gleason, together enjoy the pace of time and quietude found in the mountains of Appalachia.

Julia Metzker serves as Director of the Washington Center for Improving Undergraduate Education at The Evergreen State College. Julia received her first degree from The Evergreen State College where she learned first-hand the value of a transformative liberal arts education. She obtained a doctoral degree in inorganic chemistry from the University of Arizona and completed a postdoctoral appointment at the University of York in the United Kingdom. In her 10 years as a chemistry professor at Georgia College, she discovered the power of community-based learning to engage students in learning that matters. After serving as the inaugural Director of Community-based Engaged Learning at Georgia College she moved to Stetson University as the founding Executive Director for the Brown Center for Faculty Innovation and Excellence. During her journey of discovering herself as an educator, she was fortunate to find a cohort of like-minded university educators who co-founded the Innovative Course-building Group (IC-bG) - a grass-roots social network for learning that supports teaching faculty and staff across disciplines. She believes in reimagining and reclaiming the democratic potential of assessment, work she champions as a member of the Imagining America's “Assessing the Practices of Public Scholarship” research group. She and her partner, Joe, raise chickens and bees with the help of an unruly Australian Shepherd in the Pacific Northwest.