"A Very Fertile Field": CLASP Fellow Teacher Trainings Cultivate Student-Centered, Writing-Rich Innovations
Romina de Jong, Dean of Academic Affairs at Parami University (left) and Juan Carlos Duran Uribe, Adjunct Professor of Contract Law at Universidad de los Andes (right).
The fellowship is a 2-year professional development opportunity for early to mid-career faculty who demonstrate pedagogical leadership. The current group of fellows hails from 15 partner institutions across the network, actively collaborating across disciplines as well as campuses. Fellows immerse themselves in training that helps them to apply student-centered, writing-rich teaching methods crucial to liberal arts and sciences education. The strategies they learn about can then be implemented in their classes and shared with peers, helping to grow a global community of faculty deeply committed to student-centered pedagogical innovation.
While attending the workshops, Romina de Jong, Dean of Academic Affairs at Parami University, an online institution offering Bachelor of Arts degree programs to underserved students from Myanmar, said the first year of the fellowship involved in-depth study of writing-based pedagogies that were helpful in formulating strategies she can use in her own pilot project.
De Jong’s project focuses on designing fully writing-based courses at Parami University. This means helping students develop a socially inquisitive mindset that can inform their studies. “I really want them to get a feel of how writing and thinking are connected and how to use this during their research,” she says.
She notes that studying liberal arts and sciences is relatively new to Myanmar and countries throughout Southeast Asia, where business or management degrees are usually viewed as more viable paths to career success. Conversely, studying liberal arts majors, such as philosophy, politics and economics, or statistics and data science, can help students develop skills that are applicable in a variety of occupations, she says. “We have no idea whether the jobs we have nowadays will still exist ten years from now, so it’s smarter to develop skill sets that can be used across disciplines and are desirable in different professional fields,” she adds.
De Jong says she is grateful she joined the fellowship at this time because it gives her tools she can use as the recently licensed Parami University launches its new undergraduate program. She and fellow faculty members can now implement writing-based pedagogies in a coordinated fashion.
The robust international infrastructure that OSUN provides has allowed De Jong to engage in several innovative cross-campus collaborations. She has co-taught an OSUN course with a colleague from BRAC University, bringing together students from Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. “Bangladeshi and Burmese people normally do not get in touch with Rohingya, so this was exciting to do. It wouldn’t have happened without OSUN,” she says.
CLASP fellow Juan Carlos Duran Uribe, Adjunct Professor of Contract Law and coordinator of the Judicial Training Program at Universidad de los Andes in Colombia, says the first year of training in student-centered, intensive writing teaching has been helpful for both his teaching and faculty work, especially now that the School of Law is undergoing a curricular reform.
“We want our students to transfer what they learn into other contexts and to be critical and responsible citizens,” says Duran, who has been applying CLASP’s critical and socially engaged strategies to his contract law course.
Duran says one of the most striking things he has learned during the fellowship is that “writing is a way of slowing down your thoughts…Through writing, you are able to organize your thoughts so they are more coherent and reflective of what you are trying to say.” This goes a long way in helping students to “build reflection skills that will help them to live better as citizens.”
Meeting fellows from across the globe, Duran has also benefited from observing on a personal level that “your thoughts, struggles, and worries as a professor are shared by many others all around the world.” He also feels certain that the connections he has made with other fellows will lead to networks of like-minded educators who wish to do the same type of teaching. “It’s a very fertile field to create collaborative work in the future,” he concludes.
As the second year of the fellowship progresses, OSUN and the CLASP leadership look forward to observing the exciting innovations fellows will bring to their teacher research capstone projects, as well as the mentorships they will conduct with the incoming cohort.
Post Date: 10-10-2022