The goals of our community of practice are to:
- Support and connect field educators in advancing practices that facilitate the development of a sense of belonging for students during undergraduate field courses.
- Explore how to apply promising practices that have emerged from research from the Belonging in Field Education project both in participants’ own teaching and to co-create materials for other faculty to use in their efforts to promote student belonging.
Through learning, reflective practice, and problem-solving with others, selected undergraduate field educators are:
- Participating and fully engaging in six sessions of synchronous virtual workshops and asynchronous informal discussions between September 2023 and May 2024 and a final session in August/September 2024. The first meeting (required) was Sep. 27th, 12:30 – 2pm Eastern (9:30 – 11AM Pacific).
- Exploring promising practices that emerged from project research and identifying which practices are most achievable for faculty.
- Implementing one or more of the promising practices in their field courses and sharing the experience with other participants.
- Bringing challenges from their own teaching to help drive discussion and activities.
- Participating in formative and summative evaluation data collection activities such as short surveys, the collection of course materials, and brief interviews or focus groups to reflect on community of practice participation.
- Contributing (optional) to collaborative product(s) based on the community of practice (e.g., resource for other field educators, synthesis paper, blog post, workshop).
Topics for community of practice workshops include:
- Knowing your students
- Teaching approaches
- Assessment of your teaching practices
- Peer and informal interactions
The Belonging in Field Education community of practice is supported by National Science Foundation Award #s 2111621 and 2110824.
