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Courses consist of modules that can be mixed and tailored to a school's culture and mission. Adopt courses as-is for traditional academic frameworks (semester, summer, full year) or adapt modules within them to meet visions for tailored micro-learning workshops. ​
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Right now, RL courses are being designed for summers only. Reach out to discuss how to get the curriculum so that you can implement courses on your own.
First Year Experience Lab
Description
The first year of college comes with challenges that are as unique as we are. That's why first years begin with an orientation to cultivate familiarity and belonging, helping to ease the transition. But it is easy to lose sight of the tremendous support on our doorsteps throughout the year and the years that follow if we haven't reflected on the extent to which we self-advocate. Without this kind of active orientation to self, it's more difficult to develop growth mindsets that help us benefit from the variety of curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular supports introduced to us in those first weeks of college. Many of us retreat into fixed mindsets about what we can do academically. FYEL participants will develop self-awareness and practice the effective self-advocacy habits that help them orient others to themselves.
Aims / Goals and Outcomes
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By engaging in a critical exploration of their past educational experiences, participants will be able to identify barriers to success. By chronicling past events, providing alternative explanations for their outcomes, and examining attitudes held about them, participants will understand the impact of self-perception on performance, achievement, and learning. They will question the soundness of the narratives they have internalized about their performance as students, and they will practice the self-leadership skills to forge stronger connections with the student services available to them.
"For as long as I can remember I've been learning to prove I know something instead of learning to find things out. Somewhere along the way it became about approval for me, which got in the way. It's like I developed a chip on my shoulder. I can see that it's there now. I can tell others it's there. I can get out of my own way."
College Engagement Lab
Time frames
Summer, Semester, Year, or ongoing (microlearning by module)
Audience
Students who want to maintain the self-management mindsets that lead to a degree.
Modules
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Mindfulness in Education
Field Guiding
Deeper Learning
Deep Listening
Observation, Interpretation, Judgment
Mobile Technology Salience
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Description
College is a marathon, not a sprint. Pacing matters, especially beyond the first year. In the CEL we will explore something called the time/attention matrix. Academic work tests our ability to manage our time, which is why there is so much emphasis on this aspect of our learning. This lab focuses on a resource we can have much more control of -- our attention. Participants will practice engaging in different kinds of attention, they will familiarize themselves with their habits and rhythms, and develop the skills to avoid moments of stress or even burnout. The work of the CEL can tie directly into the content and skills students are learning about in their coursework, tailoring these practices to students' academic interests.
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Aims/Goals and Outcomes
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Participants will get to know the different kinds of attention. For example, they may learn why they should take a walk after class without their phones, capitalizing on the thinking that happens as a result. They will be able to identify what kind of projects actually benefit from a kind of procrastination, taking advantage of a range of thinking modes available over the course of such a project. They will identify methods that work for them (like the Pomodoro technique). They will be able to do one thing at a time and assess the value of that thing in the context of their learning.
"I realized that there were alternative ways to use my mind to help me get more out of the material I was studying. I could meditate on a concept. I could take someone else's stance on a subject and see where it went. I basically become more flexible."
Signature Work Lab
Time frames
Summer, Semester, Year, or ongoing (microlearning by module)
Audience
Exploratory undergraduate students; interdisciplinary majors.
Modules
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Participant Observation
World Building
Real Time Curation
Pathfinding
Lookbook & Pitch Bible
Traveling Artifacts
Mission Statements
Education Branding
Description
Participants in the SWL will engage in a sequence of reflective practices designed to help them interconnect a fragmented curriculum or bring authenticity to their signature work projects with an already connected curriculum. This course can also run as a supplement to support the signature work model at your school.
Aims/Goals and Outcomes
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In addition to developing a positive academic self-concept that supports self-directed learning, participants will learn how to declare a purpose for their projects, considering the impact of their work in a field as well as the impact of a discipline's work in the community. They will develop discourse community awareness as a means to understanding the relevance of their academic projects to a profession. They will examine learning pathways, and they will learn how to connect with the allies, mentors, and consultants available to them in support of their signature work. They will explore how to navigate changes of mind and heart throughout the years of their education, and gain insights into the ways these changes come about.
"I never thought of all the different courses I was taking as relevant to what I want to actually do after college. But when I started considering the ways of thinking that every course developed, I realized there was something ....
Athlete Lab
Time frames
Summer, Semester, Year, or ongoing (microlearning by module)
Audience
Student-athletes, or athletic students.
Modules
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Academic Self-Concept
Athletic-Self Concept
Student-Athlete Self Concept
Description
Whether you're a student-athlete or an athletic student, your athletic and academic schedules have been criss-crossing and paralleling each other for as long as you can remember. You have a general awareness that these two sides of yourself have circled each other extensively, so much so they seem curiously related. But why? How? For some, this relationship is tremendously supportive. For others, it's confusing or stifling. Some of us have never stopped to make complete sense of what one has to do with the other. Making sense of ourselves as student-athletes or athletic students is what the athlete lab is all about.
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Aims/Goals and Outcomes
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Participants will identify correlations and/or connections between academic and athletic performance. They will identify and define academic self-concepts that incorporate a sense of themselves as athletes, and athletic self-concepts that incorporate a healthy sense of themselves as students.
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Student-athletes with demanding schedules will apply the self-advocacy habits of mind, disciplined practice, and growth mindsets that benefit them in their sports to academic contexts, developing a flexibility of mind that helps them across a demanding student-athlete landscape.
"Even though it was so obvious, I never really made sense of why sports and school went together so much yet also seemed so much in conflict with each other."
Adult Learning Lab
Time frames
Summer, Semester, Year, or ongoing (microlearning by module)
Audience
Non-traditional students, working professionals.
Modules
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Academic Self-Concept
Family Curriculum
Curriculum Mapping
Self-Leadership
World-Building
Missions and Visions
Lookbook and Pitch Bible
Description
Perhaps inspired by lofty education rhetoric, college students often identify the means of their education to be learning and the goal to be understanding. “I’m learning about money management to understand finance.” Nudged a little further to consider what their impact might be, many students leap to grand statements like “to fix homelessness” or "to prevent fraud." It becomes clear that we see our education as a referendum to learn and understand in the abstract, and that once we do that learning and understanding, we will have the antidote to the biggest problems facing humankind. In contrast to that abstract grandiose thinking, as adult students we have demonstrated an ability to learn and work on tangible problems in our field, but we are very hungry for more personally fulfilling work that we can connect to a bigger picture. The adult learning lab starts with the real-world knowledge and passion that more experienced learners bring to the table.
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Aims/Goals and Outcomes
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ALL participants will embark on a cornerstone, keystone, capstone project sequence connecting where they've been to where they are, and where they are to where they want to go. Those of us getting a bachelors after already working professionally are often called "lifelong learners." As these lifelong learners, we often readjust goals and set new courses for our professional advancement. But in order to make the advances or pivots that will fulfill us, we have to start with a healthy amount of lifelong unlearning. We will not attain some magical standing in the workplace after this journey. Who knows. Maybe. But our aim is to revive our growth mindsets and come out with the self-leadership skills to bring more opportunity to ourselves and those around us.