Experiential Learning

Student-centered learning strategies have been effectively used to increase academic performance and learning in students. Educators have hypothesized that course content reduction can also improve student learning. However, support for this idea is lacking. In the present project, I am planning to assess whether a content reduction strategy increases the academic performance of upper-division stem students at the University of Texas-Austin.

The SafeTeach Collaborative is a learning community that aims to improve faculty and graduate students' ability to handle classroom safety issues by developing their knowledge, self-efficacy, and instructional strategies. The program utilizes interactive methods including role-play exercises, scenario-based learning, and case study analyses to engage participants in realistic safety situations. The project's design fosters peer support networks, ideally providing participants with ongoing resources for addressing safety concerns.

The current proposal envisions developing alternative pedagogical materials for the “Measuring Racial Inequality” course, written in plain language and accessible to students from social sciences/humanities and underserved communities and families.

The primary goal of this project is to enhance student engagement and participation in the learning environment, especially those who have may have been marginalized by conventional approaches to teaching. This project aims to support, encourage, and train faculty to incorporate compassionate pedagogy (CP) and experiential learning (EL) into their teaching, with the goal of promoting student connection and faculty creativity.

This project focuses on training Clinical Audiology Doctoral students (AuD) to be clinically certified supervisors upon entering the field post-graduation. According to the American Speech-Hearing Association (ASHA), Texas ranks 48 out of 50 states for the number of clinically certified audiologists who are needed to supervise doctoral students in order for those students to have ASHA-approved hours (https://www.asha.org/siteassets/surveys/audiologist-and-slp-to-populati…).

The primary goal of this community-based service project is to provide experiential learning opportunities for undergraduates interested in statistics and data sciences while supporting the broader Austin-area community. Coordinating with local organizations, students enrolled in some of our SDS courses are gaining hands-on experience in data analysis while exploring authentic contexts. This innovative and collaborative effort provides a community-based model that allows students and local organizations to co-develop and answer real-world research questions.

CE 357: Introduction to Geotechnical Engineering is a third year required undergraduate course that has traditionally been a challenging course for students due to its abstract nature. The average course rating for   CE 357 is 3.8 in the last twenty years. I have successfully transformed the lecture modules to achieve a significant increase in interest and students’ performance in the course. Although preliminary work looks promising, I want to scientifically evaluate the effectiveness of the course and publish the findings.