Strengthening Graduate Programs by Engaging Students as Co-Designers

Abstract

This chapter will tell the story of how a cohort of master's students were engaged in a project-based course in which their problem to be tackled was the re-design of their larger program curriculum. In addition to gaining transferable skills from this co-designer's experience, these students left with a sense of legacy and the satisfaction that the program would better serve future cohorts. The authors discuss how students-as-partners approaches are informed by tenets of project-based learning and inquiry-based learning. They explore how students navigate frustrations within the ambiguity of these learning environments, and how the navigation of this initial uncertainty may contribute to the development of greater agency. Finally, the authors offer a consideration of how these teaching approaches may help fulfill the goals of critical pedagogy.

Can Co-Creating and Participating in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Develop Climate Change Leaders?

“…Our findings add to the limited evidence available documenting that MOOCs can help remote learners develop leadership practices [37][38][39][40][41], including within the context of climate change [16]. The study also adds further support for collaborative and practice-based educational opportunities, showing that students as partners pedagogies, when deployed to co-create MOOCs, can contribute to these positive outcomes [17,[43][44][45]. Looking across both populations, this study further suggests that HEIs can achieve their mission of developing leaders who can address societal challenges such as climate change through a combination of pedagogies and modalities: by supporting suitable MOOCs as well as using innovative methods such as co-creation with students.…”

“…Consistent with this Special Issue's goal to address the gap in research on climate leadership education in higher education contexts, our study focused on assessing the effectiveness of two innovative pedagogies increasingly employed by HEIs, that of online education through MOOCs and that of co-creation with students as partners [16][17][18]. As suggested above, there is some evidence that MOOCs can support learning, including about climate change.…”