Instructional Model and Activities
As with any learning experience, working backwards from the specific
learning outcomes will help instructors to ascertain if the curriculum
is in alignment with those goals, or if there are activities that are
not aligned or extraneous. If intended student outcomes are to increase
skills with research practices (e.g. Fig. 2A ), then the actual
activities should support this outcome. In this vignette, students are
supported to develop a research project, aligning the instructional
model and activities to the outcome. Similarly, an intended outcome of
the Humanities Course at a Field Station vignette (Fig.
2C ) was to develop stronger connections to place in Northern Michigan,
and the course curriculum included activities focused on exposure to
place, and fostering a sense of place. In the Urban Field CUREvignette (Fig. 2B ), an intended outcome was for students to
engage with relevant stakeholders, and activities included gaining
feedback on student-developed experimental design from the researcher’s
whose work the urban field CURE expanded. There are multiple options for
designing curriculum or activities that will allow practitioners to
gauge the participant experience, thus acting as a form of formative
assessment. For example, designing a written reflection activity that
probes the student experience or their learning in that particular
environment, or collecting student artifacts from the field experience
can yield information regarding how a student experiences the UFE, and
can in turn inform UFE stakeholders.