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.