Build a community of practice at this collaborative session to explore the concept of student agency and create plans to intentionally enhance its presence in your classroom. Participants will leave with a framework, practical takeaways, and examples for empowering student agency in higher education.
Student agency in higher education is often at odds with existing attitudes, dynamics, and expectations at the student, faculty, and institutional level. How do we design learning experiences that balance curricular needs, instructional needs, and student needs? The concept of student agency, while not new, is quickly gaining momentum in higher education and is key to striking this balance in the classroom.
Instructors often discuss agency using the examples of students choosing course content or the method in which they are assessed (weighting grades, ungrading). This oversimplifies student agency and can create a false dichotomy of total student agency or no student agency. Instead, join us in a collaborative session to define agency together and dive into the many benefits (for faculty and students) of using agency as a core component of instruction. Participants will leave with a framework to support leveraging learner agency in course design and practical takeaways and examples of how to empower agency in the classroom.