Frequently Asked Questions

1. What does a community of engaged learners look like?

In a community of engaged learners, students with the help of faculty or staff, acting as scholars, become responsible for their own learning. Again, with the assistance of faculty or staff, Student/Scholars move into a more self-regulated environment and are able to identify and make explicit their learning goals. In some cases students might learn to evaluate their own achievement and give and receive feedback to others. They work collaboratively with members of the educational community, professors, and other students on a relevant problem, issue or organized student activity. They become motivated to learn not because they anticipate graded evaluation but because they've embraced a relevant problem and taken it towards solution by applying knowledge from a variety of sources. Engaged learners are strategic in that they know how to learn, how to find knowledge, how to transfer knowledge and how to apply knowledge to solve problems creatively or also complete projects indigenous to their individual discipline. This type of scholarship is founded on the engaged teaching methods and practices of faculty and staff.

2. What do engaged learners do?

Engaged learning engenders curiosity and seeks to break down interdisciplinary walls. It challenges teachers, students and staff members to find authentic, integrative and multidisciplinary tasks that reflect real world complexity, where they can apply knowledge and make a relevant difference. There are things or projects that need to be done; problems that need to be solved; issues that need to be addressed within the community of stewardship. Engaged learners address these problems often with group collaboration and the help of peers and mentors. For a professor, this requires the use of teaching strategies that require problem-solving. Engaged learning takes on real problems or projects in the communities in which the student and the professor live and makes a significant and meaningful difference in the community and in their understanding of theory as well as understanding concepts as they apply in real-world situations. It goes beyond the memorization of facts and applies theory and knowledge to benefit the place in which the learning is occurring.

3. How do you assess engaged learning?

Engaged learning involves embracing relevant problems and making a difference; therefore, assessment must take the conditions of engaged learning into account. First, the learning or task must be authentic; integrative and perhaps multidisciplinary. Second, it must involve collaboration between student, peers, faculty and community. Third, they must acknowledge the complexity of the problem and do problem clarification before they do problem-solving. Fourth, engaged learning must involve performance-based assessment in addition to the assessment of the knowledge of the participants. In other words, in engaged learning, students are not graded solely by classroom performance, but also by the success in achieving predetermined outcomes in addressing an authentic problem.

4. What are the instructional models for engaged learning?

The most powerful tools or models of instruction are interactive; students with students, students with faculty or staff and students with their communities in which they live or communities regionally or globally. In engaged learning, a faculty member helps students apply course content to a problem and then follows the problem to solution, guiding the students and advising the cooperating agency, institution or business. The class is managed and controlled because the faculty member lets the problem control the learning. The community becomes the context to teach scholars how to be relevant problem solvers. In this model, students often teach each other interactively as they engage with community members and teachers as peers.

5. What is the context of engaged learning?

In an engaged learning environment, the classroom has to be re conceived not as a place with four walls, but as body of knowledge bound by a problem definition. This is not meant to infer that all engaged learning must solve a problem. Engaged learning is the act of bringing together a community of learners. It sustains problem solving capacity within a community and places value on diversity of opinions and solutions. Once the teacher or the educator begins to see the classroom not as a geographic space but as a community where problem solving is possible, they start to see multiple opportunities for engaging students in this highly entrepreneurial form of learning. To be sure, engaged learning experiences vary from semester to semester. The standardization of the classroom experience is not the goal, although the outcomes related to learning key concepts may remain consistent. Educators and students need to learn to be opportunistic and anticipate that each semester might be different at least insofar as the problem to be solved varies.

6. How do students, teachers and staff members interact in the engaged learning environment?

Generally, teachers and groups of students collaborate in teams. It is not uncommon for small groups or teams of two or three students within a classroom to work on various projects. Students thus become engaged in a microcosm of their community: heterogeneous groups that include different sexes, cultures, abilities, ages and socioeconomic backgrounds offer students a chance to engage different perspectives in different ways to solve an important problem or to contribute to the cannon of knowledge. In engaged learning projects, diversity is valued because it is consistent with the diversity in the community where students will live and work and provides a real world experience.

7. What is the role of the instructor in the engaged learning environment?

In engaged learning, the role of instructor in the classroom shifts from the presentation of information to the guidance or “coaching” of students in utilizing knowledge to solve a problem. The “information downloading” model of teaching gives way to the model of the teacher as a coach or guide. In other words, by first establishing a foundation of knowledge based on course materials, the instructor creates an information-rich environment and learning experiences, and then guides the collaboration of students in a “classroom” or community. The teacher also acts as a mediator, modeling and coaching students. As described by the educational theorist Palo Freire (1988), the teacher and the learner walk the same path of learning together. In the past, the teacher has often been the grader, the evaluator; classifying students into A, B, C and other categories. In the new paradigm, students and instructors are co-learners. Instructors are no longer evaluating on just what a student knows, but on how the student is able to apply that knowledge to a specific set of problems in a dynamic and complex environment. Wilhelm (2001) presents a model helping students navigate though their “zones of proximal development.” These zones are identified as levels at which students can do things with help that they cannot do alone. Wilhelm describes these zones. As “I do you watch” “I do you help,” “You do I help,” “You do I watch.”

While what is described here is exemplified in specific courses and formal instruction, it should also be noted that some engaged learning opportunities may arise from extracurricular experiences that do not involve a specific course or a faculty member. These experiences are equally valid and are a part of the teaching and learning that occurs in a university context.

8. What is the role of the student in engaged learning?

Ritchie and Hammond (2005) have argued that the scholar role needs to be greatly expanded and seen as more important and valued in society. A scholar seeks opportunities to make a difference. A scholar seeks out a way to make a difference in their environment while also guiding students to important and valid conclusions. Engaged learning is the scholar’s model for learning. Scholars who engage themselves in the model of engaged learning become producers of knowledge capable of making significant contributions towards real world problems in their community.

9. Who can apply?

Anyone. Faculty, staff, students, community members, etc. However, it is essential if a student or community member apply that they include a faculty or staff member in the process, as all applications will need to receive signature approval from the Department Chair and Dean.

10. How much grant money can I apply for?

As of this point in time we have not set a limit for the amount of funds you may apply for. Keep in mind the more entities of engaged learners that are involved, the better chance you have at receiving more funds.

11. When are the grant deadlines?

See Deadlines & Timeline tab

12. Can we apply for a grant to fund a project we are already doing?

Absolutely. In fact, we encourage this. We do not want to add to your work load, only help make it easier by allotting funds which would contribute to the enhancement of what it is that you are 'already doing' for the learning and benefit of all individuals involved in your current project.

13. What does community engagement mean?

Community Engagement describes the collaboration between higher education institutions and their larger communities (local, regional /state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity. -Carnegie Foundation

14. What is the Center for Engaged Learning?

Utah Valley University (UVU) is a student centered teaching institution dedicated to building communities of engaged learners by developing its students and employees to be people of integrity who are good stewards of place (their community) and professionally competent in their chosen profession. The Center for Engaged Learning (CEL) promotes opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to participate in the Communities of Engaged Learning Initiative, which consists of all forms of instruction, appropriate research and interaction with the regional community. CEL fosters student cohorts for engaged learning and promotes the active involvement of students in the implementation, practice, and demonstration of actions and activities that develop professional competence, community stewardship (local, regional and global), and personal integrity.