Thomas Lamonica, Communication
Students and even some faculty may think of a guest speaker as an opportunity to take a day off from the real work of a class. In this session, the presenter will explain how he uses guest speakers to promote learner autonomy. Student groups engage in both intellectual and logistical preparations for each speaker's appearance, learning a variety of professional and critical thinking skills along the way. The benefits go beyond the classroom by bringing alumni and other professionals to campus to meet with today's students, creating a potential for future interactions, including job shadowing, internships, employment, and development. Key to the success of this approach is that the information guest speakers share carries equal weight with other student learning activities, leading to further consideration and eventual assessment.
Sally Parry, College of Arts & Sciences
Field trips can enrich the curriculum in a variety of important ways. Although time constraints make it difficult to arrange these trips during the regular semester, summer school offers a perfect opportunity to make the most of some of the resources our state has to offer. In this instance, students were able to take meaningful field trips to places such as Galesburg, Petersburg, and Springfield, IL, actually visiting the homes of the authors they were reading and connecting the sense of place with the literature. There are logistical challenges, of course, but the experience was a positive one and has implications for others who want to make the state their classroom.
