Preconference Sessions

Preconference Session A (November 6, 9am-12pm)

Messing with Texas: A Reacting to the Past Game Playtest

Adam Costanzo & Bernadette Flores (Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi)

During this fully interactive session, attendees will take part in a playtest of a Reacting to the Past game in development. Reacting to the Past is an award-winning pedagogy for engaged learning based on role-playing games. In Reacting games, students are assigned the roles of historical characters facing a specific historical event or controversy. The game to be play-tested, 'Messing with Texas: Partisanship, Voting Rights, and Congressional Redistricting in Turn of the 21st Century Texas,' places the players into the shoes of Texas state senators during a pitched battle over the proposed mid-decade redistricting of the state’s Congressional districts in 2003. Playtest participants will gain experience with Reacting and direct insight into the ways that this pedagogy can be used in LC’s and standalone classrooms. Pre-registration for the session will be required to ensure that players receive game materials and role information prior to the conference.

Registration Required ($50 Fee)

Preconference Session B (November 6, 2pm-5pm)

The Power of Two: Integrated Curriculum and Teaching Friendships

James Gould & Ted Hazelgrove (McHenry County College, Retired)

Linked course learning communities contain classes in which the subject matters and ways of investigating questions in two or more academic disciplines are integrated around a shared theme and taught to a common cohort of students. Faculty members work collaboratively together to co-design, and sometimes team-teach, these classes. Two hallmarks of linked course learning community courses are integrated curriculum and active pedagogy. These learning communities enhance student learning and enrich faculty professionally.

This interactive workshop focuses on "linked course" learning communities, and it emphasizes classroom curriculum integration (not program development). The workshop has three parts:

an overview of linked course learning community structures (what learning communities are, how they can be organized, what their benefits are)
suggestions on how to develop an integrated linked course learning community (how to pair different courses together, how to create integrated learning activities and assessment measures)
discussion on the psychology of the faculty-to-faculty relationship (teaching friendship, the spirituality of teaching, team-teaching as professional and personal development).

The presenters draw on 20 years of co-designing and team-teaching linked learning community courses integrating philosophy and ethics with English literature and composition.