Poster by: Reginald D’Silva, Kaye Hare, Amber Moore, Ryan Dechambault
Session: Session C | Time: 11:00AM-11:20AM | Location: Room 201
International students in post-secondary contexts are faced with learning challenges related to critical literacy while enrolled in courses with inter-related themes. These themes include social justice, global citizenship, Canadian studies, immigrant communities, and Indigenous peoples. Pedagogically-designed, instructor-facilitated, Community-Based Experiential Learning Modules (CBELM) have the potential to help students enhance their critical understandings of complex issues associated with such themes. As such, this pilot project aimed to extend international students’ understandings of course content with nuance and complexity through experiential learning.
A series of six field trips were designed and carried out in an international program with the primary goal of enhancing students’ engagement with complex course themes through targeted multimodal co-curricular experiences. Students who voluntarily signed-up to partake in these field trips were given pre-trip orientations to provide background on the topic, as well as opportunities to debrief after the trip. This poster presentation will illustrate the project background and preliminary findings with a view to stimulating discussions around the challenges and rewards of extending the curriculum in international programs through critical literacy community learning initiatives.