Going Virtual When The Doors Close: Addressing Geriatric Workforce Training Needs During A Pandemic

The focus of our Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP) is to enhance long-term services and support (LTSS) and primary care healthcare workforce capacity through interprofessional education (IPE) and to increase patient, family, and caregiver engagement. When it became evident that LTSS settings, schools, and communities were going to be adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic for the unforeseeable future, our GWEP quickly pivoted to address new challenges and initiate technology to continue our programs. In this symposium, we describe four programs implemented or revised during the COVID-19 pandemic. We utilized CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) funding to develop a 3-part Project ECHO on utilizing telehealth in LTSS settings. We pivoted quarterly Fireside Chats – community-based educational programs held at partnering LTSS settings for older adults and caregivers – to bi-weekly and now monthly webinars addressing topics relevant to COVID-19 and combatting social isolation. Because students could no longer attend an in-person IPE course introducing them to long-term care, we revised the course to be online with a partnering nursing home participating in an interactive mock care conference. Finally, a 2-semester undergraduate Honors College project-based course introducing students to successful aging utilized virtual activities to expose students to the challenges of hospice care during a pandemic. With these adaptations, as well as activities that advocated for, and supported, LTSS settings and older adults, our GWEP program was able to continue to provide education and support to the setting and individuals most impacted by COVID-19.

Learning Transdisciplinary Collaboration: Undergraduate Student Perceptions of Successes and Areas for Improvement in Transdisciplinary, Problem-Focused Honors Seminar Courses

The honors college at a large land-grant research university developed transdisciplinary courses to provide undergraduate opportunities for small, student-centered classes and collaborative problem engagement in a global context. In these courses, students engage principles of competency-based education and inquiry-based learning combined with instruction in transdisciplinarity and decision-making tied to the college mission statement and course learning outcomes. As an observational study, we surveyed 91 honors students from 12 transdisciplinary courses over three semesters, asking five-point Likert scale questions and open-ended perspective questions at the beginning and end of each semester. Participants predominantly identified as White (74%), male (57%), senior-level students (67%), and represent 34 majors. Findings emphasize outcomes of lasting faculty relationships and opportunities to explore interests outside students’ majors, which respondents report influencing their academic development. Students also report areas for curricular improvement in developing research skills and engaging problem-focused experiences. We describe new offerings made to address findings.

In the End, There Is No Such Thing as Unconscious Racism: CRT/Asian American Crit Counterstories by Undergraduate Students During the Pandemic

This article emerged from undergraduate students in an Honors College class on critical race theory at the University of Utah during the spring semester 2020 during the pandemic. The counterstories evolve around critical race theory/Asian American Crit and the historical and current violence against the Asian American community in the United States. Given the recent anti-Asian American backlash which has emerged through the COVID-19 crisis, to the March 2021 murders of the Asian American women and others in Atlanta, we present these counterstories with the imperative of their importance for critical social justice to combat White supremacy.

Practice-oriented Approach to Development of Leadership Competencies of Honors Students: the Project «The Territory of Intellectual and Liberal Inventions»

This article presents the results of the study dedicated to the development of leadership competencies of the students with high academic achievements based on the practice-oriented approach. The authors of the paper reveal the features of the development of leadership competencies of Honors College students based on a practice-oriented approach, present the theoretical justification and description of the project «The Territory of Intellectual and Liberal Inventions», develop the specific character of gamification of the process of development leadership competencies among students of the Honors College. The main methods of this study were a review of theoretical works devoted to leadership and leadership competencies, circumstances of the educational environment of the Honors College, and theory and practice of gamification; a survey of Siberian Federal University Honors students; substantiation, description and creating of the project «The Territory of Intellectual and Liberal Inventions»; a design of a gamification model of student leadership competencies’ development process; a pilot experiment of this model, an analysis of the experiment results. The results of the conducted research reveal that the development of leadership competencies among gifted students based on a practice-oriented approach is actually and widely discussed by the educational community. The use of gamification allows intensifying the passing of the studied process. The materials of this article may be essential and beneficial for the researchers of development of leadership competencies, as well as for comparative studies in the field of teaching gifted students

Vignette--Pivoting from Laboratory to Remote Research Using the Online Game Foldit

Honors College students at Purdue University are required to complete a capstone project as part of the curriculum. Many students experienced a disruption to their research plans in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, faculty launched a place-based research initiative to recruit students to be onsite researchers from wherever they were. A Foldit research group was created for students from biology-related majors.

Are Gifted Students Adapting Their Self-Regulated Learning Processes When Experiencing Challenging Tasks?

Self-regulated learning (SRL) promotes both current and future academic achievement and must be adapted based on task demands. To develop SRL, gifted students must have opportunities to experience optimally challenging tasks. Gifted students’ past experiences (or lack thereof) with challenging tasks affects how they approach current tasks, which affects how they will approach challenges in the future. The current study used a two-stage approach to examine the extent to which Honors College students are able to adjust their SRL approaches based on task demands. Stage 1 provided baseline data on which types of Graduate Record Examination data analysis problems each student found to be difficult or easy. Then, in Stage 2, students were provided individually designed, easy and difficult problems. The students reported their SRL processes while engaging with the problems. When students were solving difficult problems, they demonstrated lower self-efficacy, lower performance evaluations, and lower effort. Furthermore, students reported using more surface level strategies when solving a difficult task, compared with their deeper strategic approach employed when engaging with the easy task. These findings suggest that, although gifted students may be aware of deeper, more effective strategies, they may not transfer these skills to difficult learning tasks. Thus, one recommendation would be to provide gifted students with more opportunities to practice building and transferring adaptive SRL processes when faced with a challenging task.

Honors College Faculty Support for High-Impact Practice Participation

Much of the existing research on honors colleges or programs is focused on the student experience, with less information offered concerning the faculty perspective. This study presents findings from the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE), comparing support for high-impact practices between faculty who teach honors courses and those who do not. Along with core FSSE items, this study uses responses from 1,487 faculty members at 15 institutions on two experimental items about teaching honors courses. A series of ordinary least squares and binary logistic regression analyses suggest that faculty who teach honors courses are more likely to supervise undergraduates on research and internships and to think that it is important for students to participate in learning communities, study abroad, and research with faculty. These findings are interpreted within the context of previous research and current theory, bridging knowledge from the fields of higher education and gifted education.

Profile Interview with Faculty Mentor Dr. Jason Ware

Dr. Jason Ware is a clinical assistant professor in the Honors College with a courtesy appointment in the College of Education.