There has been a proliferation of papers on resilience in universities in recent years, many of them focused on how educators can make students more resilient. Yet the meaning of the term is nebulous, and critics argue that the focus on individuals obscures wider systemic dysfunction. This paper reports on a critical narrative review informed by a multidimensional framework called the Dynamic and Interactive Model of Resilience (DIMoR) (ahmed Shafi, Templeton et al., 2020; ahmed Shafi, Middleton et al., 2023). We found three critical themes in the extant literature: a troubling lack of complexity and coherence in how resilience is conceptualised; unsupportable assumptions inherent in typical resilience-training interventions; and incompatibility between traditional scientific investigative methods and the dynamic and interactive dimensions of resilience. We argue for a more considered approach to resilience within the sector, looking to co-create with all community members the conditions that are supportive of resilience: namely, connection, communication, compassion, care, and challenge. By profiling five illustrative examples from the literature, we suggest a way forward for practice and scholarship that embraces resilience in all its contextual and relational complexity.

This study applies the Decoding the Disciplines framework to address a persistent bottleneck in geographic education: students' difficulty developing spatial empathy in increasingly hybridized learning environments. Spatial empathy—the ability to deeply connect with and understand places and their inhabitants beyond cognitive recognition—requires students to overcome ontological and epistemological barriers rooted in colonial perspectives of space. Through careful analysis, we identify expert mental moves that geographers employ, including multi-sensory engagement with place, recognition of temporal layers and multiple narratives, embodied spatial cognition, connecting personal experience to broader contexts, and transferring spatial understanding across physical and digital realms. We created immersive 3D audio experiences featuring pandemic-related campus narratives and measured their impact on 47 university students. Results demonstrate significant differences in emotional responses between students who experienced campus closure (more negative emotional tone, higher intensity) versus those who didn't, though both groups reported high empathy levels. Qualitative data revealed three key themes: perspective-taking, accessibility awareness, and sensory connection to place. Digital storytelling effectively modeled expert mental moves by making tacit knowledge visible and fostering embodied engagement through sonic pedagogies. This approach offers geography educators a framework for teaching place-based concepts in hybrid contexts while challenging visual dominance in spatial representation. Our findings extend the Decoding paradigm to encompass multi-sensory dimensions of spatial understanding, demonstrating how immersive soundscapes can bridge disconnections from place while fostering mutual understanding across diverse experiences.

The action plan is the culminating assignment that provides students with the opportunity to apply their semester-long learning about civics, diversity, and ethics to a real-world problem and propose an actionable solution. Students select an authentic genre that serves their purpose best: a letter to someone in a position to help implement their solution or an op-ed for a relevant news source. The goal is to end the semester with a piece of writing they can share and use to advocate for social change. Sara (the first author) uses the assignment in a required course in their university’s general education curriculum. At its essence, the action plan is designed to help undergraduates act as justice-oriented citizens (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004a) who take responsibility for transforming social issues. Sara’s student Hannah (second author) wrote an action plan that led her on a journey with Sara and Heather (third author) to try to change state education policy. In the personal reflection that follows, we explain our journey to enact Hannah’s action plan and detail how Sara used those experiences to refine the assignment to provide authentic learning experiences (e.g. Ritter, 2008; Sisserson, et al., 2002). To promote readability, the essay is written in Sara’s voice, and Hannah and Heather’s insights are presented throughout.

Background: Integrated lab-lecture courses are popular in undergraduate engineering courses as they employ the benefits of hands-on activities without the student dissatisfaction of a flipped classroom. Hypothesis: The goal of this project was to test the hypothesis that the number of hands-on activities is positively correlated with student achievement (i.e., grades). Methods: This work was done within a junior/senior-level Machine Components course. The number of hands-on, physical lab activities and overall course grades were collected from 132 students over three semesters. The correlation of these two variables was quantified using Spearman’s correlation coefficient. Student evaluation scores were also analyzed better to understand the effect of hands-on activities on achievement. Results and Discussion: The number of hands-on lab activities was not statistically correlated with overall student grades for the semester, rs = -0.16, p = 0.06. Although, this negative correlation of relative significance may support critical claims in the literature of the meshing hypothesis and suggest a more diverse range of labs (e.g., hands-on, computational) may be a better approach. Interestingly, increasing the number of hands-on activities was associated with better student ratings of the instructor’s overall teaching effectiveness. This trend suggests students were more satisfied with the course overall as more hands-on experiences were added.

This article aims to contribute to the growing, yet still limited, research related to the development of 21st century skills in the post-secondary population by demonstrating that the use of academic makerspaces in curricula can facilitate the learning of 21st century skills. This article reviews literature regarding current information about 21st century skills and their development in teaching and learning facilitated by academic makerspaces. On the completion of a Capstone course delivered in an academic makerspace, a qualitative research study was conducted with the participating fourth-year Child Studies students. The research focused on the development of 21st century skills, the impact of 21st century skills on the practice of child and youth care, and the suggestions for the implementation of similar programming in other post-secondary institutions.

More often than not, faculty have limited opportunities to interact with colleagues that teach similar classes at nearby institutions. Particularly in regions with many institutions and institution types within a close geographic area, these interactions can be important to support student transfer between institutions. Increasingly, our students do not go to just one institution for the UG degrees but transfer from one to many different institutions over the course of their degree. The development of a regional network was our solution to this problem. The aim of the Northwest Biosciences Consortium (NWBC) was a broad implementation of the Vision & Change recommendations with two emphases: (1) incorporation of Vision and Change recommendations into the introductory biology curriculum for majors and non-majors, and (2) curricular support for students transitioning between and within institutions. We describe how these objectives shaped the development of the NWBC along with other formative factors, the lessons we learned from this work, and recommendations regarding the development of a regional faculty network.

This reflective essay explores the transformative power of interpersonal communication, especially when coupled with experiential learning. It follows the unique stories of four college students, as their lives evolve when interpersonal communication empowers them.

Student ownership of learning is paramount in the classroom, but also outside of the classroom. Organized in 5 themes (choice, accountability, control, engagement, and language), we provide advice on how to ensure students have the opportunity to own their learning, both inside the classroom and in other areas of campus life (e.g., advising and student service). Possible barriers are also discussed.

Building a meaningful practicum for undergraduate students is a rewarding and labor-intensive process. This paper describes a professor’s experience in designing an experiential capstone public health course with support from faculty developers. Utilizing backwards design and deliberately integrating team-based learning strategies, this reflection shares the strengths and challenges of creating and implementing this course. Considerations for future community engaged coursework are also explored.