Fostering Agency in
Learning

Ideas

IDEA #7: Relevant & Purposeful Learning Focus

"[I]n this turbulent moment in America's history, students need to be prepared to navigate and lead change in workplaces, communities, and political arenas."
—University of California Santa Cruz

Learning Intentions

One of the keys to fostering student agency is ensuring that learning is relevant and purposeful so that it supports students in honing lifelong learning skills. Create opportunities and design assignments so that students learn not just how to comprehend the world, but how to change it.

Long-Term Relevance

  • Ensure that tasks are relevant to goals in the course, to students' fields of study, the workforce, and life.
  • Explain to students, or ask students to discuss, how their assignments might pertain to their future professions.

Focus on Skills

  • Build human skills that will set students apart from AI in the workforce.
  • Incorporate digital literacy, collaboration, independence, and problem-solving.
  • Focus on collaborating across disciplines.
  • Create assignments that involve applying concepts, tying course outcomes with higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.
  • Incorporate project-based learning.

Social Relevance

  • Create socially relevant projects applicable in other settings.
  • Connect projects to social good or social need.
  • Give students the opportunity to share socially-applicable projects with the community.
  • Create opportunities to materialize concepts with actual objects or experiences.

Center Student Interests and Strengths

  • Give students choice in research and assignments so that they can individualize their studies to what they are passionate about.
  • Practice culturally relevant pedagogy by giving students opportunities to utilize the knowledge and perspectives that they bring to the classroom.
  • Give students decision-making power.

Resources