The 2015 Project Promoting Student Discourses on U.N. Millennium Development Goals

• In Event: Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Creating Social Change: Do Multicultural Service-Learning Opportunities Make a Difference?

Abstract

At a Southwestern U.S. university, instructors sought to foster critical student discourses in sections of a hybrid/online course. Narrative-seeking activities challenged students to crisscross various online platforms in transmedia navigation, a form of seeking and sharing of information and media over multiple platforms. One of the course assignments asked learners to explore two UN Millennium Development Goals during six weeks; HIV/AIDS and Environmental Sustainability. Students sought solutions to these multifaceted problems through peer discourse tied to current real world events as shared through posted relevant news articles. Initially, students tended to express only surface-level reflection and discourse; however, as the semester continued, there emerged deeper thinking and also a beginning liberating systemic critique indicated in learner’s individual reflections

Authors

• Jonathan Gratch, University of North Texas

• Scott Joseph Warren, University of North Texas

• Jenny S. Wakefield, University of North Texas