Teaching and Learning for Social Impact

How to Use This Teaching Schema

We have chosen to create a Teaching Schema rather than a Teaching Guide. Guide implies that you will read something from beginning to end. Our Schema is less linear and more flexible. Think of it more like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" tool rather than a traditional book or article. A schema is "a plan or an outline that is also a diagram." This teaching schema will provide a structure and process for (re)designing your course to have greater social impact.

We understand that a lot is being asked of you as you transition your courses to be online, hybrid, or hyflex. We do not want this to be one more thing that you have to do on top of all of that. We want to save you time by providing you with the models, methods, and tools that will allow you to most easily transition your course while also ensuring that your course contributes to positive social change. We have designed this schema so that you can decide how much time or energy you want to invest.

Schema Outline

This Schema is organized around three questions: Why, How, and What. While we don't expect you to read the whole schema beginning to end, we do encourage you to start with the Why, move to How, and finish with What. We think this order will ultimately save you time.

Why: This section will provide opportunities for you to reflect on why your course matters. It will serve as your compass, giving you direction on your course design journey. It is hard to get where you are going if you don't know what direction you are headed.

How: This section will focus on integrating your educational purpose with your courses through a process of backwards design while connecting to specific pedagogies. This will allow you to design for significant learning and social impact. We will talk about how to create a course that incorporates belonging and hope for students in this current time, highlight manageable strategies for designing your course to be adapted to remote, hybrid, and hyflex teaching modalities, and explore pedagogies to enhance your teaching practices.

What: As there are many ways that you can go about teaching for greater social impact, the last section of the guide will provide possible pathways, including tools and resources to get you where you are going. While the distinctions between these topics can blur, we expect that you would focus on one or maybe two of these topics in a course. Included in this section you will find resources for integrating the following topics for your courses:Each of these pathways includes

Let’s work together


Share your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions as you work with the schema. We want to hear your ideas, what you still need, and what you would like to see moving forward.
Cassie Power: cpower@wustl.edu
Amanda Albert: amandabalbert@wustl.edu
Denise Leonard: dleonard23@wustl.edu
August 2020

This page has paths:

This page references: