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Communicating in English brings about a number of challenges for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students. Such challenges remain unaddressed and unresolved within the traditional classroom settings, which are often dominated by intense guidance and instructions. The aim of this chapter is to address, discuss, and research project-based learning (PBL) as an effective pedagogical approach capable of prompting higher education students’ EFL capabilities – particularly English writing skills – in an engaging, student-centered manner that connects to their real-life experiences and develops a range of their generic skills. The PBL approach was designed, integrated, and implemented within the curriculum of the intensive English course (ENGL 101) delivered at Phoenicia University. Over a semester, 120 students across all four sections actively engaged, in groups, in PBL tasks, where they were required to identify problems in their community, propose solutions to these problems, and develop action plans to ensure that such solutions are sustainable. A mixed method approach that comprised a questionnaire (pre- and post-test) and semi-structured interviews was implemented. This chapter found that the adopted PBL method was very effective in promoting students’ engagement, ownership, and confidence in EFL. Additionally, this chapter showcased the power of PBL as a pedagogical device in humanizing EFL students’ experiences and education and provoking them to build their citizenship and agency in tackling problems and issues of relevance to them and their communities rather than being passive sufferers or observers of such problems and issues.

Educational pedagogy is concerned about student-centered learning that engages students and involves them in a meaningful manner to enhance critical thinking and creativity. Creative teaching and learning methods are a catalyst that can improve the learning experiences of students. Good teaching and the experience associated with it helps to connect students, faculty and the subject that is being taught to the students (Palmer, 2007). Many subjects till today are taught with a purely fact-based approach, and such traditional methods overlook the need to bring the subject to life and to make learning meaningful. Multi-dimensional methods are used to encourage students and convert them to successful learners with the ability to think creatively. The issue of student’s disconnectedness is a matter of much academic pursuit and using non-traditional methods such as plays, narratives and even humor are on the rise and have gained popularity due to their success in classroom teaching (Dunn, 2000). This book will help to highlight various case studies and interventions that have used innovative ways to improve the teaching-learning methods and engage students in the classroom. Academicians, through the chapters in this volume, have argued that education does not only mean teaching, learning and research but also the emotional connection and commitment that involves a dialogical process between the faculty and students. It is the responsibility of the faculty members to ultimately create an environment that provides the students with tools that are socially engaging, interactive and meaningful (Dunn, 2000).

In this study, the authors draw upon 10 years of collaborative teaching and research as two, White, women literacy teacher educators to theorize the role of humanizing pedagogies within literacy teacher education and share explicit examples of how these pedagogies might be operationalized in actual classroom settings.

This study is based on 10 years of qualitative, teacher inquiry research on authors’ shared practice as literacy teacher educators and has included focus groups with students, the collection of student work and extensive field notes on class sessions.

Contextualized within decades-old calls for humanizing teacher education practices, this study puts forward a framework for teaching literacy methods that centers critical, locally contextualized, content-rich approaches and provides detailed examples of how this study implemented this framework in two contrastive teacher education settings comprising different institutional barriers, regional student populations and program mandates.

The proposed framework of critical, locally contextualized and content-rich literacy methods offers one possibility for reconciling the divergent debates that perpetually shape literacy teaching and learning. As teachers are prepared to enter classrooms, the authors model concrete approaches and strategies for teaching reading within and against a sociopolitical landscape imbued with White supremacist ideals and racial bias.

This chapter provides a didactic analysis of a course-based service-learning research experience. The author explores undergraduate honors college students’ development of self-determination, co-determination, and solidarity vis-á-vis a Humboldtian theory of human bildung – cultivation of humanity. This particular analysis provides a case study for using course-based service-learning research experiences with undergraduate students in larger research-intensive universities. It provides students with an opportunity to learn and practice qualitative research methods and analysis, and provides time and space for them to make a difference in the world, which they seem so keen to do.

The purpose of this study was to understand factors that hinder success of at-risk students and whether blending advising models helps students who are on academic warning or probation. In this chapter, the researchers reflect on the development and implementation of an academic recovery program (ARP) that involved 332 at-risk students during a three-year period, beginning in the Fall of 2016. When conceptualized, the ARP centered on the issue of development of students on all levels – as individuals, as scholars, and as creators and consumers of knowledge.

The results show that 54% of ARP students exited the program with good standing and persisted at the university (graduated or enrolled at the end of the period of the study). Of the 46% that were not retained by the university, 32% left with good standing. Qualitative explorations indicated that students in the program experienced a variety of academic and external challenges that prevented students from reaching success. These challenges resulted in heightened levels of stress and anxiety about their college success.

Higher education has struggled to find, implement, and adopt technology that is transformative to the learning experience. Most systems are disparate, old, data-poor, and heavily nuanced platforms with few champions and many detractors. At the same time, the process of learning, which is the ultimate goal of the institution’s students, does not leverage what we know about the brain, learning science, and more. However, all of these problems can be overcome if leaders and champions create learning technologies that are holistic to the student experience while assuring deep integration with other systems. This is how student success initiatives can be improved, at scale, and see technology assisting leaders.

Leveraging case studies of exemplar teaching, learning, technological, and data strategies by which to empower people and connect analytics, this chapter seeks to provide tangible ways by which to deliver “best” learning from a holistic perspective. The problems facing higher education and consistently presented in the media can be overcome with smarter, more connected solutions, such as the ones described in this chapter.

Coaching in higher education has become increasingly common across the United States. Our qualitative study explores the perceptions of coaches and advisors, as they consider academic coaching as a role distinct from academic advising.

Our study adopts a qualitative research approach. Two focus groups were conducted with 14 coaching and academic advising professionals.

Our findings identify at least three major themes when considering academic coaching as a role distinct from academic advising: (1) Potential role overlap, (2) Caseload disparities and (3) Philosophical differences. The indiscriminate use of the title of “coach” contributed to confusion, ambiguity and tension.

Without a clear understanding of the coach role as a distinct type of support in higher education, confusion and ambiguity are likely to continue.

No studies have explored the perceptions of coaches and advisors, as they consider academic coaching as a role distinct in the United States.

Developing student engagement in the online classroom and within co-curricular digital spaces is about relationship building more than technology or class structure. Where the learning management system is used effectively, online learning can equal or exceed the engagement levels of face-to-face classrooms particularly with Millennial and Generation Z students. Beyond technology is the need to create a higher value aspect of learning by developing models closely aligned with “communities of practice” (Wenger, 2000) or “communities of inquiry” (Garrison, 2007). This chapter will examine how to engage Millennial and Generation Z traditional undergraduate students through distance learning approaches in ways that support student learning and development.

In this paper, the authors draw on theories of critical pedagogy to interrogate recent trends in online education scholarship, calling for more humanizing pedagogies. By using vignettes from their own teaching experiences, the paper illustrates tensions between autonomous and ideological visions of humanizing approaches, particularly how they apply to issues of inclusion in online teaching and learning.

The authors draw on critical theory to interrogate the framings of humanizing online teaching. Sharing three illustrative vignettes from their own reflexive teaching practice, the authors demonstrate how a critically framed approach to humanizing digital pedagogies can promote the design and enactment of more inclusive learning environments across online contexts.

Based on the pedagogical cases presented, the authors demonstrate (1) how methods promoted in autonomous models of humanizing pedagogy can present challenges for inclusive design, (2) how participatory media production activities can still intersect with issues of racialization, and (3) how humanizing pedagogical commitments by individual instructors can be constrained by material, structural, and institutional realities.

While critical framings of pedagogy necessarily resist prescriptive recommendations, the authors conclude the article by underscoring the importance of critically interrogating the ideological dimensions of humanizing pedagogies, the need to grapple with social inequities even as educational contexts are increasingly digitized; the importance of considering structural issues of power and privilege that produce and constrain pedagogical possibilities.

The authors offer a critical framing of humanizing pedagogies in online education that runs counter to the often-autonomous framings of these approaches, highlighting issues of power, privilege, and ideology that can be overlooked in online educational contexts, especially at the level of institutional, instructional design and support.