The JWL difference -- Ignatian Pedagogy and our Academic Processes

1. THE JWL DIFFERENCE
JESUIT WORLDWIDE LEARNING

2. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
▸ At the heart of JWL’s mission are these
words:
“Learning together to transform the world”
Let’s look at the “learning together” part first.

3. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
Our model
▸ Student cohorts learn together in an onsite learning
center with dedicated staff hired by onsite partners to
guide and mentor them.
▸ We work with partners on the ground because they are
already successful at working in the environments where
we operate
▸ They are called our ‘implementing partners’
▸ Alind (Kurdistan)
▸ ReConnect (Brooklyn)
▸ St. Aloysius Gonzaga school (Taunggyi)
▸ Jesuit Refugee Service (everywhere else)

4. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
▸ Our learning centers provide:
▸ Computer access
▸ Internet access
▸ Onsite general tutors
▸ Opportunities for group reflection and
discussion
▸ Academic advising and guidance

5. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
▸ There is a lot going on behind the scenes with the
Academic team of JWL, too.
▸ Director of Academic Operations (DAO) – Dr. Tara Ross
– oversees the diploma program for JWL
▸ Head of Faculty – Dr. Marie Friedemann – hires faculty
and manages faculty
▸ Student Records Officer – Tracy Jenkins – manages
student grades, grade changes, schedules, and
enrollment statuses
▸ Academic System Support – Alejandro Brillembourg –
works with the DAO to administer the diploma
program

6. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
Learning Centers
▸ Students come from many different locations:
▸ Amman, Jordan (urban refugees – not in a camp)
▸ Bamyan, Afghanistan
▸ Brooklyn, New York
▸ Domiz, Iraq (Kurdistan) (refugee camp)
▸ Dzaleka, Malawi (refugee camp)
▸ Erbil, Iraq (Kurdistan)
▸ Herat, Afghanistan
▸ Kakuma, Kenya (refugee camp)
▸ Taunggyi, Myanmar

7. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
▸ While students come from many different
locations, they are mixed together in the
online classroom
▸ Thus, students who start in one of our January
or August cohorts may see each other every
day in their learning center, but they meet
other students from our other locations in their
online classes

8. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
▸ Back to the heart of our mission statement:
“Learning together to transform the world”
Let’s look at the “transformation” part next.

9. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
▸ Transformation begins with an expertly
written and designed curriculum that is
sensitive to the culture and context of our
diverse student population
▸ Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) write our
curriculum, which then goes through two
rounds of review – one internal and one
external

10. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
▸ Once approved, our curriculum is designed
into an online framework by our course
designers
▸ Courses are 8 weeks long, and are housed
on the Blackboard Learning Management
System
▸ Regis University, which approves all course
content, awards credits for courses

11. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
We do more than give lip service to the word
“transform.”
▸ We use IGNATIAN PEDAGOGY to:
▸ Keep the curriculum sensitive to a student’s
CONTEXT, regardless if they are
▸ in a refugee camp in Africa,
▸ at a living-on-site location in Bamyan,
Afghanistan,
▸ an inner city in Brooklyn,
▸ or a remote and rural part of Myanmar.

12. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
JWL Perspective
We use a variety of perspectives, and yet we do not
leave out the western perspective. English is the
language of our program. Ultimately, we let the student
bring in their own context. We call this “leaving the
doors and windows open.”

13. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
▸ Once we open the doors for context, we then:
▸ Give students EXPERIENCES that can help them
learn a topic in a meaningful way. This might take the
form of:
▸ Providing science kits to our students in the
physical science class so that they can conduct
experiments (many for the first time)
▸ Watching videos of Northern Ireland ex-
combatants talk about their peace building actions
today
▸ Listening to jazz music and learning how to use art
to tell a story in order to give it impact

14. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
Note!
▸ You might be wondering how Northern Ireland or
even Jazz relates to the lives of refugees. First, don’t
put your own blinders on…students have tremendous
capacity to learn about new contexts regardless of their
own.
▸ Second, sometimes we deliberately take students far
away from their existing context and let them learn
about another context. Once they have learned the
information without the benefit of their own
environmental cues and/or blinders, they may be more
objective. Then they can apply what they’ve learned to
their own context and life story.

15. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
▸ After experiences, students are then:
▸ Provided an opportunity for REFLECTION so that they
can connect the head to the heart, and let what they’ve
learned affect what they understand, believe, and feel.
▸ Reflections are journals that students write each week.
They are graded pass/fail, and while we want you to
read them, and ensure that the student is doing them,
we don’t want you to grade them for what they write
(unless it’s unrelated to the assignment.)

16. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
▸ Reflection then leads one into making changes
in the world around them. In the JWL curriculum,
we do this through Action.
▸ With ACTION, students have an activity, an
assignment, or project that not only helps
them apply what they have learned, but also
helps them consider how they can transform
the world around them.

17. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
What happens…
▸ The action element is so transforming that we
often see students creating programs outside of
their studies that will benefit their community.
Once students learn how to think like this, they
develop a tremendous sense of personal agency.

18. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
▸ Constant improvement is a good educational practice.
We accomplish this through EVALUATION
▸ Students are evaluated in what they have learned
formatively (asynchronous discussions), and
summatively (assignments, journals, projects, and
tests).
▸ Students evaluate the curriculum and their faculty
member through an end-of-course evaluation.
▸ Faculty evaluate the curriculum and the course design
through a faculty end-of-course evaluation
▸ The academic team at JWL evaluates the outcomes to
determine next steps.

19. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
▸ The evaluation results we receive then enter a
feedback loop that involves our academic
team and our course designers.
▸ We use the results and outcomes to improve
the curriculum, the design, and the program
as a whole.

20. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
▸ Some examples of feedback and changes include:
▸ Using unified rubrics so faculty members feel less
burdened by grading
▸ Modifying some course content to require less busy
work and richer, more meaningful (but fewer)
assignments.
▸ Suggesting that our learning centers hire an alumni
to tutor current students in Algebra on-site

21. THE JWL DIFFERENCE
Context
Experience
ReflectionAction
Evaluation
Thus, our model looks like this:

22. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
▸ Is transformation just a personal event?
▸ Transformation is personal – the student combines
their prior life experiences with their newly acquired
knowledge and, based on their current context,
begins to change how they approach problem
solving.
▸ More personal agency
▸ Begin to see options
▸ Recognize opportunities
▸ Crave “what’s next” – want to go beyond the JWL
program

23. TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION
▸ Is transformation just a personal event?
▸ No; transformation is also cultural, societal, and
global.
▸ We don’t aim to change culture; it enriches the
lives of our students.
▸ We aim to have students transform their societies
and their world within their cultural context.

24. JUST SOME BACKGROUND….JWL HAS:
325 active students,
from 9sites,
with43% women, and 57%men.

25. DIPLOMA FACULTY IN 2016:
86 individual
faculty
members
taught
135
sec4ons
and
are
from
24colleges
and
universi4es,
2 high
schools,
and
4
non-­‐profit
organiza4ons

26. MAINTAINING THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION RECEIVED
▸ So what affects the quality of the education
received?
▸ The student’s background and abilities
▸ The curriculum
▸ The availability of on-site tutors
▸ The structure of program
▸ and teaching practices
(Su-Ann & Van Der Stouwe, 2008).
Let’s look at teaching practices!

27. JWL TEACHING PRACTICES
▸ Online teaching effectiveness uses social, teaching,
and cognitive presence -
SOCIAL is the ability to project oneself and
establish rapport,
TEACHING PRESENCE is how the instructor shares
their subject matter knowledge,
COGNITIVE PRESENCE is how they help students
construct meaning and knowledge of the content
(Gorsky & Blau, 2009)

28. JWL TEACHING PRACTICES
▸ SOCIAL PRESENCE
▸ Welcome announcement with your photo, signed by you,
and includes your email
▸ Weekly announcements that guide the students for what is
coming up in the week ahead
▸ If your course carries an introduction discussion, reply to
each student individually to welcome them
▸ Be active in the weekly discussions at least 3 times per
week, replying to students’ posts and encouraging
students to check out points made by other students as
well
▸ Reply promptly to student emails

29. JWL TEACHING PRACTICES
▸ TEACHING PRESENCE is how the instructor shares their
subject matter knowledge
▸ While the course, syllabus, rubrics, and assignments have
already been created for you, we ask that you contribute
your subject knowledge in the online discussions
▸ You can also share your expertise in feedback to student
assignments
▸ Finally, you can share subject content using the
announcement feature
▸ While faculty have used Skype to communicate with
students, we cannot require it because of bandwidth and
time zone differences.

30. JWL TEACHING PRACTICES
▸ COGNITIVE PRESENCE is how the instructor helps
students construct meaning and knowledge of the content
▸ This combines the design of the course with your
expertise
▸ Much of this is accomplished through our curriculum and
course design, but is enhanced through your discussion
posts with students
▸ Bring in your professional experiences and insight
▸ Share new perspectives and understandings
▸ Motivate and encourage student involvement

31. JWL TEACHING PRACTICES
▸ Provide timely feedback
▸ Students crave your feedback
▸ They do not have the same reliable access to their
courses, so getting them feedback that allows
them to maximize the online time they do have is
very helpful
▸ Please have each week’s grades completed one
week from when it ends.

32. JWL TEACHING PRACTICES
▸ Communicate high expectations
▸ Despite the challenges of our JWL students, we
still need to have high expectations
▸ Flexibility is warranted due to internet outages,
power outages, sickness in the camps, but we
also want to avoid extending every deadline, or
allowing non-emergency extensions
▸ Policies regarding plagiarism, final grades,
course extensions, and more are found in the
Faculty Quick Guide

33. REFERENCES
Gorsky, P., & Blau, I. (2009). Online teaching effectiveness: A
tale of two instructors. International Review of Research in
Open & Distance Learning, 10(3), 1-27.
Su-Ann, O., & Van Der Stouwe, M. (2008). Education,
diversity, and inclusion in Burmese refugee camps in
Thailand. Comparative Education Review, 52(4), 589-617.