Cascadia College > Discover > Active Learning at Cascadia

active learning What learning looks like at Cascadia

Active and Integrated Learning

Cascadia’s approach to teaching is based on research that shows how students really learn. We recognize that learning goes far beyond the boundaries of the traditional lecture paradigm. In addition to highlighting group projects and hands-on assignments in all of our courses, we are committed to pioneering innovative models that reflect the depth and complexity of subject matters.

MoPan 2020

graphic of human without face and the words Tell Me, What Will Be
The Museum of Pandemic Culture >>

Drawing on the fears and the realities of living through dual pandemics--an unknown virus and well-known systemic racism--students share their work in thematic collections that transcend disciplinary fields. We invite you to click, immerse, and reflect.

Class Projects, Small Groups and Labs

Small group and hands-on assignments are designed to help students learn to communicate, solve problems, and interact with a diversity of people, often outside a traditional academic setting.

Safety Film Festival

hate crimes video

Sociology 101 Class Project >>

Students create video presentations about issues affecting students on campus, or at least issues that they find are important. View one video about hate crimes, produced by 6 students in the class. (click on link above)

Yours Truly

Creative Arts Magazine >>

Students learn the process of evaluating content, designing, and producing a community arts magazine.

Hygiene Kit Project

hygiene kit drive

Collection Drive for Hygiene Kits >>

Emily Dvorak's ELP students partner with Anne Tuominen's Sociology students to collect and assemble hygiene kits.

MOOC Poetry class

MOOC poetry class

Poets of the Cascadia Bioregion >>

Our new MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) class in poetry

Breaking Norms

Flash Mob at Cascadia >>

Instructor Soraya Cardenas' students participate in a Breaking the Norms exercise as part of their Sociology 271 course.

Counting Crows

crow video

Something to Crow About >>

Biology students teach a community gathering about the murder of crows on the college campus.

Got Muck?

Wetland Tours >>

Cascadia students enrolled in Wetland Ecology (ENVS 220) give visitors a tour of the college's 58-acre wetlands, which serves as a hands-on classroom.

Art + English Project

Integrated Learning Project >>

Students from an art class and an English class come together to create poetry and art

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Learning Communities and Linked Courses

Learning communities and linked courses are pairing of courses that allows students to develop skills and discover connections on multiple levels and across subject areas.

Sociology +College 101

Real Change

Students participate in activities designed to foster active learning, engaged citizenship and integration of new knowledge about social inequalities. In the Fall 2017 quarter, they made ethnographic observations of live social activism at the campus student walkout.

Humanities + Art

details of one side of two peace poles with graphic design of colors and the word prosperity

The Art of Protest >>

Students study, create and respond to media systems as expressed in historical struggles and protest.

Environmental Science + Humanities

Wet , Wild & Dirty

The Anatomy of a Learning Community >>

The title alone has you wondering what this class is about, right? See students and faculty explain a learning community, and specifically the union between science and social advocacy.

World Literature + Art Appreciation

puppet show video

See & Tell >>

Cascadia faculty designed a learning community in which the students studied Greek legends, wrote plays, and created shadow puppets.

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Work-Based Projects, Service Learning, and Internships

Through activities such as service learning, study abroad, work-based projects or internships, Cascadia students have the opportunity to put their course learning to work in real-life situations.

Raise Your PawZ

Student Video >>

Cascadia student production documenting Raise Your PawZ, an initiative created as an assignment for Cascadia's PR/Marketing Lab

Real world scenario

Work-Based Internship >>

Student creates web pages for Cascadia's Report to the Community.

Cascadia's Mobile Pages

Web Application Students >>

A group of students develop the first mobile pages for Cascadia's website in an internship project.

Spanish Children's Books

Students in the Community >>

Spanish class writes children's books for local elementary school.

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Learning Definitions

Integrated Learning

Integrated Learning is the connection of disciplinary and interdisciplinary ideas to complex contexts, the building of knowledge across the curriculum and co-curriculum, and the application of this education to situations on and off campus.

Learning Communities

A learning community is a pairing of courses that is team-taught by two instructors from different disciplines that allows students to develop skills and discover connections on multiple levels and across subject areas.

Hard Linked Courses

A combination between a cohort and a learning community. The same students take one course from one instructor and then a second course from a different instructor. The two instructors develop assignments that help students make connections between the two disciplines.

Soft Linked Courses

Two courses tackling different subject matters. Students enrolled in one course interact on specific assignments with students enrolled in the other course and see how the two disciplines relate.

Simultaneous Soft Linked Courses

Two distinct classes held simultaneously that interact with one another on occasion.

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