Using Our Existing Technological and Teaching Resources To Enhance Experiential Learning: A Case Example Mark Blagen, Ph.D., School of Psychology & Counseling and The Center for Teaching & Learning Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA

One Such Difference (and Challenge) Most students come into an addictions course with strongly held opinions on the subject These opinions are often incomplete or, inaccurate

A Solution to this Challenge Create a classroom environment that would deconstruct incomplete or inaccurate beliefs Using the standard “tell’m and test’m” lecture method may benefit some but, by using innovative teaching strategies such as: Briefly speak of how this realization came about - students have generally been self selected - not so in my current position - in the first class they do a ‘reflection paper” as to what addiction is - in the second session we discuss the theories of etiology - this is where, if I facilitate it properly, we get some dissenting opinions - about 1/3 of the class grew up around addictions – they tend to be quiet - in my opinion it is absolutely critical to deconstruct incorrect or incomplete opinions of addiction – these are clinical counseling and psychology students – they are going to see addictions day in and day out in the four different environments I have taught addictions, it has been an elective course, so students were self selected – in a minority of instances a student would be in the course and not be open – but it did happen. In my current position, it is a required course for a vast majority of the students who are in the class.

Innovative Teaching Strategies Technology for instruction Constructivist learning Student collaboration Peer teaching Problem-based learning Active learning

From Concept to Product On the first night of class, I set up the problem of college aged drinking by Stating some accurate and recent statistics on the prevalence of the problem and then Having the class listen to two National Public Radio clips that clearly and expertly reported on the problem We then, as a group, processed what we just heard

From Concept to Product The processing lasted about 45 minutes and was very productive (remember this was the first hour of the first night of class – everyone had a lot of energy) We then transitioned into thinking about solutions This was aided by me asking “What if we were to design a ‘prevention’ video, what would be some of the concepts and themes we would want to include and how would we want it to look?”

Themes and Ideas that Emerged from the First Night How the drug alcohol has been normalized in our society “It could (never) happen to me A vague concept that I introduced of “Living a Life that Matters” A special emphasis that the opening scene must engage the audience Peer-aged testimonials

The Collaborative Result this Far Through the hard work and outstanding effort of the CTL production staff which included Amy Evans who wrote the script and was the producer, and J Darin Wales who directed and edited the production, and Diane Cooke who was the assistant director The video was shot in June and the final cut was completed in August The following is a short clip of the 22 minute final product

What is Next? In my opinion, this project has legs The Summer Addictive Behaviors class began the process of developing the concepts of the Web-based interactive piece that will go along with the video My research methods class will develop a program evaluation model and future research methods classes will analyze the outcome data, once the video has been used

Ultimately This project has the potential of “coming to an undergraduate campus near you” and as a result, potentially changing the lives of young students All this resulted from the motivation of my COUN 535/PSY635 students and Most importantly, the extraordinary professionalism of The Center for Teaching and Learning