Using this place-based pedagogy, we’ve learned some valuable lessons. As we’ve noted throughout the site, we think Street Challenge can be applied to many educational contexts and needs. Street Challenge pedagogy has been used with undergraduate, graduate, business students, students without business backgrounds, and combinations of these populations. Assignments can be used or omitted to reflect the make up of the community you want to engage, whether it’s an urban business district or a small-town main street.
Some considerations span across context. Students can face a challenge transitioning their ideas from the abstract to the concrete, and may struggle to understand community-focused approaches to learning. There are also practical, logistics concerns: weather, transportation and class size will affect plans. Finding community stakeholders or guest speakers who are available may all be an issue. Fostering and sustaining student engagement (especially in teams) may be challenging. Finally, different instructors may expend varying amounts of time adapting the pedagogy to their context.
This pedagogy was adapted on the fly to an online learning environment in Spring 2020 using Zoom. Only a third of the students in the class were familiar with the chosen business district, but careful curation of the student teams made sure to include ‘locals’ on each team. We found meetings through Zoom with local stakeholders and online resources allowed students to gain a sense of place. In the module we have published, we are including online adaptations of the modules; we hope to advance place-based pedagogy in the face of changing learning environments.
Some considerations span across context. Students can face a challenge transitioning their ideas from the abstract to the concrete, and may struggle to understand community-focused approaches to learning. There are also practical, logistics concerns: weather, transportation and class size will affect plans. Finding community stakeholders or guest speakers who are available may all be an issue. Fostering and sustaining student engagement (especially in teams) may be challenging. Finally, different instructors may expend varying amounts of time adapting the pedagogy to their context.
This pedagogy was adapted on the fly to an online learning environment in Spring 2020 using Zoom. Only a third of the students in the class were familiar with the chosen business district, but careful curation of the student teams made sure to include ‘locals’ on each team. We found meetings through Zoom with local stakeholders and online resources allowed students to gain a sense of place. In the module we have published, we are including online adaptations of the modules; we hope to advance place-based pedagogy in the face of changing learning environments.