The Spring 2014 issue of Educate magazine (published by MSU’s COE) included an article about my revisions in the course, Human Relations in a Multicultural Society. Here is an excerpt from that article:
When Sandell inherited the human relations course four years ago, it came with a full complement of teaching materials—course syllabus, textbook, lesson plans, assignments, etc. And the first semester, she used them.
She also used the IDI as a pre- and post-test to measure whether the course made a difference in students’ cultural competency. In that first semester, there was no significant difference in her students’ cultural competency as defined by the IDI.
“I realized that whatever I was teaching wasn’t making a difference, so the next semester I decided to introduce a new assignment,” she said. “Students were required to find someone from a different culture, hang out with him or her for nine hours, conduct an interview, and write a paper.
“There is knowledge and there is experience and I ask my students to reflect on both,” said Sandell. “They were getting knowledge and experience the first semester for sure, but they weren’t necessarily reflecting on it in depth.
“With the addition of in-depth reflection,” she said, “the IDI scores showed significant improvement—positive movement on the continuum toward cultural competency—that second semester and every semester since.”