Trent students Lynda Thomas and David (DJ) Cunningham held a room captive earlier this week when they were part of a Trent presentation at Destination Success - the second annual national conference on Post-secondary education and Learning Disabilities.

Lynda and D J joined other Trent personnel, Eunice Lund-Lucas Coordinator Special Needs, Robert Silvestri Learning Strategist (Learning Integration Program) and Prof. Magda Havas in showcasing one of Trent’s newest course offerings. The ARTS 110 course Thinking and Learning was designed to provide Trent students with an opportunity to explore how they learn and the interactions between various types of learning.

The credit course, taught this past year by instructors and staff from several academic departments and support units at Trent, was developed during the past summer in response to the growing desire to provide students with an instructional environment which is accessible to all learners and where students can learns the skills and self-knowledge to become successful learners at the university level and beyond.

Trent has a past history of multi-disciplinary teaching as well as being a leader in responding to the learning needs of students with learning disabilities. Through this collaborative effort of dedicated teaching faculty and staff, a course was developed where all learners could explore the how and why of learning and apply the results of their exploration to new learning experiences. The course was designed as a transition tool for students studying at Trent who were interested in how they learned and how to apply that knowledge to their academic experience at the university level while looking at ‘language’ from the disciplinary perspective.

In the presentation, the audience was shown examples of the creativity of the students through their preparation of posters and visual representations of their work. They were also shown examples of the Learning Portfolios which the students developed throughout the course. These portfolios contained information and examples of student achievements from their earliest days in school up to the present time. They represent accomplishments and insights made by the students of their life and learning experiences to date. The ARTS 110 students can continue to develop these portfolios throughout their academic pursuits and will be able to utilize these in planning for and seeking out their chosen careers.

Lynda and DJ explained to the audience how they developed through various course activities and how they were challenged to think and express themselves in different ways throughout the course. They also indicated that this had been a very positive learning experience in which they grew and developed new and broader learning strategies which would be beneficial to them in their further studies. Each student explained the ways in which this course had contributed to their educational growth and each indicated the great benefit they had gained from being part of this experience. They also identified this particular course as the most important course they had taken this past year. Through small group, interactive learning they were able to explore new areas of their own learning and experiment with new and creative ways of expressing their mastery of the course content. They shared how they had used the experiences with course content and activities to examine their own fears and difficulties with the learning process and to develop new strategies for dealing with these difficulties. They also indicated that in this course they were challenged to go beyond how they had usually approached academic work to take the risk of trying new ways of expression. Each clearly noted that they had gone beyond their usual limit in some way to produce course materials. They credited the core of enthusiastic and expert instructors as having motivated them to do their best and in innovative ways. They shared with the audience that they would highly recommend this course to other students and that they were glad they had ‘signed up’ for ARTS 110 this year.

The ARTS 110 course has been renewed for another year and in the Fall, many more students at Trent will be starting to explore their learning processes in new and innovative ways through this course.