{"id":5682,"date":"2021-03-18T13:26:02","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T17:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/issues\/uncategorized\/learning-is-engagement\/"},"modified":"2021-03-31T11:58:31","modified_gmt":"2021-03-31T15:58:31","slug":"learning-is-engagement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/issues\/spring-2021\/learning-is-engagement\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning Is Engagement"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kathleen Torrens
Professor, Communication Studies, and Assistant Director, Online Education<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of the 2020 溏心vlog免费B站 Foundation and Alumni Engagement Excellence in Teaching Award, Torrens encourages her students to think critically and engage in civic life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While working on her dissertation on the 19th-century dress reform movement, Kathleen Torrens developed a deeper appreciation of ways in which we communicate publicly. For example, clothing can function as political statement. The progressive 19th-century woman\u2019s rejection of corsets\u2014and petticoats, hoops, chemises, and bustles\u2014intertwined with the public movements for suffrage, abolition, and temperance, Torrens notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want my students to ask and answer questions, to have an appreciation for education and for community. I want them to be citizen-participants.\u201d
\u2014Kathleen Torrens<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe 19th-century dress reform movement involved this intersection of all kinds of activism and the different ways that 19th-century women advocated for themselves,\u201d says Torrens. \u201cI have read reports of women who put down the corset and recounted how frightening it was to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was clear that wearing bloomers was a form of protest, argument, and advocacy,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think my interest in social movements and discourse arose from that. I’ve worked that into my teaching,\u201d Torrens continues. \u201cPeople suffered so that we don’t have to wear things like corsets, which symbolize social control and oppression, and so that we can vote and own property.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Equity and Online Education<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Torrens is one of the faculty at the forefront of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s online learning initiative. It is a democratic way to deliver a quality education, provided an institution ensures access, affordability, and equity for its students, she says. COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of online instruction at 溏心vlog免费B站 while also highlighting inequities.

\u201cI\u2019m hearing students say, \u2018I work on my phone because the Wi-Fi in the house is bad,\u2019 or, \u2018My house is overcrowded.\u2019 While the bulk of students at 溏心vlog免费B站 are privileged, there are a great number who are not.\u201d

The responsibility for making online learning work must be shared by faculty and students, Torrens says. \u201cOnline learning is an amazing tool for getting students involved in their own education, but it requires training students to participate in a way that they’re not used to,\u201d she explains. A group blog might replace classroom discussion. Oral presentations might require video. \u201cLearning is engagement, and I feel it is incumbent on us as instructors to learn how to best engage our learners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Educating an Informed Citizenry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Students in Torrens\u2019 classes evaluate sources by looking critically at how they receive information. If their preferred outlet is Twitter, or even TikTok, they\u2019ll get no pushback from Torrens. The goal is that students become aware of the rights, responsibilities, and power they have as citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy students explore their interests so that they exercise their power as critical consumers of culture and become aware that they are being bombarded every second of every day by people wanting to change their minds or behavior,\u201d she says. \u201cOver time, my teaching has become less about content and more about critical thinking, problem-solving, and enjoyment in learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want my students to ask and answer questions, to have an appreciation for education and for community,\u201d Torrens explains. \u201cI want them to be citizen-participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you learn to be a participant, you are more likely to be
an advocate.\u201d \u2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Marybeth Reilly-McGreen<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Nora Lewis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Communication studies professor Kathleen Torrens wants her students to become citizen-participants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[294],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-2021","architecture-currents","architecture-why-i-teach"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5682"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6070,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5682\/revisions\/6070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}