Creativity is a useful skill in the recreation profession, yet it is rarely treated as a fundamental skill in the preparation of undergraduate recreation majors. The purpose of this overview is to illustrate the need for creativity in the workforce and how best to nourish student creativity through undergraduate teaching. We review…

In a matter of weeks--and in some cases, days--teachers were asked to move the remainder of their semester-long, in-person courses to the online environment, restructuring assignments and methods of content delivery along the way. Now, we live in-between, as people have navigated hybrid, stops and re-starts. What helped us then can help us in the…

We have all made several transitions within our teaching practice since the start of the COVID 19 pandemic. After time reflecting and re-assessing my teaching pedagogies and practices, I have implemented many new-to-me online teaching tools with the intent to increase student engagement, empower student ownership of course content, and create a…

Teaching an online course was always something I resisted. Like many of the colleagues I have talked to, I was worried that the lack of face-to-face interaction would significantly take away from the quality of the education for the students. With a class like Recreation Programming, I knew that students needed hands-on experience with running a…

Providing quality hands-on exercises in a GIS course is essential in enhancing problem-solving skills and student-led learning activities. However, the strategies and instructional methods of managing hands-on exercises, which have been used in traditional face-to-face classes, will require new interpretations in a virtual learning environment and…

In a virtual environment finding creative ways to connect course material is essential to student success. PackBack is a platform that can bridge course material as students learn new knowledge. PackBack consists of special measures that help students research questions they may still have after discussing course material. Using this platform and…

I have been teaching an information technology course in recreation, parks & tourism partially online (hybrid format) for nearly a decade; however, I never taught it fully online until the shift to emergency remote instruction during the pandemic. What I found was that some of my previous reasons for not wanting to teach fully online were…

This paper explores the use of podcast-style interview pedagogies (pod-agogies) as an innovate teaching method in a capstone therapeutic recreation (TR) seminar course. The purpose of the pod-agogies course component was to create meaningful connections between upper-year TR students and TR practitioners working in the field and on the frontlines…

This paper explores an inter-learning teaching method designed and utilized by the authors in the Winter 2021 term for first- and upper-year therapeutic recreation (TR) students in an online platform. This collaborative teaching method sought to make intentional space for upper-year students to take the lead on and facilitate seminars for…

The purpose of this article is to discuss the You-Pick-5: 1-Experience, 1-Slide, 1-Minute learning strategy, which draws from the concepts of co-curricular involvement, classroom engagement, and transferable skills. This learning strategy is unique in that it blends academic concepts with student-selected co-curricular activities and intentionally…

Contemporary population trends impact leisure experiences and service delivery, requiring recreation and leisure departments to prepare students to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse clientele. However, with little formal training on how to teach content concerning diverse populations, this can be a daunting task. The panel session…

In this paper, I argue that educators who embrace vulnerability in their teaching enhance their capacity to promote social justice. Vignettes from three of my course meetings with undergraduate Recreation and Leisure Service majors are presented, each of which illustrate different opportunities and pitfalls in vulnerable teaching. The first class…

Many professors and lecturers strive to structure educational experiences that facilitate engaged learning in university classrooms. While some lectures may fail to achieve this goal due to monotone, routine speeches or uninteresting PowerPoint presentations, educational live action role-playing (edu-larp) is a strategy to facilitate interactive…

Myllykangas postulated that students studying various careers within the parks and recreation profession might prefer a certain learning style, which is, often the case, different from the teaching style used by the faculty. In order to address learning styles of students, it is essential to be able to adapt to the learning styles of each student…

Recreation students today need to be prepared to engage in the topic of poverty as a social justice issue affecting our communities, yet many instructors do not have the tools to effectively teach this complex topic. One way instructors might learn how to engage students with poverty is through an interdisciplinary community of practice (CoP).…