Kayla Cranston, PhD

Teaching allows me to apply my knowledge of human motivation in a substantively different way than research, using an experiential and self-directed model of education that studies have shown to predict long-term engagement in the learning process. My primary goal in teaching is to facilitate opportunities for students to discover their own meaningful understanding of class material in a way that will also supply them with the knowledge and tools they need to create innovative solutions to real-world problems in the future. Because of the diversity of backgrounds AUNE comes from, this emphasis is particularly important for allowing students to gain knowledge and build skills in a manner most appropriate to their learning style, practical experience, and current understanding of the world. In all my courses, I provide an instructional scaffolding that allows students to approach material at their current level of understanding and then expand upon that knowledge base through a carefully crafted combination of pre-class readings and multi-media engagement, in-class discussion of central principles and demonstration of application, group work to further coalesce new information and practice application, and opportunities for students to demonstrate their new autonomous understanding of the topic through student-led projects. Since having a critical understanding of multiple perspectives is an essential skill in the environmental field, the overall atmosphere I create enables students to collaboratively develop and debate innovative alternatives.

I use a variety of techniques to encourage student engagement. The combination of my international research and practice over the past seven years and my fourteen years of basic and applied research play an important role in this. This experience allows me to develop activities and assignments that offer students opportunities to apply their new knowledge and skills to real-world scenarios. For a lesson on Behavior Change Models, for example, I designed a multi-class lesson plan to help students develop an in-depth understanding of how and why conservation interventions are oftentimes hampered in seemingly unexpected ways by local communities rejecting the solutions that conservationists perceive as straight-forward and helpful. This activity is based on the research of how individual motives, mental schema, and context help to predict human behavior and was grounded in real-world case studies of domestic and international conservation. Students were first introduced to the basic principles of the behavior change model through pre-class readings. I further reviewed the model in class by demonstrating how it could be employed to analyze a real-world example of American ranching practices. The students then broke into small groups and worked together to analyze American water conservation using the same model. They presented their analysis to the class and together we clarified logistical questions that arose. In preparation for the next class, students were individually assigned to one of the three dimensions of the behavior change model (motives, mental schema, or context) and asked to carefully listen to a National Public Radio episode that described a case study of a failed intervention in Haitian mango farming after the 2010 earthquake. As they listened to the episode, they made note of instances from the case study that belonged in the behavior change dimension they were assigned. During the next class, students shared with the class which aspects of the case study they believed belonged in their dimension. To conclude the class, I facilitated a discussion of the complexities and nuances that emerged, how the model helped (or did not help) students better understand real-world problems, and how it could be employed in their future work. I have since turned this in-class activity into an online experience and it can be found at the following URL: https://courses.ecampus.oregonstate.edu/fw560/vbn/story_html5.html

My interactive teaching approach to learning follows a flipped classroom pedagogy, wherein factual transmission happens outside of class via assigned readings or multi-media and class time is reserved to integrate that knowledge through small group activities, class discussion, and student presentation. While many students thrive by directly interacting with classmates in a flipped classroom, this learning style is not for everyone and I create space for this difference by offering opportunities for students to also engage in the material individually and anonymously while in class. One tool I often employ for this purpose is TurningPoint technologies. I use the clickers with PowerPoint presentations to allow students to anonymously explore classmate perspectives on potentially sensitive topics and to test out survey question formats to think critically about the experience of responding. I have also created and taught online courses using Blackboard and Canvas and would welcome the opportunity to continue honing this aspect of my teaching in the future.

I have designed and taught 5 on-campus classes related to conservation psychology, communications, sustainability, human dimensions of conservation. My approach to teaching these courses embodies my drive to engage students in real issues and practical tools that they will need upon graduation. I took courses in graduate school that followed a similar experiential pedagogy and have found the skills I gained during those courses to be among the most useful in my career.

I take pride in creating valuable learning experiences for my students with the methods I’ve described above. I was especially pleased by this set of comments from four graduates who recently wrote in their evaluation of my course: “Dr. Cranston is an amazing professor and her class is incredibly important for people going into conservation/natural resource management. Her upbeat spirit and high energy truly inspired me to learn and invest in the course content. By letting us focus on applications that fit our goals and specific interests, she created a class that is in line with our need to be self-directed in our future careers. Each class period and the overall organization of the course lent enough structure so that content and assignments were clear, effective, and productive. I truly appreciate Dr. Cranston taking her role as an educator seriously. I highly recommend her classes to my peers because of how much I’ve learned and enjoyed being in her class.”