This is the last A&S Teaching & Learning Community of Practice session of 2023.

Thursday, December 7, 2023, 11 am – 12 pm, Online | Zoom Registration

Touching the Earth: Experiential Learning in a Buddhist Context for Student Well-Being

Michael Ium, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department for the Study of Religion

In this presentation, I describe the “touching the earth” project I assigned to students in RLG376: Touching the Earth. The course focused on various Buddhist conceptions of the earth and earth-related practices. To complement their learning and facilitate student well-being, students chose one of the practices we learned about (such as prostration or walking meditation) and wrote a short essay about it, engaged in it for multiple sessions, and journaled about their experience. On the whole, students found this project the most rewarding aspect of the course, as it contributed to their individual well-being and enhanced their understanding of the course material.