While other students were sunning themselves or catching up on movies and light reading over Spring Break this week, one group of hardy Honors College students was touring the Grand Canyon in one of our most engaging and intellectually stimulating active-learning trips ever.Dr. Mark Miller led his Geography 101 class to the Grand Canyon and its environs in a trip that has created substantial buzz among our students about the invigorating nature of our active-learning trips. What better way to learn the geography of the American West than to see it first-hand?
About half of our Honors College classes take substantial active-learning trips, and they are among our most popular courses. The trips are much more than the school field trips we all remember from our youth; each is tailored to reinforce and expand upon classroom material to reinforce the instructor's goals for each course. Students love them not just because they're fun but because they learn so much by taking them.