Teaching in Honors
Overview
The Seneff Honors College helps students develop knowledge, mindsets, and skills needed to thrive in the 21st century through in-class and co-curricular opportunities. Broader, deeper, and more complex than the College’s standard curriculum, honors experiences engage students as partners in the learning process, often through pedagogies such inquiry-based learning, community-based learning, and project-based learning.
Benefits of teaching Honors coursework
- Enhance your curriculum with research-driven pedagogies
- Teach to a dedicated group of talented and motivated students
- Cultivate an environment that fosters inquiry and personal growth
- Build a community of like-minded learners with smaller class sizes
- Help students connect what they learn in the classroom to real-world concepts and a robust offering of co-curricular opportunities
Honors curriculum
- Honors courses at Valencia College are interdisciplinary, prepare students to become
21st century learners, and integrate research-driven pedagogies. Faculty work with
the Honors College to identify one or more of the practices below to integrate into
their curriculum:
- Undergraduate Research
- Description: Undergraduate Research is undergraduate students learning by doing - the pinnacle of active learning. Since students reinforce and expand their knowledge through active inquiry in scholarly and discipline research processes, the guidance of an undergraduate research faculty mentor is the purest form of teaching. The research experience may vary by discipline and focus, and be academic, applied, design-based, or creative. It may range from open-ended to authentic inquiry, but it is useful to students and often the discipline of study. Students receive training on elements of research or scholarship such as discipline-specific methodology, library research and literature review, ethical standards of research, safety (if applicable), effective project management, and communication and presentation skills.
- Community-Based Learning
- Description: Community-based learning is a teaching approach that connects classroom learning with meaningful community engagement. Through partnerships with local organizations, students apply academic knowledge and skills to real-world challenges, deepening their understanding of course content while contributing to the public good. This experiential model fosters critical thinking, civic responsibility, and personal growth, helping students become more engaged and socially aware citizens.
- Authentic Inquiry-based Learning
- Description: Authentic inquiry-based learning prompts students to apply problem-solving techniques to the community around them. In life, students will encounter problems that are complex, not well defined, and lack a clear solution and approach. Identifying and applying different strategies to solve these problems is an essential skill needed by today's learners.
- Undergraduate Research