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Contextualized teaching represents a range of ways to connect curriculum to learning that intentionally broadens and deepens students’ experiences. The Contextualized Teaching Program encourages faculty to apply any of the following high impact practices in their classes.

Infusions

Infusions are small yet impactful ways to provide contexts for students. They are implemented in single courses by individual instructors.

The five areas of context that we encourage faculty to use for infusions are as follows:

• Careers 
• Equity 
• Community 
• Global learning
• Interdisciplinary

Themes

These are independent courses with full context for themes connecting to the discipline. As students, choosing a major is exciting, but it can also bring many questions. Students can now choose Academic and Career Pathways, which are meta-majors and designed to help you decide if an area of study or a major is right for you. We also have Academic Success and Equity (ASE) programs that offer fully contextualized courses. To learn more about these classes and if they are a good fit for you, contact the Contextualized Teaching coordinator, Professor Thao Ha (tha@miracosta.edu).

Examples:

• ENGL 100 + ENGL 52: “ChildDevelopmentStart”: Highly supported English for child development majors.
• ENGL 100 + ENGL 52: “HealthStart”: Highly supported English for allied health majors.
• ENGL 201: “Composition, Coding, & Cyborgs: C^3”: Critical thinking and composition for computer science majors.
• ENGL 100 & 201 for the Mana and Puente ASE programs.
• COUN 101 & 105 for the Mana, Puente, and Umoja ASE programs.
• MATH 64 & MATH 103 for the Umoja ASE program.

Learning Communities

Learning communities are two linked courses with overlapping themes and materials. Two (or more) instructors from different disciplines work with each other to connect the courses. Students take both courses as a cohort together. This is a great opportunity to take two classes with the same group of people and to have both of your instructors working together to help students make the connection between two classes (interdisciplinary learning). Examples at MiraCosta include the following: 

• ENGL 100 + ENGL 52: “ChildDevelopmentStart”: Highly supported English for child development majors.
• ENGL 100 + ENGL 52: “HealthStart”: Highly supported English for allied health majors.
• ENGL 201: “Composition, Coding, & Cyborgs: C^3”: Critical thinking and composition for computer science majors.
• ENGL 100 + COUN 101: "Sports and Success": A learning community for student athletes.