Embeddedness as an Integrative Quality Assessment Tool for Student-Centered Extracurricular Studies

Abstract

Extracurricular studies are a way for universities to deal with issues that are relevant for students beyond their individual study programs, such as sustainability or digitization. While the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) provides profound advice for regular study programs on how to reach high levels of student engagement, similar recommendations for extracurricular studies are virtually non-existent. To address this gap, this article develops a quality assessment tool based on the notion of embeddedness to take different universities’ conditions into account when designing, investigating, and refining extracurricular studies. The article applies the ‘embedding tool’ in context of a prototype seminar for extracurricular studies entitled ‘Foundations of Planetary Thinking’ to exemplify pitfalls, best practices and missing degrees of embeddedness. The results indicate that extracurricular studies are ‘embedded’ when they resonate with the specific university conditions at hand, and the integration of both enables student-centered learning. If refined and supported by further studies, the findings imply that the embedding tool allows for a self-evaluation to ‘embed’ extracurricular studies.