Collaborative Course Design for Intentional Student Learning
In-Person
Abstract
This interactive session draws on an interdisciplinary course design collaboration at USU in spring 2026 to offer practical, adaptable strategies for faculty committed to building transferable skills in their students. The session will open (15 minutes) with a concise overview of the presenters' collaborative design process, how it was structured, what intentional choices were made with student learning outcomes at the center, and how the approach might be adapted across departments, multiple sections, or paired courses.
The heart of the session (25 minutes) we be participatory and practical. Presenters will share two or three classroom-ready activities developed through their process, including a collaborative video resource usable in face-to-face, hybrid, and online settings, and invite participants to engage with the resources directly. Participants will identify at least one strategy they can adapt for their own students in the fall.
The session will close (5 minutes) with questions and shared reflection. Participants will leave with concrete tools for building transferable student skills, a replicable framework for intentional course design, and ideas ready to implement.
Presenters
Vonda Jump
Associate Professor, Social Work
Dr. Vonda Jump Norman is an Associate Professor in Social Work at the Brigham City campus of Utah State University. She has a strong interest in promoting positive parent-child relationships and the optimal development of children impacted by adversity. Her intervention, Better Together, strongly positively impacted families and children who have experienced trauma one year after the end of the intervention. She is a trainer for Infant Massage USA and the International Association of Infant Massage. She is also an Executive committee member of the Utah Coalition for Protecting Childhood, worked as a consultant with ZERO TO THREE’s Military Projects on trauma, grief, and loss issues, and is a ZERO TO THREE Fellow. She is married with one daughter and 2 young grandsons. She loves trail running, skiing, hiking, biking, trying to garden, and spending time weekly with her grandsons.
Lady Ajayi
Assistant Professor and Peace Fellow in the School of Social Sciences and the Heravi Peace Institute
Lady Ajayi is an Assistant Professor and Peace Fellow in the School of Social Sciences and the Heravi Peace Institute at Utah State University. As a scholar-practitioner, she teaches, conducts research, and partners with communities on gender-based violence policy, peacebuilding and conflict transformation, international studies, migration, and human rights, weaving theoretical rigor together with practical, transferable skills. Her courses are deliberately designed to center student agency, cross-disciplinary inquiry, and Global South perspectives, creating learning environments where complexity becomes an invitation rather than a barrier. She is committed to pedagogy that is just, collaborative, and deeply human and is delighted to share that practice with fellow educators.
Timothy Curran
Associate Professor, Communication and Media, Director of CMST Graduate Program
Tim specializes in health and family communication, and communication theory. His research focuses on intergenerational transmissions of psychological health factors in families, relational schema, family conflict, and interpersonal communication and social adjustment. His work has been published in Communication Monographs, the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Health Communication, the Journal of Family Communication, Personality and Individual Differences, and elsewhere. Tim is Associate Editor of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
Colin Flint
Distinguished Professor of Political Geography, the School of Social Sciences
Colin Flint, a geographer by training, is Distinguished Professor in the Political Science Program at Utah State University. His research interests include geopolitics and peacebuilding. He is the author of Near and Far Waters: The Geopolitics of Seapower (Stanford University Press, 2024), Introduction to Geopolitics (Routledge, 4th ed. 2022), Geopolitical Constructs: The Mulberry Harbours, World War Two, and the Making of a Militarized Transatlantic (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), and co-author, with Peter Taylor of Political Geography: World-Economy, Nation-State and Locality Routledge, 8th edition, 2025). He is editor emeritus of the journal Geopolitics. His books have been translated into Spanish, Polish, Korean, Mandarin, Japanese and Farsi.
Henry Hallock
Undergraduate Research Assistant for HPI Peace Lab
To be added