Namita Mehta is a Learning Experience Designer with the Office of Information Technology at CU Boulder.  She has over 15 years of experience in education and holds an Ed.D in Leadership for Educational Equity. Lauren Storz is an Academic Experience Analyst on the Academic Technology Design Team, and a PhD student in cultural anthropology at CU Boulder.   Traditionally, teaching and learning in higher education has implemented “the banking model of education” as coined by Paulo Freire. Freire (2018) describes this model as one in which “knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing” (p. 72).  This model reinforces that instructors should hold the power of what goes on in the classroom while students remain passive learners of their education. Through the years, there has been a greater emphasis on student-centered approaches (e.g. connected learning) that entail empowering students to be ac...

Nick Havey Looking (for research participants)? Consider “the Apps”  If you’re familiar with the HBO series Looking, which explores very white queer life in San Francisco, or have used a dating app in the last 10 years, you might know “looking” as a one-word interrogative that says a lot. It mostly is meant as a lazy (or efficient) way of asking another user if they’re interested in casual sex, but you might be “looking” for research participants! Having a baseline understanding of how dating apps work is prerequisite for using them for research purposes, as understanding terms like “looking” and app-based norms can help researchers navigate confusing virtual spaces and build trust and rapport with potential participants.  I have used proximity-based dating apps as recruitment sites for two different research projects. One considers the state of queer sexual education and how queer collegians are responding to sex educations that were not inclusive of their experiences or desi...