We are all students: The moral courage project as a model for transdisciplinary experiential learning

Abstract

This chapter details the experience of the faculty facilitators of the Moral Courage Project (MCP), an innovative experiential learning (EL) program in which students seek out stories of ordinary heroes at sites of human rights crisis in the United States. Thus far, student teams have traveled to Ferguson, Missouri and El Paso, Texas to conduct interviews and produce multimedia materials that include traveling exhibits, interactive websites and a podcast series. Fundamentally, the MCP challenges students to take seriously multiple non-traditional sources of knowledge production; faculty members are not the sole authorities in terms of expertise and information, and voices that are often marginalized in the U.S. become a source of power and authority. In this way the learning environment becomes fluid, power dynamics shift, and the education can become transformative. When the learning space opens like this, all participants can be vulnerable in ways that the classroom often inhibits. As this case study shows, experiential learning creates an opportunity for faculty and practitioners to be co-learners alongside students and for all to work together to apply that learning through action-oriented means.