Dr. Taylor receives Cal Poly's first Learn By Doing Scholar Award
Kevin Taylor, Kinesiology Department Chair, received the first Cal Poly Learn By Doing Scholar Award for his published research on the STRIDE, now renamed to Center for Health Research, program, Activity4All. The new award recognizes outstanding faculty scholarship in Learn By Doing.
The article for which Taylor received his award shares his research on Activity4All, a Center for Health Research program in which students collaborate to design equipment to enable physical activity for people with disabilities. In the article, “Learning Design through the Lens of Service: A Qualitative Study,” Taylor and co-authors Dr. David Hey, Dr. Brian Self, Dr. Lynne Slivovsky, and Dr. James Widmann evaluated the impact of Activity4All on student learning. As they published in the Journal for Service Learning in Engineering (v. 9 n. 1, Spring 2014) article, Taylor and his co-authors studied the effects of the design project experience by focusing on learning engineering design, student motivation, and student views of people with disabilities. They also searched for student identified benefits and obstacles in collaborating with an interdisciplinary team.
“Your findings, including your documented discoveries about how to improve the design experience for students, will support better Learn by Doing experiences for future students,” Anna Gold, Dean of Library Services and Chair, Learn by Doing Scholar Committee, said in the award letter.
The Learn By Doing Scholar Award committee will be hosting an award ceremony planned at this year’s “More than a Motto” reception on May 15, from 4:10-6p.m., in the Universal Art Gallery.