The Photo Essay as a Medium of Experiential Learning

My name is Eric Greaux. I serve as the Associate Professor of Religion at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina. A class unique to this HBCU is a course on the Black Church. I recently redesigned the course to include a Photo Essay as the major semester project, which resulted in more than half of the students earning an A. This poster is a visual display of how the class worked and the steps to the final product.

The primary pedagogical approach of the course focuses on Experiential Learning as developed by David Kolb. Accordingly, instead of simply reading textbooks and writing papers, students were required to participate in a series of concrete experiences at a historically Black church of a denomination other than their own, examine it from a variety of perspectives, and critically reflect on the experiences. Then, using Adobe Express, students developed a published digital product.

The Photo Essay was a semester-long scaffolded project that allowed students to meet each course objective. It included 8-10 required photo types following the guidelines provided by Life Magazine, and a 2000-2500-word narrative. Student projects and statements demonstrated their newfound ability to conduct research, to think critically on the scholarship of Black religion, and to make it available to others. Each student spoke of how transformational the class had been for them.