Senior Seminar - Academic Travel

 

Interdisciplinary Course Work

Seniors within the Senior Seminar program take courses that
include, History, Literature, Science, and the Arts.

Seminar Courses offered to date:

  • 2018-2019 - Spain
  • 2017 - 2018 ~ Greece
  • 2016 - 2017 ~ Eastern Europe
  • 2015 - 2016 ~ Britain & Scotland
  • 2014 - 2015 ~ Spain
  • 2013 - 2014 ~ Italy
  • 2012 - 2013~ Mississippi River Valley
  • 2011 - 2012 ~ Ireland

 

 

 

 

 

Senior Seminar Trip 2018 Reveal

Video by Kyle P. '17

Senior Seminar is creatively rigorous! This Interdisciplinary course includes both traditional and non-traditional methods. Including:

  • Socratic Seminars
  • In classroom and International Presentations
  • Group Projects - Digital and Hands-on
  • Maker Space Projects
  • Art/Design/Innovation
  • Multidisciplinary Capstone
    • Authentic Research
    • Formal Presentation
    • Creation of a 3D Artifact that conceptually describes the students research

What happens when students Travel Abroad?

Guide Presentations: While traveling, students experience on-site tours in museums and historic sites given by skilled, in-country tour guides.

OnSite Student Presentations: Students are responsible for researching, writing and delivering their own on-site presentations which they complete in small groups.

Academic Travel Journals are a requirement of the course and include notes, images, drawings, glued artifacts and more to document their experience in a creative way.

Learning While Traveling: Each day is rigorous and fast moving. With backpack, journal, coat and water bottle, students spend their waking hours absorbing the rich experiences provided by this rigorous and enriching academic abroad.

Map Reading Challenges: Depending on the year, students may participate in orienteering map challenges which are experiential based communication and leadership opportunities for students.

A typical course can include travel by plane, train, boat, bus and buggy.

Academic Travel Journal

Map Reading Challenges

Map reading in Eastern Europe

Program Overview

Senior Seminar is a yearlong interdisciplinary study of a region that includes learning about a place and a culture through literature, history, science, and visual information. The course is a rigorous, college preparatory block study that enables students to explore themes and topics across multiple disciplines and inspires students to look at learning as a deep endeavor as opposed to a one-dimensional set of correct or incorrect answers. Senior seminar accounts for more than half of a student’s program offered during senior year. Students are expected to read, write, discuss, present, and collaborate in ways that college freshman do. In this way, Seminar is a foray into the expectations of a college course load as well as the work habits and advocacy skills required of a successful college student.

Each senior at AIM is enrolled in a set of college preparatory courses, in addition to their dual-enrollment college class at a nearby university, which allows them to dive deeply into learning about a specific region abroad. By preparing students with rich content through traditional and mixed methods including projects, presentations and collaborative problem solving experiences, we believe that this global travel experience deeply enhances our students learning by turning the world into the classroom.

By the time all seniors embark on their international journey, they are experts about the areas they will visit and ready to share their knowledge with peers in international, on-sight presentations. Students keep thorough and detailed journals of their travel experience where they collect information from specific tours, artifacts from the places they visit and document photo challenges that take place abroad. When they return, seniors prepare to give their final Senior Capstone projects which include a public presentation, a paper and a visual, arts-based, 3-D representation informed by their research.

OnSite Lecture - Delphi, Greece 2018

Greece Learning on Site

Eastern Europe 2017

Eastern Europe
An overview of the 2017 Senior Seminar Trip created by Ross S. '17


WHAT DO AIM ACADEMY ALUMNI SAY ABOUT SENIOR SEMINAR?