Integrating Student Learning and Pedagogies Across the Professional Studies/General Education Divide: Re-engineering a Liberal Education Capstone CoursePhiladelphia University

International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and LearningCommitment, Community and CollaborationVancouver, British Columbia, CanadaSunday, October 16th, 2005

Susan Frosten, Associate Professor of ArchitectureMarion Roydhouse, Dean, School of Liberal ArtsTom Schrand, Associate Professor of History

Philadelphia University

• Founded in 1884 as Philadelphia Textile School

• Currently: 40+ professional majors – architecture to conservation biology

• Mission: “founded to raise the art and technology of the textile industry to international standards… [offers a] unique blending of the liberal arts and sciences with professional studies”

Curricular origins and evolution

• Middle States report inspired new general education curriculum (1986)

• FIPSE grant to develop interdisciplinary learning across three years (1993-1995)

• Development of College Studies program and liberal-professional education (1991-present)

Assessment and its impact

• Ongoing assessment drives change: 1993 to 2005

• Qualitative outcomes assessment

• Driven by examination of student work

• Unique capstone connects liberal arts/ professional majors to develop integrative learning.

Arts and Cultures(1 course total)

Year Four

Foreign Languages (may be taken any year) OR

Area Studies (taken in Years Two or Three): 2 courses total

Writing II

Arts and Cultures: 1 course

Contemporary Perspectives

Social Sciences I

Humanities I

Level II (Humanities, Historical Understanding, and Social Sciences II): 2 courses total

Quantitative Reasoning I and II: 2 courses

Science I and II: 2 courses

Writing I

Historical Understanding I

Foreign Languages and Area Studies(2 courses total)

Writing, History, Social Sciences, Humanities(8 courses total)

Quantitative Reasoning and Sciences(4 courses total)

Year Two Year ThreeYear One

College Studies Program sequences- arrows show prerequisites

Capstone course with liberal-professional themes

• General education capstone: “Contemporary Perspectives”– Explores current global trends and issues– Focuses on liberal-professional integration– Taught by liberal arts faculty– Culminates in advanced research project

linking global issues to students’ career fields

Capstone student project

• The “seminar paper” – 12-15 page academic research paper with 3

components:• Analysis of a major global trend• Examination of trend’s impact on student’s

professional field• Case study: example of the global trend

interacting with professional issues in a specific foreign country

Global (or regional) trend:

Big, free-standing topic, independent of your profession

Impact on profession:

How is this trend creating changes in your profession (find the overlap with global trend)

Case study:

An example of your trend affecting your profession in a specific foreign country (find the overlap with the previous two topics)

Entire global trend

Your entire professional field

Foreign country

Topic example

Global trend: Increasing water scarcity and pollution worldwide(change over time on a global or regional scale)

Professional impact:Increasing pressure on textile industry to reduce water use and pollution

Case study:Textile industry in Turkey responding to issues of water use

Capstone project assessment

• Formal departmental assessment (1996)• “Liberal-Professional Scholarship Awards”

(1999 - present)– Outstanding student projects nominated from

each professional program– Projects read and scored by capstone faculty

and faculty in the professional programs– Award meeting held with both professional

and liberal arts faculty to discuss projects and choose winners

Capstone assessment results

• Assignment was overly structured?• Liberal-professional integration could be

uneven or mechanical • Assignment emphasized traditional “scholarly”

research, “liberal arts” skills and content• Some professional faculty seemed

uncomfortable• Assessment conclusions:

– Can the integration be deeper, more authentic?– Can the assignment require more professional skills

and knowledge?

Experiment: problem-based learning

• The problem-based learning (PBL) assignment: – Students identify a “problem” related to their

profession in a specific world region– Develop a scenario that places them in a

realistic professional role– Play out the scenario to produce a

professionally-appropriate response (the “deliverable”)

PBL example: HIV/AIDS in South Africa(architecture project)

PBL example: HIV/AIDS in South Africa(architecture project)

PBL example: HIV/AIDS in South Africa(architecture project)

PBL assessment

• Liberal arts faculty felt under-qualified to critique “professional” work

• Professional faculty supportive?

• Integrative PBL assignment “disoriented” students

Analyzing our “integration anxiety”

• Professional format of “deliverables” created faculty anxieties about content: “That’s not my field”

• Integrative Learning Project helped us consider deeper questions:– Do we understand how knowledge is constructed and

student learning is demonstrated in different professional disciplines?

– How would these be different when the goal is liberal-professional integration?

– Must disciplinary differences in pedagogy and epistemology be addressed?

Assessment from the professional perspective

• Architecture as intrinsically “integrative”

• Concerns with the “traditional” capstone assignment

• Intrigued by the PBL experiment

• Examining the South Africa HIV/AIDS student project

PBL from the professional perspective

Integration and pedagogy

• Could we achieve our integrative student learning goals without the final design piece?

• Pedagogical questions:– When and how does the student learning take place

in different disciplines?– Is there any common ground between pedagogies

and student learning across professional disciplines and the liberal arts?

– Should we be examining the “signature pedagogies” that shape student learning in different professional fields?

Pedagogies and performances

Liberal arts• Seminar: lectures, group

discussions around common readings, little individual interaction

• Isolation during production (solo research and writing)

• Written performance• Private presentation of written

deliverable• Private, written evaluation

Emphasis: written and private communication

Architecture• Studio: involves individual and

group interaction, including lectures and seminar discussions

• Interaction during production (studio, desk crits)

• Visual performance• Public, oral presentation of visual

deliverable• Public, oral evaluation, followed

by private, individual evaluation

Emphasis: visual and public communication

Comparing pedagogies and performances

Similarities:Seminar and studio formats both • encourage interaction between the students as a group

and the instructor• involve individual performances Differences:• Written vs. visual communication• Interaction vs. isolation• Private vs. public performance• Amount of individual interaction• Analysis vs. practice

Comparing processes for creating “deliverables”

Liberal Arts• Assignment: topic is given or

discovered• Research: academic

• Analysis• Conclusions based on evidence

from research and analysis related to the defined problem

• Deliverable = research paper• Purpose: conclusions presented,

hypotheses evaluated

Architecture• Assignment: design problem is

posed• Research: academic,

programmatic, precedent, and site context

• Analysis• Definition of design parameters

based on conclusions substantiated by research and analysis

• Setting the criteria for design• Deliverable = design• Purpose: solution proposed for

design problem

The critical middle

• Despite differences, both pedagogies have distinct stages as performances are created

Research

Information gathering

Exploring context

Conclusions

Performance

Design

Analysis

Evaluation

Connections

Integration

• The middle stage is where we find the most commonality between fields

• It’s also where students have the hardest time

Next steps: pursuing the “signature pedagogies” question

• Workshops for the fall semester: faculty in the liberal arts and professional majors analyzing their different pedagogies

• Assessment of fall semester projects with the workshop faculty

• Questions to be examined:– Can we (faculty AND students) recognize parallels between the

distinct pedagogies, performances and deliverables?– Do we agree that the middle stage is a place where subject

matter expertise is less relevant, and critical integrative thinking skills are universally applicable?

– Should the capstone assignment place a special emphasis on this middle stage, to reduce the anxieties created by different “deliverables” and the pedagogies that shape them?

Ongoing research questions

• Can a focus on “signature pedagogies” help resolve the dilemmas of integrative learning?

• Can problem-based learning encourage more integration across the liberal-professional divide?

Susan Frosten, Associate Professor of Architecture FrostenS@PhilaU.edu

Marion Roydhouse, Dean, School of Liberal Arts RoydhouseM@PhilaU.edu

Tom Schrand, Associate Professor of HistorySchrandT@PhilaU.edu

Organizing Your Seminar Paper The material below is intended to help you structure the research and writing of your seminar paper. The suggested topics are not mandatory for every paper, but the papers that successfully fulfill this assignment generally provide the type of information described on this sheet. Guidelines for writing Section II In Section II (Global Trend) you should:

identify and briefly explain the immediate conditions/forces/changes that have given rise to the trend

describe the magnitude or scope of the trend, preferably by using a variety of indicators (number of

countries or areas affected, amount of world population, or capital, or vital natural or cultural resources involved, etc.)

explain who ( i.e., countries, institutions, industries, etc.) supports the trend, why they support it,

and how they have demonstrated their support

explain who ( i.e., countries, institutions, industries, etc.) opposes the trend, why they oppose it, and how they have demonstrated their opposition

briefly describe and assess the impact of the trend

Guidelines for writing Section III In Section III (Impact on Your Profession), you should think about and research several ways in which your chosen global trend has impacted/is impacting on your profession, including (but not limited to) the following:

how the global trend has affected the core knowledge/philosophy on which the profession is grounded

how the global trend has affected the prestige of the profession and/or its relation to other

professional fields

how the global trend has affected conduct of the profession

how the global trend has affected employment in the profession

how the global trend has affected morale within the profession

how the global trend has affected the training of new recruits to the profession Guidelines for writing Section IV In Section IV (Case Study), you should analyze the impact of your global/regional trend on your profession as it is practiced in a specific country outside of the United States.