WELCOME

GENERALSTUDIES

MEETING1 February 2007

Please complete the form to identify Please complete the form to identify workshops of interest.workshops of interest.

HLC ACADEMY

• What is the academy?

• What institutions participated?

• Timeline

• Commitment

CSC COMMITMENT

• Institutional Effectiveness – President’s address

• One component – General Studies

CSC General Studies Representative to HLC

• Jim Margetts – Music

• Greg Spranger – Mathematics

• Sally Blomstrom – Communication Arts

• Ottley Wright – HPER

• Charles Snare – Arts & Sciences

Purpose of General Studies Steering Team

DIMINISH OBSTACLES

• Time

• Training

• Resources

• Communication

Why General Studies?

• Ernest Pascarella and Patrick Terenzini, How College Affects Students, 2005

• Warren Buffet

Which is the most accurate answer?If you are swimming and relaxing on the

beach, which one of the following is most likely to result in serious injury or death?

a. shark attackb. falling coconutc. completion of assessment reportd. email denoting an Arts and

Sciences school meeting

• Pre-existing views influence what we see

• Humans bend information in the direction of the desired conclusion

WISHFUL THINKING??

“So,if you are interested in teaching, do not even expect the young to be like yourself and the people you know”

(Gilbert Highet, 1966, The Art of Teaching, New York: Alfred A. Knopf).

CONSIDER THIS

“Schools teach you to imitate. If you don’t imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were suppose to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher your were not imitating.”(Robert Pirsig, 1974, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, London: The Bodley Head)

How do we know students are learning what we think they

are learning?----------------------

Are students effective at appearing to learn what we want them to learn?

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter” (Winston Churchill)

Employers are asking:

• What standards have been applied to the students’ work?

• What skills and knowledge have been developed (that are reflected in a grade)?

• What reflects the extent to which students have mastered skills and knowledge?

ALIGNING EFFORTS

“For the most students college demands adjustments in learning styles, study habits, use of free time, and interacting as adults with their teachers. These changes involve substantial modification of long-standing habits. They will come about, if at all, over a considerable time span, and with persistent vigilance on the part of all concerned” (added emphasis; Leamnson 1999:4).

“Teaching and learning take place in a whole system” … If every aspect operates as planned, the “learner is ‘trapped’ and cannot escape without learning what is needed” (Biggs, J., 2002, Aligning the Curriculum to

Promote Good Learning)

DO WE KNOW THE ANSWER TO THE FOLLOWING?

• How do we know we have “trapped” students by creating the optimum conditions for learning?

• What evidence do we need to know?

General Studies: an Opportunity • Optimize the conditions for quality learning

experiences -- trap the learner• Minimize the professional experience trap --

wildlife fire fighters• Exhibit the scholarship of teaching: to “think

of teaching practice, and the evidence of student learning, as problems to be investigated, analyzed, represented and debated” (Bass in Huber et al. 2005:36).

-----------------------------“It is a serious thing to interfere with another man’s life” (Gilbert

Highet, 1966, The Art of Teaching, New York: Alfred A. Knopf).

Questions to ponder within each of the 12 areas of

General Studies

• 1. Is the pedagogy aligned with the performance criteria? Does it need to be? If so, how is it aligned?

• 2. Is the content aligned with the performance criteria? Does it need to be? If so, how is it aligned?

• 3. Within each of the courses and sections of courses, what standards have been applied to the students’ work? Should it be different? If so, in what way?

• 4. How do exams/assignments/essays and so forth measure each of the performance criteria at the appropriate level?

Other sources• Huber, Mary Tyler, P. Hutchings, & L.

Shulman, 2005 “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Today” in Kerry O’Meara and R. Rice Faculty Priorities Reconsidered: Rewarding Multiple Forms of Scholarship, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• Naisbitt, John, 2006, Mind Set! Reset Your Thinking and See the Future, New York: HarperCollins.

• Nathan, Rebekah, 2005, My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student, Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press.