The Eastern Integrative Learning Experience (ILE)

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The Eastern Integrative Learning Experience(ILE)
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What is Integrative Learning?

• Integrative learning entails providing students
  with coherent curricula, significant learning and
  life experiences outside of the traditional
  classroom context, and ample opportunity for
  guided reflection, enabling students to tie the
  disparate parts of their academic, personal, and
  professional lives into a holistic,
  transformative university experience.

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Why Integrative Learning?

• A concept with an existing body of literature
• Speaks directly to Easterns overarching goal
  -- being the best
• An umbrella for the academic initiatives which
  we have been pursuing for several years Study
  Abroad, Undergraduate Scholarship, Honors,
  Service Learning
• Includes many elements of the educational
  experience we have offered for many years

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Characteristics of Integrative Learning

• Intentionality
• Reflection
• Problem-solving
• Collaboration
• Engagement
• Metacognition

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Integrative Learning Requires

• Intentionally and purposefully including two
  activities in courses and in co-curricular
  activities
• 1. Connecting (skills and knowledge from
  multiple sources and experiences)
• 2. Reflecting (on learning, experience, and
  the connections between them).

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High Impact, Integrative Experiences

• First-Year Seminars and Experiences
• Collaborative Assignments and Projects
• Writing Intensive Courses
• Study Abroad
• Research, Scholarship, Creative Activity
• Student Teaching
• Internships
• Service-Learning, Community-Based Learning

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What do these have in common?

• Each puts the student in a practical situation in
  which she has problems to solve or challenges to
  overcome.
• Each requires the student to apply skills and
  knowledge acquired in one context to a situation
  in a different context.

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How can we prepare students to take full
advantage of these experiences?

• Instill habits of reflection
• Encourage students to be intentional about their
  choices, both academic and personal/professional
• Provide experiences in which students can
  practice integrating skills and knowledge from
  one context into another

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One of the oddest things about the university
is that it calls itself a community of
scholars, yet it organizes itself in a way that
conceals the intellectual links of that community
from those who don't already see them.

• --Gerald Graff. Colleges Are Depriving
  Students of a Connected View of Scholarship.
  Chronicle of Higher Education. 13 Feb. 1991

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Types of Integrative Learning

• Horizontal
• Vertical
• Global
• Personal
• Cosmic
• Adapted in part from SUNY Oswego catalyst
  project

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Horizontal Academic Integration

• Provides opportunities for students to reflect
  upon connections among their courses through
  exercises such as one-minute papers, focused
  class discussions, reflective assignments.

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Vertical Academic Integration

• Encourages students to reach back and review/use
  skills used in prerequisite courses to enhance
  learning in current course.
• Encourages students to reach back to general
  education courses to provide grounding and inform
  learning in major courses.

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Global Academic Integration

• Encourages students to make connections among
  courses using an overarching concept or theory
  that applies to many courses.

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Personal Integration

• Encourages students to apply academic learning to
  outside-of-class experiences.
• Encourages students to bring personal, social,
  cultural, and professional experiences to bear on
  what they are learning in class.

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Cosmic Integration

• Enables students to recognize the
  interconnectedness of all things.

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What have we accomplished?

• Positives
• Presidential buy-in
• General diffusion of the idea
• Website with information and student examples
• Departmental discussions predominantly listings
  of things already being done
• An increase in the number of integrative
  experiences
• Not a lot of vocal or overt push-back
• Many faculty doing things consistent with IL

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EIUs Integrative Learning Web Site
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Elements of ILE
EIU Reads Appreciative Advising General
Education Major/Minor Curricula Student
Life Co-Curricular Experiences
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EIU Reads

• Enhances critical reading skills
• Develops social/academic skills through
  interactions with faculty and students
• Can provide a follow-up assignment wherein the
  student reflects on her own reading tastes,
  strengths, abilities

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Appreciative Advising

• Academic advisors include discussions of
  students career goals and personal aspirations
  while recommending courses and co-curricular
  activities.

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General Education

• Include assignments that allow student to
  reflect upon her own learning process
• Include assignments that allow student to
  connect to other coursework
• Chosen to coincide with students academic and
  career goals
• Provide opportunities in each course to connect
  to material in other courses e.g., literature
  connects to psychology, political science to
  ethics, sociology to history, fine arts to
  physics . . . .

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Major/Minor Curricula

• Classes build upon disciplinary expertise but
  also reach back to General Education classes in
  science, social science, fine arts, humanities
• Include assignments that allow students to
  reflect on learning process, human experience

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Some Considerations

• How often can personal/professional reflection
  be incorporated into coursework?
• Can students personal/professional aspirations
  be contextualized through their coursework?
• Can academic content be applied to out-of-class
  experiences?

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• How coherent is the curriculum and is that
  coherence explicitly explained to students?
• How can Reflection be embedded in the
  curriculum and be required before and after all
  major integrative activities

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Honors Pilot

• The Presidential Scholars Program has included
  several elements to promote integrated academic
  and personal development
• Academic Plan
• Required participation in student
• life activities
• Required high impact experience
• For all freshman Honors students, the new 1-
  credit required class

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CAA

• In the curricular development/approval process,
  what might be CAAs role?
• Can College curriculum committees be asked
  to consider IL as they look at course proposals?
• Can there be particular expectations of
  General Ed. proposals for intentional inclusion
  of IL?
• Could there be a review of General Ed. with
  an eye on IL?
• Other?